How many browsers to support?

[netman4ttm]

I just read an interesting article about browsers.

http://www.computerworld.com/develop...l?nas=WS-93722

I've dumped all but IE 6 and FireFox, but then again I'm not selling on the web.

[matauri]

I couldnt get thru on the link.

However, your pretty much right about IE & Firefox, but I would also say Opera as well. They seem to be thr major 3 that will show the most discrepencies with PC's. Though I think if you design for firefox & code correctly, you cover the other 2.

[netman4ttm]

This is the article just in case you can't get it.

Time to trim your browser support





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Opinion by Alan K'necht, K'nechtology Inc., (Computerworld Canada)

JUNE 08, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD CANADA) - We all know the browser wars are over. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer is the dominant browser. Yet, for various reasons, scores of other browsers remain out there.
This means that front-end HTML programmers are still fighting the battle of cross-browser compatibility.


It's amazing to read corporate Web and application browser requirements. A properly drafted document for a public Web site can start to read like a mininovel, saying "must support Netscape 4.5, Netscape 4.7 (Windows and Mac), Internet Explorer 5.0, IE 5.5, IE 6 (Windows and Mac), IE 6.01, Safari, Opera." As developers or site managers, do we just take this as a given?


Personally, I believe that we need to not only address it, but attack it head-on. We need to find the person who came up with this list and start to educate him about the impact on the cost of cross-browser development and testing.


I'm not advocating dropping support for older browsers. But rarely have I seen support for Internet Explorer 4, Netscape 3, Netscape 2, Mosaic or other early browsers. Support for these was taken off specification requirements long ago, and long before people deciding on requirements ever heard of the Web.


While I've never advocated pushing the envelope on corporate Web sites (it's just not good business sense), it's time for companies to examine their access logs and find out just how many people are still accessing their site with the old browsers. Once this is determined, they must figure out if they represent their real customers -- are they the ones who actually purchase something from the site or complete Web-based forms? Only then can companies start making the right business decision.


Where you draw the line isn't so much a fixed percentage as it is gut feel. On the surface, saying 0.25% of visitors used Internet Explorer 5 last month says nothing. What does it represent? If it's $100,000 of sales a year, then you may want to support them to fullest possible level. However if it's a mere $1,000, then perhaps it's a signal to drop full support.


What is full support? It's ensuring that a Web site/application looks and works exactly the same across all browsers. And it's in dropping full support where savings can easily be achieved. It's a job made easier by coding pages to the W3's recommended XHTML. With XHTML you can create pages that degrade nicely to older browsers while minimizing the time spent on cross-browser programming and testing.


True, your site won't look the same between browsers. But how many of your clients use multiple browsers and are going to compare how the site looks between them?


When it comes to building Web-based applications, it's time to dig in those heels and declare that you will build only to the XHTML standard. Why? Because in this instance you can control the browser. Dictate the browser to your user community.


If we don't start moving the user community off them ,we'll be spending even more time coding and testing cross-browser compatibilities than ever before, especially as the next generation of browser emerges.

[Jeff Colburn]

Hi,

I design my sites to support IE 5 and above, Netscape 4.7 and above, Opera and Mozilla. There are a lot of us out there that use Mozilla. The Mozilla people made Netscape, and now that Netscape is dead Mozilla has taken over from them.

Have Fun,
Jeff

[netman4ttm]

If you build to the XHTML standard, haven't you covered older browsers?

That seems to be the main thrust of the opinion.

I'm never sure what standard I'm writing too because they moving the target.

[greeneagle]

There is really no "moving target" if you subscribe to the need to W3C validate. One of the great advantages when going there is; Who cares about cross browser functionality? - If it doesn't work in one - well... they just need to catch up. Wright or Wrong?

It is all about that whole field there, isn't it?

Ken

[netman4ttm]

Greeneagle; I would love to agree with you but, as every worm, trojan and other Windows/Linux failing proves, people don't update as they should. I'm almost positive that MS update forces a user to go to IE 6 before any other patch can be applied and RedHat certainly offers Mozilla updates.

So, I think going with the "standard" will cause you to lose customers.

The real question "is how much pain do you inflict on yourself by ignoring a older browser?"

