Hi All, I have just run a check on my site and it's telling me that I need a doctype at the start of my code. I am new to web dev so did a bit of research and came up with 6 different bits of code I can use. Strict Transitional Frameset and these are available in XHTML 1.0 and 4.01 (i think) Any chance someone could have a quick look here: http://www.ledgerservices.co.uk and tell me which one I need? Thanks for any help! Steve
Since XHTML Strict would need your page to validate as XHTML, and XHTML Frameset is for frameset pages only, I was going to say go with XHTML Transitional, but unfortunately your site is still using the <font> tags, so I think you need to take one more step down, and use HTML 4.01 Transitional: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> Code (markup): It's probably a good idea to learn some CSS, and then you can separate your content and presentation to a larger degree and join the brave new XHTML era
Hi Willy, Thank you for that, I'm very new to this (got my copy of FP about a month ago) so am just letting FP2003 create my code for me as I do not have a clue how it all works at the moment! I have been told that it's not the best editor to use but I have it now, and it seems there is sooooo much else to learn that unless it will have a detrimental effect on my search rankings I will just have to live with it for a while untill I get my head round the whole web development concept a bit more. Had a look at the CSS link and that confused me even more !!! lol Thank you for your help
Yes, I can imagine there's a lot to learn, starting fresh ...I've been at it since '95, myself, so have had the chance to pick things up more gradually. Don't sweat XHTML & CSS just yet, then. At some point, just upgrade to a newer FrontPage (which hopefully will support these newer standards) or maybe think about Macromedia Dreamweaver which is sort of the "professional's FrontPage" in a sense. You'll eventually have to mess around with source code at some point and can learn the concepts one by one when you need to
I put that code at the top of the homepage, but now when I run a check it is saying "This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!" do I need to change something else on the page or should I just ignore that comment? it is comming from the report on http://validator.w3.org/ Thanks
Might be that FrontPage is generating even older code. You could look at HTML 3 or HTML 2 doctypes, but IMHO just ignore it for now. If your page doesn't validate as XHTML anyway, there's not much point putting effort into something as abstract as that. Just check that your site looks OK in Windows with Internet Explorer, Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape, Opera, and if you have access to any Apple Mac computer check that separately as well.
OK, thats what I was hoping you would say Thanks for all your help, I'm sure I'll be back with more questions soon. Cheers,
1. FrontPage 2003 IS the latest version. 2. Don't stress about whether your page "validates". That really won't buy you much of anything - just make sure you test the page in alternate browsers to ensure it's at least readable in Netscape, Firefox, etc.
I have never used DOCTYPE I don't know but I am not sure if it has any effect on anything! Do search engines look for this? How does it effect the site?
Thanks for the clarification fryman... So any link explaining different DOCTYPEs and when/how should they be used?
Every page. Think of it as "instructions to browsers on how to interpret this page". Then it becomes clear - you need it on every page you want "interpreted" (rendered) correctly. Leaving it out doesn't break the page but it does leave it up to individual browsers to "decide" how to render it, and not all browsers make the same decisions in that respect. Thus, the main purpose of the DOCTYPE declaration is to increase the uniformity with which different browsers interpret that page.