DOCTYPE guides ... are they really like buses?
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Posted: Thu, 2008-04-10 16:43
Short note on your two wonderful pieces of prose - Hugo and Burlster.
For me they are too long, or perhaps more accurately they don't summarise the situation at the start.
E.g.
Which doctypes should I use?
For a new page a strict one. It doesn't matter if you choose HTML or XHTML. Some people prefer one over the other, like milk or dark chocolate, but neither is better than the other.
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Me puzzled Chris; what
Posted: Thu, 2008-04-10 20:33
Me puzzled Chris; what prompts this? My post has been out there for an age!
Isn't choosing a strict DTD always held by most of us that have an opinion to be more important than the flavour? I know I've said that in the past here.
Has Burlster written on the subject?
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Hugo wrote:Has Burlster
Posted: Thu, 2008-04-10 21:57
Yeah, it's disappeared to page 2 already.
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What prompted, seeing
Posted: Thu, 2008-04-10 23:24
What prompted, seeing Burlster's. Anyway, yours is still marked as draft
My example was meant as a sample first paragraph not as a suggestion (although it does closely reflect my views
). The point being both articles do take quite a while to get to the guts of the question. I think a neat summary or precis at the start would be handy. Those interested will read on for more details.
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Always prefer draft over
Posted: Fri, 2008-04-11 05:55
Always prefer draft over bottled.
Have we gone back to Uni? Doing a Open university course? precis? I'll pray I see fewer comments like this
Anyways you're correct it's still in draft, which is my method of covering myself, but perhaps some two years on it's time to publish the final version, with perhaps an opening paragraph, maybe along the lines of:
" If of low attention span and dislike reading; in a nutshell what is below is summed up by 'use a DTD - your choice as to flavour - keep it strict for new documents' this is holy writ!"
Edit/ Have moved Burlster's post to the 'How To' section
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Good point!
Posted: Thu, 2008-04-17 14:20
Ooops, I missed this one!
Apologies. In a way I wrote mine because I sympathised for those who don't really get the concept of a Doctype as I didn't a year ago, and who consider references to 'strict', 'transitional' and even 'w3' as a little intimidating.
In my mind, I envisioned a user asking a question and providing code without a doctype. We might then say "Ok, well first, get a doctype. Check out this link to understand why" and link to say Hugos. However, for the few that then come back with questions about whatever article we'd sent them too, it may become apparent they need a slightly more basic tutorial to get them started so we could perhaps point them to mine, then afterwards other bits and pieces might make more sense.
It was however my first article and I agree Chris, there are some basic literary principles I probably should have paid more attention to. It's all good and well following a map to a destination, but you're more likely to follow it if you actually know WHERE you're aiming to get!
P.S. Thanks Hugo!
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