I am currently using an XHTML 1.0 transitional doctype on my vBulletin website. The page in question is PHP. The source (view source) of this page verifies that the XHTML 1.0 transitional doctype is on the page. Upon downloading (File > Save As) the page in IE8, I realized that my doctype had been replaced with an HTML 4.0 transitional doctype.
Why does IE8 change the doctype?
Why isn't the doctype its chosen displayed in the "View Source"?
The answer lies in the global vBulletin options menu.
vBulletin Options -> Cookie and HTTP Header Options -> Send Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility Header (Yes/No)
Disabling that will prevent IE8 from rendering as IE7, and from using the 4.0 HTML transitional doctype.
Please check which Document Mode Your IE8 is running in. If it is IE8 then its some other error. If it's something else than IE8 please add this meta tag as the first element of the <head> Tag.
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1" />
Related
My document looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<!--[if lte IE 8]>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
<![endif]-->
I'm using IE10 to test everything. When I switch Browser Mode to IE7 the Page Default Document Mode shows to be IE7 standards. However when I switch to IE8 Browser Mode the Page Default Document Mode is IE8 standards. Why doesn't the meta tag change it to IE7 standards? Is it something to do with my browser configuration? How can I make sure that everyone who look at my site from IE8 get the Document Mode of IE7 by default?
You're hiding the meta tag, so IE10 will never see it. You'll need to remove the conditional comment wrapping.
And then, I presume that when you put IE in IE8 browser mode, that action forces use of the IE8 renderer and thus it will ignore the X-UA-Compatible header.
The websites I've designed had no problem before but now I see DOCTYPE line red in Firefox 11. There is no problem in validation. I changed encoding to UTF-8 without BOM but problem still exists.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=genelvana.com
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
Isn't it because Transitional doctype isn't really valid anymore unless you are using legacy code?
Surely now if you build a website now, should you be using strict or html5?
Same here while Fx6 didn't color it in red.
While hovering this first line, a tooltip appears saying
Almost standards mode doctype. Expected "<!DOCTYPE html>".
You can safely forget this "advice" IMHO. The important thing to do is choosing a valid doctype and then write code that is conformant to this doctype, as you already do. No browser cares about what follows html so the contrary is true too: no browser cares if there's something after html ;)
Of course, if you use HTML5 elements and technologies (nav element, canvas or whatever) then yes use the HTML5 doctype.
It's not so much an error, as it is a warning. Firefox is simply alerting you that the DOCTYPE you are using, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, triggers Almost standards mode, instead of Standards mode.
If you want the page to be displayed in Standards mode, all you need to do is change the DOCTYPE to either XHTML 1.0 Strict or HTML 5.
you may have some CSS validation errors like fractional pixel values or missing unit declarations like these :
div {left:3.545253px;}
or
div {left: 50;}
these would cause the html doctype validation errors. Check your CSS files and jQuery CSS settings if you have any.
We're in the process of converting web app to IE8 (now client is using IE6). We didn't create that app. We are only modifying and adding features to it. When I visit most of the pages in this app using IE8 developer tools show that IE is working in Quirks mode. But some of the pages work in Internet Explorer 8 Standards Mode. This page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd565628(VS.85).aspx says:
"Quirks Mode: This behavior matches that of Internet Explorer when rendering a document with no doctype or a Quirks doctype."
But all of our pages have DOCTYPE defined - !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" (I don't know how to enter angle brackets here but they are present on webpage.
Can anyone explain me why is IE8 working in both Quirks and standard mode when displaying pages that all have DOCTYPE defined? Or maybe show me two examples of pages that IE8 displays in Quirks and standard mode?
The doctype tag has to be first in the markup, otherwise it's ignored. If you have an XML declaration tag before the doctype tag, IE will ignore the doctype.
If the HTML markup is utterly broken, the browser might fall back into interpreting it as tag soup instead of as an HTML document, and rendering it in Quirks mode.
Use the W3C HTML validator to check that the code doesn't have any serious errors.
Try viewing your HTML i an HEX editor. There might be some weird characters (usually 3: ef bb bf) just before the DOCTYPE declaration. IE also falls into quirks in that case. Happened to me before, and happening right now as well.
I just have a quick question about IE8 Standards mode vs Quirks mode.
The page displays fine if you load its first page then log in. I have searched for the doc type which i think is right for changing the page to IE8 Standards Mode and i think it works because IE's built in debugger says it's in that mode. Also if you start on another page which uses quirks mode then navigate to my site the debugger changes modes to IE8 standards.
The problem starts if your change the mode to IE8 standards before you visit the page. e.g say your on google and change the mode in the debugger to IE8 standards then visit the site the page isn't displayed correctly.
I hope i've explained my problem clearly enough. I've posted the doctype i'm using is that is any help.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Add this meta tag to the head
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
This will force IE into the latest standards mode. So if they have IE8 it will be in IE8 even if its set before to other mode.
Also you could start using the html doctype without problem
<!DOCTYPE html>
You can read more about it here:
The IE Blog has posted "How IE8 Determines Document Mode" which you should read. Also, note that MS introduced a (... ah! Geries beat me to the punch while typing this!) Take a look at Geries' comment. :)
I'm working on a page that, when I load into IE8 and view the developers tools it tells me that page default is quirks mode.
I've got a strict DTD:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
I even went ahead and put in the explicit standards switch, though I didn't think I'd need to:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
I can't understand why page default isn't IE8 standards?
Only thing I can think of is that to get to this page, I first have to log in to an application and the first pages I must traverse are old quirks mode pages. Does IE decide on which mode to use at a server level, or is it supposed to decide page by page?
Thanks!
Does IE decide on which mode to use at a server level
Not generally, no. There is the ugliness of the compatibility view list, which is site-specific, but that only kicks you back to IE7-style-Standards Mode, not IE5.5-style-Quirks-Mode.
Your code otherwise looks OK, as long as that DOCTYPE is the very first thing on the page. IE will be forced to document.compatMode= 'BackCompat' if there is a comment, PI, XML declaration (prior to IE8) or any non-whitespace textual content before the doctype. If a control character has snuck in that you can't see in your text editor, that could do it.
Example problem page?