The selection mechanism of DOCTYPE mode by well-known browsers_HTML/Xhtml_Web page production

Document Scope

The mode switching included in this article applies to Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, Safari, Chrome and other Webkit-based browsers, Opera, Konqueror, Internet Explorer for Mac, Internet Explorer for Windows, and embedded IE browser. Avoid mentioning the name of the browser engine and instead mention the name of the most well-known browser using that engine.

This article focuses on the mode selection mechanism rather than documenting the exact behavior of each mode.

Mode

Here are the different modes:

Mode with content type text/html

The mode selection for text/html content depends on doctype sniffing (discussed later in this article). In IE8, the mode depends on other factors as well. However, by default in IE8, the mode for non-intranet sites that are not on Microsoft's blacklist depends on the document type.

It cannot be overemphasized that the precise behavior of modes differs in each browser, even though it is discussed uniformly in this article.

Quirks Mode

In Quirks Mode, the browser violates modern web formats in order to avoid "breaking" pages created based on practices popular in the late 1990s. specification. Different browsers implement different quirks. In Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, quirks mode effectively freezes IE 5.5. In other browsers, quirks mode is a small deviation from standards mode.

If you are creating a new web page, you should comply with relevant specifications (especially CSS2.1) and use standards mode.

Standards Mode

In Standards Mode, the browser attempts to treat standards-compliant documents as normatively correct as in the specified browser .

Different browsers follow different stages, so standards mode is not a single goal.

HTML5 calls this mode "no quirks mode"

Almost Standards Mode (Almost Standards Mode)

irefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera( Starting from 7.5) and IE8 also have a mode called "quasi-standard mode", which implements the vertical size of table cells according to traditional methods instead of strictly following CSS2 specifications. Mac IE5, Windows IE6 and 7, versions prior to Opera 7.5, and Konqueror do not need quasi-standards mode because they at least do not strictly follow the CSS2 specification to implement table cell vertical dimensions in their respective standards modes. In fact, their standards mode is closer to Mozilla's quasi-standards mode than Mozilla's standards mode.

HTML5 calls this mode "limited quirks mode".

IE7 mode

IE8 has a mode that mainly freezes a copy of IE7 standards mode. No other browsers have a mode like this, and it is not specified by HTML5.

Mode with content type application/xhtml xml (XML mode)

In Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, the application/xhtml xml HTTP content type (not a meta element nor a doctype!) will trigger XML mode. In XML mode, the browser attempts to give the XML document specification-correct processing to the extent specified in the browser.

IE6, 7 and 8 do not support application/xhtml xml, nor does Mac IE5.

In the Nokia S60 browser based on WebKit, the application/xhtml xml HTTP content type cannot trigger XML mode, because the focus in mobile walled gardens is compatibility with non-standard content. (Older “mobile browsers” cannot use real XML parsers because non-canonical content is tagged as XML.)

Having not tested Konqueror enough, I can't say exactly what will happen in this browser.

Non-Web Modes

Some engines have modes that have nothing to do with web content. For completeness, they are only mentioned here. Opera has a WML2.0 mode. WebKit on Leopard has a specific mode for legacy Dashboard widgets.

Impact

Here are the main impacts of these patterns:

Layout

The text/html mode mainly affects CSS layout. For example, it's a quirk that tables don't inherit styles. In some browser quirks mode, the box model becomes the IE5.5 box model. This document does not list all layout quirks.

In semi-standard mode (in browsers with this mode), only the height of the table cell containing the image is different from that in standard mode.

In XML mode, selectors have different case-sensitive behavior. Additionally, the specific rules for the HTML body element do not apply to older browsers that do not implement the latest CSS 2.1 changes.

Analysis

There are also quirks that affect the parsing of HTML and CSS and can cause standards-compliant web pages to be parsed incorrectly. Quirk layout determines whether these quirks are enabled or not. Regardless, it's important to understand the main similarities and differences between Quirks mode and Standards mode in CSS layout and parsing (not HTML parsing).

