SeaMonkey complains about its own doctype header

trellis · Post by **trellis** » December 18th, 2014, 4:32 pm

Perhaps not a bug as such, but seems a bit silly.

If you create an HTML document using SeaMonkey Composer, open that document in SeaMonkey Browser and View Page Source in the browser, the doctype header that SeaMonkey itself generated is highlighted in red as a "quirky doctype".

barbaz · Post by **barbaz** » December 18th, 2014, 6:55 pm

Because SeaMonkey browser is HTML5, where "correct" doctype is simply

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html>

but Composer is HTML4, where doctype isn't supposed to look like that (it's more complicated, as you can see)

patrickjdempsey · Post by **patrickjdempsey** » December 18th, 2014, 7:24 pm

Not exactly. Current versions of SeaMonkey will accept any doctype *including* HTML5.

The error originates from the Firefox Dev Tools team who have apparently decided that authors should not use a Transitional doctype, even if it's actually preferable in most situations. Source:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1077 ... ype-in-red

Why is Transitional preferable? Basically because the HTML standards folks have gone totally crazy in deprecating lots of very useful markup over the years in favor of a hypocritical form of fascism they term "the semantic web". The "semantic" way of building a website these days is not always obvious, easy, or human-writer-friendly and being that Composer is rather old, it still uses a great deal of older methods for doing things. So the Transitional doctype is probably totally appropriate for the code that Composer generates, even if the Firefox Dev Tools folks are on the HTML5-or-bust bandwagon.

Lemon Juice · Post by **Lemon Juice** » December 19th, 2014, 2:56 am

patrickjdempsey wrote:Why is Transitional preferable? Basically because the HTML standards folks have gone totally crazy in deprecating lots of very useful markup over the years in favor of a hypocritical form of fascism they term "the semantic web".

I think XHTML 1.x was the most fascist, HTML5 has preserved many good old tags due to social pressure, for example <b>, <i>, <u>. The only funny thing is they have been given new semantic meanings, which sound so complicated and counter-intuitive that I suppose we'll see a new html specification in a few years that invents yet something new while the browsers will continue rendering them the same so we don't have to worry about this.

SeaMonkey complains about its own doctype header

SeaMonkey complains about its own doctype header

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