Is a Mix of XHTML Strict and Transitional Pages OK?

[My_Donna]

I have a Web site whose pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict, and the vast majority of them are valid pages, according to the W3C validation page. Some of the pages are not valid, however, as I use some items such as target="_blank" and ol start="26" and items like that.

Would any problems develop with indexing (or with anything else) if I decided to make the invalid pages transitional and keep the rest strict? Is it ok to have a mix of XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.0 Transitional on a single site?

[REW Fergus]

I cannot speak with authority about the search engine-friendliness of anything, but there's nothing wrong with what you propose to do from a standards point of view. DOCTYPEs are document types, not site types. I highly doubt search engines care about what DOCTYPE you use, provided they can parse the page.

Another solution would be to implement this in a XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant way. Here's an article that will help:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/popuplinks/

Note: in XHTML Strict, this can only be achieved with Javascript. It is possible, though, to leave a valid href on the anchor tag providing a means to navigate for user agents that do not support Javascript.