Some people mistakenly refer to standards mode as "strict parsing mode", which misunderstands the browser's ability to enforce HTML syntax rules and the browser's ability to evaluate markup for correctness. This is not the case. Even when standards mode layout is in effect, browsers still do tag soup (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_soup) correction work. (Before the release of Netscape 6 in 2000, Mozilla did have parsing modes for enforcing HTML syntax rules. These modes were incompatible with existing Web content and were abandoned.)

Another common misconception is about XHTML parsing. It is generally believed that using the XHTML doctype results in different parsing. In fact, this is not the case. XHTML documents with content type text/html use the same parser as HTML documents. Currently all browsers care about is that XHTML with document type text/html is just "tag soup with croutons" (extra slashes everywhere).

Only when documents using XML document type (for example: application/xhtml xml or xmapplication/) will trigger XML mode for parsing, the parser at this time is completely different from the HTML parser.

Script

While Quirks Mode is mostly about CSS, there is also a bit about scripting. For example, in Firefox's quirks mode, the HTML id attribute establishes a global script-scoped object reference just like in IE. The impact of scripting in IE8 deserves more attention than in other browsers.

In XML mode, the behavior of some DOM APIs is completely different, because the behavior of XML's DOM API is not compatible with the behavior of HTML when it is defined.

doctype sniffing (also called doctype conversion)

Modern browsers use doctype sniffing to determine the engine mode of text/html documents. This means that the choice of mode is based on the document type declaration (or lack thereof) at the beginning of the HTML document. (This does not apply to documents using the XML document type.)

The document type declaration (doctype) is a grammatical forgery of SGML. SGML is an old-style markup framework, and HTML before HTML5 was defined based on it. In the HTML4.01 specification, the document type declaration describes the version information of HTML. Despite the name "Document Type Declaration" and the HTML 4.01 specification describing "version information", a Document Type Declaration does not classify an SGML or XML document as a specific type of document, even if it looks like it (because of the name) . (More in the appendix)

Neither the HTML4.01 specification nor ISO 8879 (SGML) say anything about using document type declarations as engine mode conversions. Doctype sniffing is based on the observation that at the time doctype sniffing was designed, the vast majority of quirky documents had neither a document type declaration nor a reference to an older DTD. HTML5 accepts this fact and defines the doctype in text/html as the only mode conversion.

A typical pre-HTML5 document type declaration contains (separated by whitespace) the "". The document type declaration is placed before the opening tag of the document's root element.

Select doctype

text/html

Here is a simple guide on how to choose a doctype when creating a new text/html document:

Standard mode, cutting-edge validation

If you want to verify such as , and new features like ARIA, then this is the right thing to do. Note that the effective definition of HTML5 is still changing, please be sure to test image alignment in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera9 or Opera10. Testing image alignment in Internet Explorer is not sufficient, anyway make sure you test in IE8 as well.

Standards mode, more stable verification target

This doctype will also trigger standards mode, and the 10-year-old HTML4.01 valid definition is stable. Please make sure to test image alignment in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera9 or Opera10. Testing image alignment in Internet Explorer is not sufficient, anyway make sure you test in IE8 as well.

To use standards mode, but still verify that markup or using sliced ​​images in table layouts is not recommended and you don't want to fix them.

It triggers semi-standards mode (and the old full Standards mode in Mozilla). Please note that layouts based on sliced ​​images implemented using tables may be broken if ported to HTML5 in the future (and the same goes for full standards mode).

Using quirks mode on purpose

No doctype.

Please don’t do this. Intentionally designing for quirks mode will bother you, and in the future no one your colleagues or successors will even care about Windows IE6 (no one cares about Netscape 4.x and IE5 anymore). Designing for quirks mode is a bad idea. Believe me.

If you want to still support Windows IE6, it's better to make a special hack for it using conditional comments than to make other browsers fall back to quirks mode.

