Thread: HTML 4.01 strict vs. XHTML 1.0 transational

I have an old site that I would like to update and I have been learning Dreamweaver CS4 for the purpose of doing so. This has had me watching TONS of tutorial videos. In one, the instructor stated that new pages should be created using a DocType of HTML 4.01 strict but he did not give any indication as to why. The default in Dreamweaver CS4 is XHTML 1.0 transitional and this is what most of the other videos seem to use.

What are the pros and cons that I should be considering and what do you suggest?

Thanks!

Just use the default and you will be fine.

Thanks! I asked this question in a number of places and this was the only response I received.

It's probably because it's far to technical a question for most Realtors, and far to inconsequential to coder types (you're focus should not be on micromanaging the details, you will never finish your project if you get hung up on the very first line of your source)

I think you need to ask yourself Ted - is this something you should really be doing? (Your website is the main source of your leads for your real estate business and you are a professional Realtor, not web developer right?) - what's going to happen when you realize that in order to bring your site up to today's standards you are going to want built in custom IDX (which means dedicated server, major data parsing and sql integrations, crazy queries, crons and creative solutions to complex programming problems) etc -

Also - when you finally do learn how to implement today's progressive code - (and how knowing the basics does not allow you to do anything close to what you see other professional firms) how much of your time (and more importantly opportunity revenues) have you wasted in realizing a few weeks / months and $10-50k later you would have been way further ahead - know what I mean?

This is a driving piece of your business - don't let your personal interest in learning code, or considerations of cost be your reason for upgrading yourself - let ROI be your guide - the right answer will come to you
Cheers

HTML 4.01 Transitional. Strict does little more than make your job harder. Strict forces you to use javascript to open new windows, for example, since the Strict philosophy is that HTML should take no "actions." I'd rather just add target="_blank" and be done with it.

XHTML 1.0 Transitional is just fine, too, though I would lean more toward HTML at this time since Internet Exploder 6 is still very much alive (or undead) and doesn't understand XML very well.

The more important issues (besides the questions of whether you or someone else should make your site) are that your markup is VALID and WELL-FORMED, and that your content is relevant.

The program that I use is putting the html document automartically in HTML 4.01 Transitional so I just leave it like that.

Originally Posted by sclakes

XHTML 1.0 Transitional is just fine, too, though I would lean more toward HTML at this time since Internet Exploder 6 is still very much alive (or undead) and doesn't understand XML very well.

Thanks, I had not thought of the older browsers. According to w3schools.com, IE6 is currently used by about 10% of users. This is about 1/2 of what it was a year ago. And just the other day I saw something on the news about a security threat unique to IE6 which I would expect to motivate some to update.