[greeneagle]

netman4ttm
Quote
"So, I think going with the "standard" will cause you to lose customers."
____

When was the last time you reviewed your stats? I am removing Netscape4 resize fix javascripts as fast as I can. The reality is that for most Sites the latest versions of IE are around 95%, and then a host of 1% percenters or so including Opera and everyone else.

With the recent proliferation of browser hijackings, viruses and other gargoyles, people are updating more frequently. If they don't they aren't going to be visiting my or my clients sites, or even our competitors, because they won't be able to get past the adware and porn - so I don't even need to worry about them! CALLOUSED, BUT REAL!

The primary thrust of W3C recommendations is STANDARDIZATION for viewing across browsers. Why shouldn't I just go with the flow, accept the standards, validate and say - "That's good enough"?
The Cajuns have a saying in Lousiana for this kind of issue; "It's allll goooood".

Is there a reason to personally consume time substantiating W3C recommendations, making sure they are right after all by checking design in several browsers for miniscule percentages? - Believe me it's just not worth my time! I'd much rather spend it validating.

After all, with the general design trend leaning toward validation instead of forgiveness, won't browsers clinging to lagging (non-standard) features have to play catch-up in future renditions? In my world, that is what a standard is all about.

In fact, some webmasters are leaning toward the idea that validation will pump SERPS, if not now, in the future! - Look for it, coming soon in a GOOGLE update near you! - Believe me, there is just no spamming loophole there, not even for SEO's!

MOO - (My Opinion Only)

Ken

[mikmik]

netman4ttm, I use IE6, Firefox, AND ie 5.5 (Windows 98se)
Still I am finding that about 15 - 25% of visitors use IE 5.5, and I have found as much difference between IE6 and 5.5 as between them and Mozilla. (I also throw in opera, if I am in a good mood LOL)

Running two versions of IE??????

HAH!

This section contains all the things available for download from my website. The most popular of these is the standalone versions of Internet Explorer. Feel free to download anything you want. There is no charge for anything you see here.

http://www.skyzyx.com/downloads/
It's a beautiful thang :O)))

Here is another 'Godsend'...

Optool (formerly Operatool, now Optional Browser tool or Open-in-another-browser-tool - or whatever you like!) for MS Windows is a freeware utility which easily allows you to open a given web site in another browser. Use it if your preferred browser doesn't show the site properly or if you are a developer and want to check the page in several browsers without the hassle of cutting and pasting the URL.

As a bonus, Optool lets you create internet shortcuts on your desktop or in your favorites collection from any browser. You can even add custom locations!


Optool 1.11 works with these browsers:

Opera 5,6 & 7
Mozilla
Netscape 6+
Netscape 4.x
IE 5+
Any custom browser by using the clipboard option

http://www.kreacom.dk/tools/optool/
This program is so handy that I can't hardly believe it.. It also runs from folder and has almost zero overhead.

[netman4ttm]

We use LAMP on the server side IE 6 on the client side. I know that every client will be using IE 6 because I set up the clients. We are preparing to switch to RedHat and Firefox. We use web technology to run our internal apps. In other words I have complete control of the server, the bandwidth and the client.

What I am trying to get a handle on are these quotes from the article. Does it mean that if you use XHTML there is no browser issue? Or does it mean there are issues but they are insignificant?

"Where you draw the line isn't so much a fixed percentage as it is gut feel. On the surface, saying 0.25% of visitors used Internet Explorer 5 last month says nothing. What does it represent? If it's $100,000 of sales a year, then you may want to support them to fullest possible level. However if it's a mere $1,000, then perhaps it's a signal to drop full support"

and

"With XHTML you can create pages that degrade nicely to older browsers while minimizing the time spent on cross-browser programming and testing."

Ken I agree with you 100% standardization is great but I will admit this too my pages look really, really awful when I use Amaya. (thw W3C browser)

[greeneagle]

netman4ttm

I hope this doesn’t seem too forthright:

For the life of me, I can't figure out why you would even check your site in "Amaya". It has never shown up in my stats and I have never even heard of it.

Beyond that there is no Document Type Declaration in your source code. Not only is it not valid HTML but W3C can’t even start to validate. It immediately gets lost just trying to figure out what it is looking at. The only reason it renders "reasonably" in the primary browsers is because they are so forgiving. Secondary and tertiary browsers don’t have the same depth of “forgiveness”. But, you wouldn’t have to even worry about any of that if you brought your site code up to W3C standards.