I do not recommend any XHTML doctype because XHTML used as text/html is considered harmful . Regardless, if you choose to use the XHTML doctype, be aware that XML declarations will trigger quirks mode in IE6 (but not IE7!).

application/xhtml xml

A simple guideline for application/xhtml xml is to never use doctype. Web pages in this manner are not "strictly consistent" with XHMTL 1.0, but that doesn't matter. (Please see the Appendix at the back)

IE8 complications

A List Apart once introduced that in addition to doctype, IE8 will use mode conversion based on meta elements as one of the factors in mode selection. (See Ian Hickson, David Baron, David Baron again, Robert O'Callahan and Maciej Stachowiak comments. )

IE8 has 4 modes: IE5.5 quirks mode, IE7 standards mode, IE8 quasi-standards mode and IE8 standards mode. The choice of mode depends on data from several sources: doctype, meta elements, HTTP headers, periodic download data from Microsoft, LAN domain, settings made by the user, settings made by the LAN administrator, and the mode of the parent frame (if any) Compatible with the address bar view button is triggered by the user. (For other apps embedded in the engine, the mode also depends on the embedded app.)

Fortunately, IE8 will generally use doctype sniffing like other browsers if:

• The author did not set the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header
• The author did not set the X-UA-Compatible meta tag
• Microsoft has not placed this site’s domain name on the blacklist
• The LAN administrator did not place this site on the blacklist
• The user did not press the Compatibility View button (or was otherwise added to a specific user blacklist)
• This site is not in the LAN domain
• User did not choose to show all sites in IE7
• The page is not embedded into the compatibility mode page through the frame

Except for the two cases above regarding X-UA-Compatible, IE8 performs doctype sniffing like IE7. IE7 emulation is called compatibility view.

In the case of X-UA-Compatible, IE8 behaves completely differently from other browsers. I would like to see the Appendix or the flow chart in PDF and PNG formats on this page.

Unfortunately, without the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header or meta tag, even with the appropriate doctype, IE8 allows users to inadvertently downgrade the page from IE8's standards mode to IE7 mode, which is an emulation IE7 standards mode. Worse, LAN administrators can do this too. Microsoft can also blacklist all domain names you use.

To deal with these effects, doctype is not enough, you need X-UA-Compatible HTTP header and meta tag.

The following is a simple guide on how to select the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header or meta tag for new text/html documents that already have a doctype that triggers standards mode or quasi-standards mode in other browsers:

Your domain is not on Microsoft's blacklist, and you are more concerned with not having browser-specific nuisances than making sure users can't fall back to IE7 behavior.

You do not need to include the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header or meta tag.

Your domain name is on Microsoft's blacklist. Because other authors in your domain name have damaged the site or caused users to enable compatibility view for the entire domain, you are worried about Google or Digg using frames to embed your site or your To ensure that users cannot use compatible views

First, include the following meta element in your page (it is illegal in HTML5) (before any script element), or set the following HTTP header: Breaking

in IE8 First, include the following meta element in your page (it is illegal in HTML5)

(before any script element), or set the following HTTP header:

Related links

Eric Meyer writes about Mac IE5 patterns in

Using the correct doctype
doctype sniffing for Mozilla
• by David Baron Lance Silver discusses mode and doctype sniffing in Windows IE6 in
CSS Enhancements in IE6
doctype conversion for Opera9
• Faruk Ateş’s
IE8 and X-UA-Compatible solution
Addendum: A plea to XML implementers and specification authors

Please do not bring doctype sniffing to XML.

Doctype sniffing is a tag chowder-like approach to solving a tag chowder problem. Doctype sniffing is a heuristic designed after the release of the HTML4 and CSS2 specifications that distinguishes stale documents from documents that conform to behavior that their authors might have expected.

Occasionally it is suggested to use doctype sniffing on XML to schedule different processing, identify the vocabulary in use or activate features. This is a bad idea. Scheduling and vocabulary identification should be based on namespaces, while feature activation should be based on explicit processing instructions or elements.

