Does the DOCTYPE declaration have to be the first tag in an HTML document? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I read the w3 specs which just say that there are 3 parts to a document. The sequence is assumed and there is no explicit statement forbidding, for example, a little js snippit up front.

I understand that it is possible to configure TAM to add the js at the end of the dicument but it beats me why they put it up top if it can cause such obvious problems!

Answer 2

It could be the source of your problem though! Check out "quirks mode" as that depends on doctype settings. Further study : http://www.quirksmode.org/ explanation: you can toggle your browser into (mostly IE) strict standards compilant mode, and loose mode. This will greatly affect rendering. TAM's setting could have switched this on/off.