Further beyond that; if Amaya didn’t render “standard” code correctly after bringing your site up to par – then forget them, because everyone else will be having the same problem too.

I believe that it really is, just about that simple.

Ken

[netman4ttm]

My attitude is that IE 6 is the standard, simply because Bill and company owns the desktop.

But isn't Amaya the browser that w3c says is the standard?

I don't use Amaya for anything except to see what a page would like. Most of the time it is very disappointing; for me at least.

[greeneagle]

netman4ttm,

The most important action you can take immediately to get your site to render better in all search engines is to straighten out your Document Type Declaration issue. I would think that that would probably influence your recults in Amaya if it is a "W3C" browser more than anything else, because that is no "venial" sin, it's one of those big "cardinal" ones!

Hope this helps,
Ken

[greeneagle]

netman4ttm,

You mentioned "XHTML", so try this. Insert the bolded lines in these locations on every page in your Site:
______________
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>

<head>

<title>Membership Marketing Services The provider of membership recruitment and retention services for professional associations</title>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
______________

See what "Amaya" thinks about that, at least she will know what direction to look.. That's not saying you don't need to make sure that the rest of the code plays on that playground.

You just really can't "support" any browser without a "Document Type Declaration"!

Good luck,

Ken

[netman4ttm]

Come on Ken, straight to hell, no chance in purgatory?

Thanks,
Alan

However, if I do go straight to hell; I'm blaming you :^)

Just made the changes.

[greeneagle]

Alan,
You still have time to repent!
LOL
Ken

[netman4ttm]

Thanks Ken;

It looks much better in Amaya.

[HardCoded]

I've completely given up supporting NS4.x. I Just don't care. My perfectly valid XHTML and CSS looks like crap in it, my DOM 2 Javascript won't work in it, and I don't even care one bit.

[greeneagle]

hardcoded,
As mentioned above, I agree with you completely. N4 needs to finally find the daisies.

As alluded to though, I believe we are going to take a harder position than that. What about the advantages of validating every page we design from here on out and not worrying about support in the different browsers? :-O

W3C compliant design assures that the pages will view in the majors, currently used by 95% of viewers.

AOL has already indicated little or no future support for Netscape.

Opera and all the secondaries can't possibly hope to shout "me too" without being W3C compliant.

I just don't see a reason to worry about "cross browser" design any more - I believe our company is going to validate everything we do and call it a dead issue. After all that was a major W3C theme in creating the "standards".

Regards,
Ken

[HardCoded]

W3C compliant design assures that the pages will view in the majors, currently used by 95% of viewers.

I would love to be able to take that hard line, but yet we are still not ready for that. Why? IE6. You can't uglify things for 85% of browsers. That applies to JS too, where both Firefox and IE6 do not (not quite, in the Mozilla case) adhere to DOM 2. And also I don't know any way to "validate" JS scripts.

But I think you might have meant what you are saying literally. Did you?

[greeneagle]

hardcoded,

I wasn't speaking figuratively, here's why:

The article posted above by netman4ttm is a good article, I only disagree with a couple points:

I do think it is time to “Push the Envelope”.
I believe that is time to shove the Netscape 4 and IE4 users off the pot.
I believe we as web developers are key in the adoption of W3C standards.
I'd like to see the door open to the next level of CSS (Level 2)and DOM2 as far as that goes.

Let me show you why. Here are my Site’s last month (5/04) visitor browser stats (Page View Percentages):

MSIE:
v7.01-0%, v6.0-80%, v5.5-3.7%, v5.23-.5%, v5.22-.2%, v5.21-0%, v5.17-0%, v5.16-.1%, v5.15-.2%, v5.14-0%, v5.12-0%, v5.01-2.2%, v5.00-1.1%, v4.01-.2%, v?-0%.

Netscape:
8.0-0%, 7.1-1.2%, 7.02-.1%, 7.01-0%, 7.0-0%, 6.1-0%, 6.0-.3%, 5.0-0%, 4.7-.1%, 4.5-0%, 4.0-1.3%, v?-0%

Others:
Mozilla 4.6%, Opera 2%, Safari 1.1%, Konqueror .3%, libWWW 0%, Firebird 0%, Galeon 0%, W3C HTML VAlidator 0%, Links 0%, Curl 0%, WebTV 0%, K-Meleon 0%

A Quick Breakdown:
MSIE – 88.7%
Netscape – 3.2%
All Others – 8.1%

Note that I had incidents of all Browsers listed above but some were in such small quantities they were in %s<e-3.

