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I have read many forums which explains the difference between strict and transitional doctypes but none of them explain whether selecting strict or transitional matters when it comes to rendering a page. for eg: 'i' tag is deprecated in strict doctype. But it renders fine in your web page no matter you use either of the doctypes. So do other deprecated tags such as 'u' or 'font' for that matter. So my question is, is there a real difference between strict and transitional doctypes when it comes to page rendering.

anishenos
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What differs in almost-standards mode is roughly this: inline boxes that have no non-whitespace text as a child and have no border, padding, or margin:

  • do not influence the size of the line box (that is, their line-height is ignored)
  • do not get a height (e.g., for their background) larger than that of their descendants, even if their font size is larger (if they have no descendents, they are zero-height positioned at their baseline)

The HTML 4.01 transitional doctype validates against the HTML 4.01 spec. It allows some presentational markup and deprecated elements (such as elements) but not framesets.

The HTML 4.01 strict doctype validates against the HTML 4.01 spec, although it doesn't allow any presentational markup or deprecated elements (such as elements) or framesets to be used.

If you are using an XHTML doctype, you need to use XML well-formed syntax

References

Community
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Paul Sweatte
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