Head First HTML with CSS

Okay, it’s been more than
a “few pages” since you said
you were going to talk about what
“transitional” means. What’s with this
transitional stuff? If we’re writing
“standard” HTML 4.01, why is it
transitional?
standards, compliance, and all that jazz
There are actually two DOCTYPEs, one
for those transitioning to HTML 4.01,
and a more strict DOCTYPE for those
who are already there.
Imagine you’ve got a Web site with hundreds of Web
pages, all written in nonstandard HTML. You’d like to
improve the site and get all that HTML up to the 4.01
standard, but you’re using lots of old legacy stuff from
back in the 2.0 and 3.2 days of HTML.
What do you do? Use the HTML 4.01 Transitional
DOCTYPE, which allows you to validate your pages but
still permits some of the legacy HTML. That way, you
can be sure you don’t have any outright mistakes in your
markup (like typos, mismatched tags, and so on) but you
won’t have to rework all your HTML to get it to validate.
Then, after you’ve removed all the legacy HTML, you’re
all ready for the strict document type, which ensures you
have a fully compliant, standardized Web site.
you are here 243