I showed no incidents of Firefox, Thunderbird or Camino – I believe my stats roll them into Mozilla.

When designing and validating to W3C 4.01 Transitional, I may have about 1.8-2% viewers using older browsers that might have difficulty with DOM1, CSS1 and even ECMA-262.

Here’s 2-1/2 year old info on “new” Browsers and compliance:
MSIE6: CSSLevel1-Excellent, ECMA-262-Excellent, DOM1-Excellent
Navigator6.1: CSSLevel1-Excellent, ECMA-262-Excellent, DOM1-Excellent
Opera5: CSSLevel1-Excellent, ECMA-262-Good, DOM1-Good
Konqueror2.2 - CSSLevel1-Excellent, ECMA-262-Good, DOM1-Excellent

I don’t believe anyone is advocating DOM2 and CSS2 very strongly yet – but the browsers are starting to catch up, making a lot of progress since those ratings.

I believe that DOM1 and CSS1 degrades fairly gracefully in MSIEv5 and NNv5. Correct me if that is wrong. There are more exacting command compatibility tables for reference, but mainstream I just don’t see much to worry about.

I have visitors from 70-100 countries every month. I believe most of my NN4s are coming from lagging technology in certain countries.

2 more considerations:

Some of my clients do International Business but see less older technology access on their Sites than I do and other contact methods like telephone #s are provided on every page.

With the continued need for viewers to upgrade security, most of the Internet community knows they have to continually update browsers these days. That will work greatly toward this end. I believe it is time to “push the envelope”!

My Opinion Only,
Ken

[HardCoded]

Yeah, I know. It's heartbreaking in a sense. The fact remains that you can do up a reasonably complex site in Firefox, validate it for XHTML and CSS, and something will almost certainly break in IE6. That's exactly the route I take, by the way.

There is also this nagging concern, and I welcome your opinions on it: competitors have been known to point out the fact that the sites we do don't work in older browsers. It's true: they don't. Now as I've said I don't care if they don't, but, given a sufficiently snake-like competitor, clients can be convinced that we are not the way to go because they've been shown a site, by our competitor, in some ugly old browser. The line then is tht we are not paying attention to cross-browser compatibility issues (while, by implication, they are, even though their sites look equally gross in all browsers). They also tend to use the 'knowledge' that since ours is a back-asswards community in the sticks, lots of local browsers are old, even though our own stats match yours very, very closely.

Your thoughts.

[greeneagle]

hardcoded,

I live in a bass-ackward area by choice too - I get to watch the red-headed woodpeckers in the 80ft pine trees out my office window, it's great - but that doesn't change the growing trend toward proliferation of worms, viruses and browser hijackings - they will get bit in the rear end playing those deceptive games, simply (I
know "simply"-right?) explain to your client a few basic issues and show them the W3C logos and links at the bottom of your sites and ask them if your competitor designs to acceptable standards too.

Besides, your client's computers will be so gummed up with virtumundo and other adware that they won't be able to use them before long anyway. Their wives may even knock them on the head when that free daily porn starts appearing! Let the computer repairman explain it or subcontract that business too!

I have had "sticksters" calling me and wanting me to fix their browser hijacking problem - not a chance, I don't do that. Why would I want to work on a win95 machine running NN4? If a client can't upgrade beyond that, they couldn't afford my services anyway - I know, caloused again! - but fact.

Let's put it like this: - I couldn't stay in business even running the monster I am with XP-Pro, without a firewall, updating McAfee 3-4 times per week and windows XP every time notified!
Believe me, not being able to view a well designed site to minimal acceptable standards is and will continue to be the least of their problems and damn sure not their only one- from now on out!

LOL

Just tell them that "indoor plumbing is a lot more sanitary than an out-house"

It's coming, It's here, the time is now!
Ken

[matauri]

I agree guys! Though, I do try most times to at least layer the content so that it can at least be readable, even if the formatting is gone. Which is a good idea for being printer friendly too.

