[IUG] doctype declarations for the WebOPAC

[Michael Kreyche <mkreyche at kent dot edu>]

I was recently assigned to lead a makeover project for our OPAC and have 
spent a frustrating couple of days trying to figure out why I could not 
get CSS inheritance to work as I thought it should. Specifically, I was 
trying to modify the default font size in my local style sheet like this:

body {
	font-size: 85%;
}

I finally resorted to copying a page to my hard drive, modifying the 
stylesheet links to point to the ones on our staging server, and 
cleaning up all the errors exposed by the W3C HTML validator. When I was 
done, the font size behaved very nicely.

Then I started putting the errors back in the page, one at a time, to 
find out what was causing the problem. It turned out to be lack of a 
DOCTYPE declaration.

A search of the Innopac archives turned up a useful exchange from last 
April (http://innovativeusers.org/list/archives/2006/msg02267.html) in 
which Stuart Ure explains how to use the INSERTTAG option to add a 
declaration. There is also a caution from Bob Duncan which is well 
taken, but for the moment I'm sold on using the option!

I decided to use the HTML 4.01 transitional for now, but I'm wondering 
if anyone has a better suggestion. I'm working with WebPAC Pro.

Mike
--
Michael Kreyche
Systems Librarian
Associate Professor
Kent State University Libraries and Media Services
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~mkreyche
330-672-1918