DOCTYPE declaration for invalid page

[Kevin Sullivan]

Thomas Dowling wrote:

  <snip>
> recognized entity name.  Some browsers will (and actually should) convert
> those to the corresponding character, so source code like this:
> 
>   <a href="script.pl?chapter=1&sect=2&copy=3">
> 
> ..gets rendered by the browser, and sent back to the server, as though
> the URL were:
> 
>   script.pl?chapter=1§=2©=3  (apologies if this doesn't display correctly)
>   script.pl?chapter=1[section symbol]=2[copyright symbol]=3
  </snip>

This brings up another issue. When developing an interface for staff to
update a database, I was using a construction similar to the following
to pull up the appropriate record and drop them down to the next input
form:

  <a href="modify.cfm?id1=value1&id2=value2#form">

My test worked great on NN4 and IE5 on Win2K, but a coworker's IE5 on
Win98 was passing the value of id2 as value2#form (this was confirmed
using CF debug). The numeric value of id2 was safe, strangely, and the
correct record was retrieved; but, the browser would not honor the
anchor reference. So, I put in another ampersand to separate the anchor
definition:

  <a href="modify.cfm?id1=value1&id2=value2&#form">

Finally, all 4 browser/platform configurations were appeased. Any
thoughts?

Thanks.

Kevin Sullivan
Internet Systems Manager
Mid-Continent Public Library
http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us
mailto:web at mcpl.lib.mo.us