HTML modes

About HTML

Most of the documents ("pages") found on the World Wide Web are written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML was originally designed as a standard hard- and software independent way of formatting documents. It is an application of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).

The only official standard is HTML 2.0, which contains very limited possibilities. The W3 consortium was developing a new, extended standard, HTML 3.0.

Meanwhile, in the recent boom of Internet and the World Wide Web, some browser manufacturers have introduced several ad-hoc extensions to HTML, of which many didn't fit in the new HTML 3.0 standard. Probably because this would make HTML 3.0 an academic standard without any practical use, the development of HTML 3.0 was abandoned. AWeb supports some of the extensions found in HTML 3.0.

Recently the W3 group proposed a new HTML 3.2 standard, which contains many of the widely used NetScape ® and Microsoft ® Internet Explorer specific extensions. AWeb will fully support HTML 3.2 in the near future.

The large browser manufacturers have introduced other tags, which aren't included in the HTML 3.2 standard. AWeb will try to support most of these non-standard extensions.

To make things even more inconvenient, some earlier versions of popular PC browsers didn't stick to the SGML rules. And even recent versions of those browsers still have problems with SGML comments. Because many people design their pages using these browsers, there are many documents on the web that just are bad HTML.

HTML modes

AWeb does its best to display all pages correctly, but sometimes you have to set the way HTML should be interpreted to get the best results.

You can choose out of three HTML modes:

Strict
In strict HTML mode, AWeb understands only the proposed HTML 3.2 standard.

Tolerant
In tolerant HTML mode, AWeb also understands other extensions. These are both extensions specific to other browsers, and HTML 3.0 extensions that can't be found in HTML 3.2.
A list of all extensions that AWeb supports is given below.

Compatible
In compatible HTML mode (a nice way of formulating "buggy"), AWeb tries to interpret buggy HTML. A description of compatibility-mode deviations to the standards is given below.
Set one of these in the settings page.

Extensions to HTML 2.0

AWeb currently supports the following proposed and/or other extensions to the HTML 2.0 standard. With each extension, the HTML modes that recognize the extension are mentioned within parentheses.
<BODY BACKGROUND=url BGCOLOR=#rrggbb TEXT=#rrggbb LINK=#rrggbb VLINK=#rrggbb ALINK=#rrggbb>
Background images and document colours. If no BACKGROUND or BGCOLOR is given, then TEXT, LINK, VLINK and ALINK are ignored.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<DIV ALIGN=align>
<Hn ALIGN=align>
<P ALIGN=align>
<CENTER>
Alignment of divisions, headings and paragraphs. align = LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT are supported.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<DFN>
<STRIKE>
Phrase markup.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<IMAGE BORDER=n WIDTH=n HEIGHT=n>
Image border size and preset dimensions.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<HR ALIGN=align NOSHADE SIZE=n WIDTH=n%|n>
Enhanced horizontal ruler.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<OL START=n TYPE=otype>
<UL TYPE=utype>
<LI TYPE=otype|utype VALUE=n>
Enhanced lists. otype can be A, a, I, i or 1. utype can be DISC, CIRCLE or SQUARE.
(strict, tolerant, compatible)

<OL CONTINUE SEQNUM=n>
<UL PLAIN SRC=url DINGBAT=name>
<LI SKIP=n SRC=url DINGBAT=name>
List extensions from the HTML 3.0 specification.
(tolerant, compatible)

&icon.name;
All proposed WWW icon entities (dingbats)
(tolerant, compatible)

<FRAME SRC=url NAME=name>
Very limited frame support. AWeb does not yet support frames, but it recognizes the <FRAME> tag and shows a hyperlink for each document. You will still see those annoying "your browser doesn't support frames, download NetScape here" messages, but at least you can access the information.
(tolerant, compatible)

Compatible mode

As mentioned above, some pages contain bad HTML. When you view such a page, it can look distorted. You can expect large parts of the page missing, links to URLs that seem to contain HTML tags, and other strange things.

If you encounter such problems, try using the compatible HTML mode of AWeb. Warning: Using compatible HTML mode, documents containing valid HTML might look distorted in turn.

In compatible mode, AWeb exposes the following deviations from the SGML standard:

Back to the AWeb Home Page.