with xhtml documnent , how do one trigger quirk mode?

Question

With the Xhtml document , how do you trigger quirk mode in internet explorer? is it related to meta tag or doc type?

Answer 1

Internet Explorer doesn't support XHTML. In order to be XHTML it must be served with the application/xhtml+xml content-type, but IE doesn't support that. If you use text/html it will be parsed as HTML regardless of DOCTYPE.

Answer 2

Usually if you don't specify a DOCTYPE most modern browsers will render the page in quirks mode. You can also "trigger" quirks mode by using xhtml1-transitional as your DOCTYPE. See this chart.

There was a bug in IE6 that caused quirks mode to be triggered if you put an xml declaration or white spaces before the DOCTYPE, but that was fixed in IE7.