The whole idea of ​​well-formedness is to introduce DTD-free parsing of XML and promote doctype-free documentation. In the formal case where two XML documents have the same canonical form and the application processes them differently (and the difference is not due to a lack of choice to process external entities), the application may be broken. In practice, if two XML documents cause the same content to be reported (qnames ignored) to a SAX2

content handler

and the application processes the documents differently, the application may be broken. Considering that as web authors you can't trust that everyone will use an XML processor that resolves extra entities to parse their pages (even though some browsers appear to do so because they map certain public identifiers to a truncated entity-defining DTD), Inserting doctypes into XML for the Web is pointless and often leads to cargo cultish habits. (You still use W3C Validator's DTD override feature to validate a DTD, although W3C Validator will say that the result is only temporarily valid. Or better yet, you can relax NG with Validate , it doesn't pollute the document referenced by the schema. ) Requiring a doctype in order to sniff is pretty stupid, even if that's the workaround in HTML practice.

Also, when a lower-level specification defines two things as equal, a higher-level specification should not try to give them different meanings. Please consider . If you remove the public identifier, the same DTD is still specified, so doctype means the same as the previous doctype. Should they be sniffed differently? Can further theorize. Assume that a DTD called foobar.dtd is copied to example.com: . How to sniff this? It should mean the same thing. Even the entire DTD can be attached to the document.

In other words, if there is #include "foo.h", you should not bind any black magic to the name foo.h, because it should allow copying the contents of foo.h into the document or copying foo.h into in bar.h and means #include "bar.h".

The reason I'm not worried about HTML and SGML constructing the same parameters is that web browsers don't use real SGML parsers to parse HTML, so I don't think pretending to be SGML is useful. Anyway, if you’re not convinced yet, here’s W. Eliot Kimber’s article on the matter comp.text.sgml

Appendix: How to handle some doctypes in text/html

In the table below, quirk mode, standard mode and quasi-standard are represented by Q, S and A respectively. When the browser has only two modes, if the row height of the table cell is consistent with Mozilla's standard mode, the standard mode is marked "S". If the row height of the table cell is consistent with Mozilla's quasi-standard mode, , then it is marked as "A".

Please note that XHTML served using the XML content model is rendered in XML mode.

The purpose of this table is not to say that all doctypes in the table are reasonable choices for new pages. The purpose of this table is to show what data my recommendations are based on.

The following abbreviation symbols are used for column headers:

NS6

Mozilla 0.6…0.9.4 and Netscape 6.0…6.2.3

Old Moz

Mozilla 0.9.5 to 1.1 alpha and Mozilla 1.0

Moz & Safari & Opera 10 & HTML5

Mozilla 1.0.1, Mozilla 1.1 beta and higher, Firefox to Netscape 7, Safari 0.9 to Safari 4.0 beta, Opera 10, Chrome, Konqueror 3.5, HTML5 specified behavior

Opera 9.0

Opera 9.0…9.20

IE 8 & Opera 9.5

No X-UA-Compatible and Compatible Mode overrides default IE8 ("A" in this case means IE8 semi-standard mode), Opera 7.5…8.54 and 9.5…9.6

IE 7 & Opera 7.10

IE7, compatibility mode and IE8 without X-UA-Compatible coverage ("A" in this case means IE7 mode) and Opera 7.10…7.23

IE 6 & Opera 7.0

Windows IE 6 and Opera 7.0… 7.03

Mac IE 5

Mac IE 5.0…5.2.3

Konq 3.2

Konqueror 3.2.2…3.3 (may also include 3.1…3.2 .1; I’m not sure yet)