Though, I dont find as much difference between Firefox/Opera/IE. I usually find a pixel or two difference between them. On the odd occassion I will find a bigger difference, and usually that is because "I" have been the one who screwed up with bad or superfluous coding. I found that if I tell 'the' browser 'everything' it could possibly need to know, then I am usually pretty safe. Some of the browsers actually need taking by the hand & instructed how to read your page.

[greeneagle]

Cindy,

I have never "layered the content" would you please expand on that just a litle. Not sure about the mechanics and how that relates to better viewing in older browsers - just haven't been down that road yet.

Currently, I am using tables and excluding cell and table backgrounds from CSS for Clients ( not my own )in thought that the degradation in older browsers will be more gentle. Still validates as transitional just fine.

Thanks

Ken

[matauri]

I've actually probably used the wrong terminology there. Layering is layering the containers on top of each other. On my business page you can see layering.

I actually meant a combination of layering & positioning the containers on your page. It depends on the size & position of your containers (sometimes it includes layering too). Having the containers containing text first on your document, and images last, so that the text &/or links are read first where there is no CSS supported and for printing (thats if you aren't supporting printers within your formatting). It's also a good idea for accessibility too, so that readers & such are reading content before images.

How I try to set it up (when I am able-because sometimes it can take a lot of fiddling depending on your design if you have layered):
i.e.
<div class="one">Logo</div>
<div class="two">Menu</div>
<div class="three">Text</div>
<div class="four">Text</div>
<div class="five">Image</div>
<div class="six">Image</div>

The best way is to read your page without the css, to see how it is seen without it. On the WDC site I have positoned the content so that superfluous images are at the bottom of the page when read without CSS, and the important info & links are at the top.

Otherwise, without the css supported, you can have the top part of the page full of images following after each other down the page, and the text slotted in & out between them.

I dont really worry about table formatting being in the css for tables, though, in retrospect I should probably put the "style" attributes in the HTML.

[Griff]

It seems to me that this is a widespread problem, and not just with browsers either. I have found that many customers have tried to install demos of my products without much success, because they're running Windows 3.11 or Windows '95 (Yes, scary but true). What I want to know is, is there anything that can be done to wean these users off old technology? The products I support won't run on anything less than IE 5.01 or Win 98, yet I find it frustrating when people ask me why they need to upgrade from Win 95. Maybe these people just aren't worth doing business with, could this be the case! I know I don't want to deal with them anyway!

[greeneagle]

Griff,
I am afraid we have to educate them! How have they escaped all out Browser Hijackings this long? Must be an Internet Guardian Angel out there! Saint-What?

Walking on thin grace!
LOL
Ken

[lightning]

This post is so timely! I just hae completed a major revision to my website where I have used CSS in a major way, migrating from tables. And I moved my common page heading block (containing my menu system) to be physically located at the end of my web page even though it displays at the top of the web pages. This, in an effort to be more search engine friendly.

The point is that I am hoping not to lose visitors while taking advantage of good coding practices. CSS2 is far from new, so it's not like I'm at the bleeding edge or anything. About 90% of my website visitors are running IE 5.5 or higher. But I don't want to be shackled to NetScape 4.0 or earlier browser limitations.

The code is W3 compliant, but I would like to try and see what it looks like with early browsers. How might I do this without having the software loaded?

[sas454bb]

Well when i make a web page i use 3 os's to test them out linux running firefox and monzila windows xp on netscape and ie-6 freebsd on firebird sometime i see things overlaping with fixefox/netscape i go and fix them

[lightning]

Wow, that's some testing you do!

How long can we be expected to support that old code? I think the !DOCTYPE idea is a great one, long-term. Still, we're never going to see a day when all vendors' browsers work as they should, according to standards. So I guess we web developers will have to continue testing pages on multiple browser platforms.

But it doesn't make for efficient coding!

[greeneagle]

Like I said earlier, I am done! - I am calling it NOW! I'll do hybrid sites with tables and CSS1 and validate, THAT'S IT, until things come around! In fact I am almost ready to utilize an old "Go Away Old Browser" javaScript I have hanging around in the closet somewhere!

