What is DOCTYPE?

Question

• What is DOCTYPE and why do I want to use it?
• What are the different DOCTYPEs I can use?
• What is the difference between standards and quirks mode, and

Answer 1

First of all there is no one doctype you should be using, but most designers try to make it work within XHTML 1.0 Strict.

A doctype is nothing more than a declaration of what tags you can use within your html (though the browsers can use more or less than what is defined) You can actually open up the doctype file and start reading (XHTML 1.0 Strict)

If you do not specify a doctype, the browser will try its best to guess but not always hits the correct type.

Quirks mode is just a technique used by browsers to be backwards compatible, a great example of quirks mode is how IE renders boxes