CSS layout will not work with the DTD

Posted September 4, 2004

Along the same lines of the problem I was having with the form tag today in HTML (lin), we decided to reduce code, that I may build the main content section of the EVS Minder Convention managing interface using CSS. I successfully built the interface and was successful. The code was cut from 52 lines to 12 and from 300 to about 30, also a 10 of the characters were used. This code was being repeated in the Smarty template on every page. So it cut down on code, but we were having problems with when the css was implemented in the background Smarty template file, it was justifying left.

In the end it was determined that without the DTD (Document declaration type), it would not recognize the CSS. I looked up the explanation on W3schoools.org to see if there was something I didn’t know about the DTD. That is basically was a way of identifying to the browser what type of document this was and how to parse the HTML, and that was basically all it said. I am not a CSS expert and not going to claim expertise in this subject just yet, like many other intelligent CSS sites (a list apart, zeldmanc.om). It needed the transitional document type to understand the CSS.