Closed Bug 57371 Opened 24 years ago Closed 24 years ago

Inform Apple about quirks/standard layout modes

Categories

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect, P1)

Product:
Tech Evangelism Graveyard
Component:
English US
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: hsivonen, Assigned: ian)

References

(
URL
)

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

Draft message
2.77 KB, text/plain
Details 
Need to inform Apple about quirks/standard layout modes and the effect on their 
navigation bar.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: --- → mozilla0.6
Whiteboard: message written; awaiting contact information
Assignee: henris → ian
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
I'll do it. A netscape.com address might have more weight.
Ok, I went to http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html and wrote:

---------------------------------------8<---------------------------------------
Hi,

Many pages on www.apple.com use an HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE that includes 
a URI, like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 
Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

...and are therefore being interpreted by Netscape 6 and Mozilla pre-release 
builds as requiring standards-compliant layout. Unfortunately, because the 
pages are actually expecting a backwards-compatible layout, the result is that 
the navigation bar on each page is slightly disjointed.

There is a very simple way in which you could change your site to work with 
Netscape 6 and Mozilla, which is to remove the URI part of the DOCTYPE -- i.e., 
use the following at the top of each page instead:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

This is perfectly valid, and additionally indicates to Netscape 6 that you wish 
a backwards-compatible rendering.

Please feel free to mail me any questions you may have.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson
---------------------------------------8<---------------------------------------

I will track progress.
Severity: normal → major
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Priority: P3 → P1
Is there anything further supposed to happen with this in the near future?
Attached file Draft message — 

    
    

    
  
(I attached the draft I was referring to in my 2000-10-21 status whiteboard update.)

    
    

    
  
Andreas,
I think further communication with Apple is supposed to happen.

    
    

    
  
I voicemailed their Partnership Manager for Worldwide Developer Relations, Calin
Pacurariu, asking to be referred to Apple's web site team, but I've gotten no
response. Voicemailed him again today. Please go ahead with trying other means
of contacting them in parallel. Thanks!

    
    

    
  
I've emailed Calin the message, cc:ing Henri. Many thanks to Henri for pulling 
this together!
Keywords: evangelized
Whiteboard: message written; awaiting contact information → message sent; awaiting reply from Apple

    
    

    
  
*sigh*, Calin's voicemail is working but his email bounces indicating user
unknown. We need a working Apple email contact. ChrisN, any contacts? I have
submitted the message through their feedback form.
Whiteboard: message sent; awaiting reply from Apple → message sent and bounced; need Apple email contact

    
    

    
  
Forwarded message to contact Greg Gilman at apple.com. (ggilman)

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 60118 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 60183 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
This appears to have been resolved. Apple's homepage now has the modified
DOCTYPE (I didn't check the other pages, but I assume they're being taken care of).

    
    

    
  
Apple now uses a doctype that activates the quirks mode. The alignment problem
is gone. Marking fixed. Thanks to everyone who helped in communicating with Apple.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED

    
    

    
  
It would've been nice if they had told us somehow! ;-) 
ekrock: did they contact you at all?

VERIFIED FIXED. Wohay! There are now almost no sites on the web that use
transitional HTML and trigger our standard layout mode! ;-) Ahem.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED

    
  
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---

    
    

    
  
Reopening as the url in Bug 60118 is still not fixed (developer.apple.com)  As
David from apple (cc'd here) noted in his last comment on that bug, the only
difference between the doctype on developer and in other places is that it
specifies:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
 - vs. -
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">

Is ours really the desired behaviour of the DTD on developer.apple.com?  If so,
is this an easy mistake that other web developers could make?  (should it be
release noted somewhere?)


    
    

    
  
Yes, that is the "desired" behavior, based on the original proposal that any
DOCTYPE with a system identifier (URI) would trigger strict mode (as in MacIE).

    
    

    
  
The distinction between HTML 4.0 Transitional with the URI and HTML 4.01
Transitional with the URI is, indeed, intentional. The reason for this is that
HTML 4.0 Transitional is already in use to such a degree that enabling standards
layout for that doctype would have likely prompted numerous complaints.

Unlike Mozilla, IE 5 for Mac activates its standards mode for both HTML 4.0 and
4.01 Transitional *with the URI*. IE 5 for Mac can get away with this without
breaking existing sites, because they implement the sizing of boxes around
images like Navigator 1 through 4. Mozilla does the box sizing accoding to the
CSS2 spec when in the standards layout mode.

The subject has been discussed in length in bug 42525 and in n.p.m.layout. There
is a documenting summary at the end of bug 42525. (Please don't add any more
questions that bug, however.) The behavior of HTML 4.01 Transitional with the
URI is also documented in Bugzilla Helper.

(The behavior of HTML 4.01 Transitional with the URI is also covered [as the
first item] on Netscape's developer release note page for Netscape 6.)

These pages might be of intrest:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/doctype.html
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/standards.html#lineboxmodel

The bug about getting the minimal documentation in the next Mozilla release
notes and hopefully elsewhere at mozilla.org is: bug 36045.

The bug about thorough documentation of the layout modes is: bug 31932.

    
    

    
  
http://developer.apple.com/ now renders in the quirks mode. Resolving as fixed.
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago → 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Whiteboard: message sent and bounced; need Apple email contact

    
  
Keywords: evangelized

    
    

    
  
Both pages look correct, but developer.apple.com uses quirks mode and
www.apple.com doesn't (it has the url in the doctype).

    
    

    
  
There is no URL in the doctype. There hasn't been one for a while.

    
    

    
  
All Evangelism Bugs are now in the Product Tech Evangelism. See bug 86997 for
details.
Component: Evangelism → US English
Product: Browser → Tech Evangelism
Target Milestone: mozilla0.6 → ---
Version: other → unspecified

    
    

    
  
http://developer.apple.com/ may not have doctype but plenty of other apple pages
do, however there is another bug on this, so i will go ahead and verify this one.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Blocks: 114156
Product: Tech Evangelism → Tech Evangelism Graveyard

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