HTML 4.01 Transitional?

[PartTimeLegend]

Is there a reason to use this doc type? It seems a strange choice considering the advancements in markup since it's release.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/

[saivann]

Doctype sometime is required to get old browsers to work correctly with some features. I will take a look if we can safetly drop html 4.01 transitional.

[PartTimeLegend]

What do you define as Old Browsers? I can't imagine in 2013 there is a need to support browsers such at IE6.

It would make sense for the new site to be using HTML 5 as the doctype. In addition to the improved scope, the use of Itemprop can be used to include schema tags to ensure that the correct information is parsed and returned in search results. This improves exposure.

As it currently stands the main pages do not validate as valid HTML 4.01. They are already closer to the documented type of HTML 5. This is likely as a result of contributors being more familiar with modern HTML elements.

[saivann]

In one line : HTML5 is still a draft, using this doctype changes nothing for the visitor and current W3C validator errors don't relate to HTML5.

That being said, so far it works correctly with IE7/8 FF3.5 and old opera versions so I'm going to change it, as it is a good idea for the long term. But I wouldn't change a valid doctype if it would introduce a regression in one of these browsers because it offers no concrete improvement. And from a pragmatic perspective, the visitor is what matters.