Doctype	NS6	Old Moz	Moz & Safari & Opera10 & HTML5	Opera9.0	IE8 & Opera9.5	IE7 & Opera7.10	IE6 & Opera7.0	Mac IE5	Konq3.2
None	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	Q	A
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/ html4/strict.dtd">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">	S	S	A	A	A	A	A	A	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">	Q	S	A	A	A	A	A	A	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">	Q	Q	Q	Q	A	A	A	A	Q
">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	A
">"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">	S	S	A	A	A	A	A	A	Q
">	S	S	S	S	S	A	Q	A	Q
">	S	S	S	S	S	A	Q	A	Q
">version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">	S	S	S	S	S	A	Q	A	Q
">version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">	S	S	A	A	A	A	Q	A	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "ISO/IEC 15445:2000//DTD HTML//EN">	Q	S	S	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "ISO/IEC 15445:2000//DTD HyperText Markup Language//EN">	Q	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "ISO/IEC 15445:1999//DTD HTML//EN">	S	S	S	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q	Q
">HTML PUBLIC "ISO/IEC 15445:1999//DTD HyperText Markup Language//EN">	S	S	S	S	S	A	A	A	Q
	Q	S	S	S	S	A	A	A

History

Moziila's doctype sniffing code was significantly modified in October 2000, September 2001 and June 2002. The status of the Mozilla (and Netscape 6.x) build described in this document can be seen at ftp.mozilla.org as of 2000.10.19. This document does not cover how doctype sniffing works in Mozilla M18 (and Netscape 6.0 PR3). Safari's doctype sniffing code has also been significantly modified since the first public beta version. This document does not cover behavior earlier than version V73 also called 0.9.

The doctype sniffing code before Konqueror 3.5 seems to come from a very early version of Safari. Konqueror now matches Safari, and its doctype sniffing code comes from Mozilla.

As can be seen from the table, Opera's doctype sniffing is regularly changing from being similar to IE to being similar to Mozilla, although Opera 9.5 and 9.6 are on the way back. At the same time, Opera's quirks mode layout behavior has been switched from emulating IE6's quirks mode to Mozilla's quirks mode.

Appendix: Mode selection for IE8

Start: Enter "X-UA-Compatible meta?"

X-UA-Compatible meta?

IE=7: Use IE7 standard

IE=EmulateIE7: Enter "quirks or no doctype? (compatibility mode)"

IE=IE8 or IE=IE7 or IE=a or IE=EmulateIE8 or no or first script: enter "X-UA- Compatible HTTP header?"

IE=8 or IE=Edge or IE=99 or IE=9.9: Enter "quasi-standards mode?"

IE=5: Use quirks mode (IE5. 5)

)"

IE=IE8 or IE=IE7 or IE=a or IE=EmulateIE8 or none: Enter "Show all sites...Preset?"

IE=8 or IE=Edge or IE=99 or IE=9.9: Enter "quasi-standards mode?"

IE=5: Use quirks mode (IE5.5)

Quacks mode or no doctype? (compatibility mode)

Yes: Use quirks mode (IE5.5)

No: Use IE7 standards mode

Show all sites... Preset?

Yes: Enter "quirks mode or no doctype? (compatibility mode)"

No: Enter "Show LAN site...preset?"

Show LAN site...preset set up?

Yes: Enter "The site is located in the LAN domain?"

No: Enter "The domain name is on the list maintained by Microsoft?"

The domain name is on the list maintained by Microsoft?

Yes: Enter "Quirk mode or no doctype? (Compatibility mode)"

No: Enter "Embedded in Frame with compatibility mode page?"

Compatibility mode page Embedding with Frame?

Yes: Go to "Quirk mode or no doctype? (compatibility mode)"

No: Go to "Compatibility mode button pressed?"

Compatibility mode pressed Button?

Yes: Enter "quirks mode or no doctype? (compatibility mode)"

No: Enter "quirks mode or no doctype? (IE8)"

Quirks mode or No doctype? (IE8)

Yes: Enter "Use quirks mode (IE5.5)"

No: Enter "quasi-standards mode?"

Pre-standards mode?

Yes: Use IE8 semi-standard mode

No: Use IE8 standards mode

These steps can be seen as flowcharts in

PDF

and

PNG

formats. Thanks Thanks to Simon Pieters, Simon Pieters and Anne van Kesteren for helping me correct the pattern sheets for various Opera versions and for their comments. Thanks to Simon Pieters for creating another IE8 flowchart.