Some of the most common and often made mistakes when designing a website are in the Head section of the HTML page. This article assumes that you have some experience in website design and HTML, but still are in the novice stage. Let me just say before starting that, yes, I have made many of these mistakes myself. I think most have, whether they want to admit it or not!
I am including this very common mistake made by
Professional website design even though this is not actually inside the HEAD tags. I don't know how many times I've seen in a forum the question "why is my page not doing what I told it to do?" A big reason is because many designers mistaking omit the DOCTYPE declaration that should be the very first line of your HTML page. (Preceding the opening HTML tag). When not included, or when incomplete, IE, (Internet Explorer), immediately goes into "Quirks" mode.
Which in short means that the browser will render your HTML and CSS in a backwards compatible fashion. It will be as if you were writing your code 5 to 10 years ago. On a good note though, Opera browser always renders pages in standards-compliant mode. But unfortunately, IE is still the most commonly used browser. So, always start your page with an accurate DOCTYPE. You are well advised to spend some time researching DOCTYPE declaration before you move any further!
Common Mistakes in the HEAD section of a Website
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