Ken

[mikmik]

lightning, see the bottom off this post for the answer to your question:

The code is W3 compliant, but I would like to try and see what it looks like with early browsers. How might I do this without having the software loaded?

Here is an online browser emulater, it looks to show many older versions back to NN4.7, but the site was slow, due to overload (sigh) and I didn't actually get to try it.
http://www.dejavu.org/emulator.htm
I think I counted 117 browsers available here, or 97, I am sleepy LOFL!
Browser archive: http://browsers.evolt.org/
These are just the recent changes 8o0

Recent Changes to the Archive ...
[2004-05-18]
Added MS IE for Mac OS Classic (4.51, 5.01, 5.1.5), Netscape Navigator for Mac OS Classic (7.0, 7.01, 7.02), Netscape Navigator for Mac OS X (7.0, 7.01, 7.02, 7.1), OmniWeb for Mac OS X (4.0.6, 4.1.1, 4.2,4.2, 4.2.1, 4.5, 5.0b6)
Note that

Hope this helps ... AHHH!
Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer

[goinggolf]

People can talk about standards all they like but as someone has already mentioned, IE 5 and above accounts for well over 90% of the visitors to my sites so when I design I design with those people in mind.

I'd love it if every browser stuck strictly to the W3C standards but the reality is they don't and this has always been the case. Web designers/developers have always had difficult choices to make, although it is somewhat easier now than it was in the days of IE 4 and Netscape 4.

Microsoft's dominance on the desktop has made my choices very easy of late and long may it continue beacuse the less time I have to spend coding around different browsers the more time I have to read forums like this and learn more about the more important aspects of running a web based business, like marketing it.

[HardCoded]

Yeah, you still need to at least look at the site in IE6. Even perfectly valid code will sometimes look different..and you just can't have it looking wrong for the major browser. Plus, some javascript works in FireFox and breaks in IE...like you can't dynamically create an iframe in IE like you can in DOM 2. You can't do this:

document.createElement("iframe");

in IE. And so on. And so forth.

I think on the next release of IE we may finally do as Ken suggests. Believe me, I'd love to.

[greeneagle]

hardcoded,

You are right there a couple pits to watch out for, but most pages can get along without the code that finds those pits.

Ken

[Niko Holopainen]

Thanks MikMik for the online emulator for the venerable browsers. I had to try it out and was pleased to note that even with I.E. 2.0 our pages would be readable, if ugly and the scandic letters were replaced with question signs.

Cool..

[greeneagle]

We will be launching a revised site for a client within the next few days. It will be using tables and a separate CSS file and every page will be W3C validated! Hopefully we haven't encroached on these code "pits", I believe we have stayed "mainstream".

I will submit it to the "Review my Site Please" forum, and I want to be torn up!, Beat me, hurt me BAD! - This client has the resources for and wants the best! He is very quality minded! - DO ME THEN - IT's ALMONST DONE!

I hope I see you there!

Ken

[greeneagle]

We have just launched a new site according to our new criteria as outlined above. My current thinking is that there would be no reason to change the approach.

We have introduced it in the "Submit our Site For Review" forum here: http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=22623
Let's see if it works!

Ken

[HardCoded]

I just happen to be in the middle of redesigning a site that demonstrates some subtle differences between IE and Firefox. No javascript even:

http://www.burden.ca/stamants.ca/index-new.html

Note the difference in the menu. (Actually if someone could tell me how to get the top and bottom borders back in IE, I'd be grateful...)

[greeneagle]

hardcoded,

Not sure where you are coming from, Looks good in IE 6.0.28!

Only thing I would do different is lighten up on the bevel on the pic in the middle of the page.

Ken

[HardCoded]

Yeah, totally, that's what I got from the client, I'm getting him to send the "unaltered" pic :)

But do you not see a difference in the menu buttons? I'm using same v6.0.28

[robinev]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

netman4ttm,

You mentioned "XHTML", so try this. Insert the bolded lines in these locations on every page in your Site:
______________
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

But be careful. Using that doctype will leave both IE and Mozilla browsers in their "quirks" mode where they are forgiving, but where both often render things far differently and in wildly non-standard ways.

If you want to get it out of quirks mode and into what they call "standards" mode (with most browsers), you have to include a uri like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Here's more about that subject: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DocType

(And, of course, HTML 4.0 of any flavor is not XHTML.)