html specifications

[chadmichael]

Is there a specification that describes how the browsers should render things?

[real_illusions]

not that i know ofjust create a page, test it in all browsers.most us learn from experience what browsers do with some things etc and we work around it when we come across odd things from time to time.its just one of those things that you have to work around and live with till all browsers display things the way they should be displayed.saying that though..its mainly explorer thats the main one for displaying things incorrectly."build for firefox, tweak for explorer" is one phrase i tend to go by now for most pages i build.

[boen_robot]

Well, I guess the specifications could only suggest a default stylesheet that Browsers should follow. For example, <p> is always rendered as a block element and <span> always as inline one.But even those are just suggestions. What the HTML specification describes in detail is only the semantics of documents and as such, their behaviour. For example, the fact that <button> shows a button is defined in the specification. How the button looks by default is defined by the vendor.

[chadmichael]

So, the HTML spec is more just the DTD of the language?The previous post mentioned that the default style sheet determines whether a <p> </p> is a block or inline. So, basically the HTML spec just says what attributes are available for each element, and the values it can have, but doesn't define defaults?

[boen_robot]

So, the HTML spec is more just the DTD of the language?The previous post mentioned that the default style sheet determines whether a <p> </p> is a block or inline. So, basically the HTML spec just says what attributes are available for each element, and the values it can have, but doesn't define defaults?

Well, the common attributes such as "id" and "class" can't have defaults. I think the reason is obvious.Of course the specification describes the per-element attributes, their possible values and their defaults. But only behaviour ones. Not for appearance. Well, not the older ones anyway. The one before CSS was born also describe the default appearance and presentational attributes.But as I said, the thing the specification describes in most details is the behaviour of elements. It defines that <img src=""/> will display an image at the location of the src attribute. It descibes that <a href=""> is a link to the location in the href attribute. It describes that when the href starts with # that leads to an element with that ID, etc.All very important things, but somehow unnoticable.