The HTML header causes CSS margin malfunction

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Hi,

I got a short code as follow: the css margin (in #StripLeft and #StripRight) would stop working if the first doctype line is included? I can make it work by remove the line but why? Any explanation please.

XML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=gb2312" />
<title></title>
</head>
<style type="text/css" media="all">

div {
float:left;
overflow:auto;
}

#WholePage {
width:680px;   border:groove; margin:0 0 0 0; text-align:center; overflow:scroll; background: #FFFFCC; vertical-align:top;
}

#PageStrip {
width:100%; height:20%; border:groove; margin:0 0 0 0; text-align:center; background: #33FFCC; vertical-align:top;
}

#PageStrip #StripLeft {
width:30%; border:groove; margin:10 10 10 10; text-align:center; background-color:#999999; vertical-align:top;
}

#PageStrip #StripRight {
width:30%; border:groove; margin:10 10 10 10; text-align:center; background-color:#FFCCCC; vertical-align:top; }
</style>


<body>
<div id="WholePage">
<div id="PageStrip">
    <div id="StripLeft">
        <span id="Box1">xxxx</span>
        </div>
    <div id="StripRight">
        <span id="Box2">yyyy</span>
        </div>
    </div>

<div id="PageStrip">
    no division in this strip
    </div>

<div id="PageStrip">
    <div id="StripLeft">
        <span id="Box3">zzzz</span>
        </div>
    <div id="StripRight">
        <span id="Box4">wwww</span>
        </div>
    </div>

</div>

</body>
</html>

Posted 18-Nov-10 1:29am

KFLee

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jim lahey · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-18T01:40:00

Solution 1

your doctype declaration will have an effect on your page and the css on that page. its explained far better than I will ever be able to here:

[http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/]

Posted 18-Nov-10 1:40am

jim lahey

Comments

KFLee 18-Nov-10 8:43am

Thanks, I read (good articles) and tested following the suggestion of the article. It works with:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

Thus it seems that the conclusion is CSS will behave better with xhtml11. For Dreamweavere 8 user noted that it will put xhtml1.dtd when create new file; so you need to change it.

jim lahey 18-Nov-10 10:13am

glad to be of help. any rating for the answer?