| HTML 4.0 Survival Guide - Part 1 |
A question being posed to the IMD more frequently is "What do we do about HTML 4.0?". Well, not to worry. If you can view the HTML 4.0 Specification then you are viewing an HTML 4.0 document. That is because HTML 4.0 has a version (defined by a DTD) called "transitional". If you view the source code of the HTML 4.0 document you will notice both reference to a style sheet, which defines presentation under HTML 4.0, and a body background tag element that support the HTML 3.2 and way of defining presentation.
This is what those code fragments Look like:
<!doctype html public '-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/loose.dtd'>
[this defines the file as an English-language document conforming to HTML 4.0 Transitional DTD (loose.dtd)]
<link rel='STYLESHEET' type='text/css' href='/StyleSheets/TR/rec.css'>
[this gives a cascading style sheet (rec.css) to be used for presentation information
<BODY BACKGROUND='recbg.jpg'>
[this gives information on body background in the same way as in HTML 3.2]
If you use a browser that supports the style sheet, it will default to this and ignore the earlier tags.
So you can begin using HTML 4.0 as soon as you have a way to test the style sheets presentation. The IMO position is to begin using HTML 4.0 not later than 10 August 1998 and covert all browsers to the latest versions as soon as they become available. Now that both Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer are free this should be a no-brainer, because style sheets will simplify production by providing a "define presentation once, produce many times" production environment.