best practice for <% %> snippet that set display for a query ?o=1

**caseyburnett** · Nov 13, 2011 19:33

I want the product pages on my site to not look like poop on IE7 / 8 / 9.

I discovered today, that while I had tested site ~2008 / 2009 in IE7 and it was working, now IE 8 / 9 goes to quirks mode. Though I haven't changed anything. From research I believe it is because some of the <% %> snippet was written before the <!DOCTYPE>

So....

Where is best practice for placing the

Code:

<!-- include=””-->
<% Dim tab1, tab5, switchtabs
    switchtabs = Trim(request.querystring("o"))
    if isnumeric(switchtabs) then
        tab1="style='display:none'"
        tab5="style='display:block'"
    else
        tab1="style='display:block'"
        tab5="style='display:none'"
end if %>

After <html> but before the <head>,
in the <head></head>
first thing in the <body></body> other ideas?

From research today and experimentation, it seems that removing a classic .asp snippet and include from before

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

allows it to display correctly in IE 7 /8 /9 but leaves for me the question of where to put the snippet that calls a particular portion of page to display

Code:

<!--#include file="store/pc/include-metatags.asp"-->

<!-- 'default to order tab or not -->
<% Dim tab1, tab5, switchtabs
    switchtabs = Trim(request.querystring("o"))
    if isnumeric(switchtabs) then
        tab1="style='display:none'"
        tab5="style='display:block'"
    else
        tab1="style='display:block'"
        tab5="style='display:none'"
end if %>

My situation:

classic asp
site is hosted on Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 All of the page files are .asp the site was designed / built by an agency. I push the pieces around. Yet it seemed that it was working on my test of ie 6 / 7. It seems to default to quirks mode in ie9, presently

Presently code that breaks in IE 7/8/9 looks like this:

Code:

<!--#include file="store/pc/include-metatags.asp"-->

<!-- 'default to order tab or not -->
 <% Dim tab1, tab5, switchtabs
    switchtabs = Trim(request.querystring("o"))
    if isnumeric(switchtabs) then
        tab1="style='display:none'"
        tab5="style='display:block'"
    else
        tab1="style='display:block'"
        tab5="style='display:none'"
end if %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
    <!-- sample for stackoverflow -->
        <div class="scontentsub">
            <div id="leftcolprod">
                <h5>Hello</h5><img src=”big-product.jpg”>
            </div>
            <div id="rightcolprod">
                <div class="models_container" id='tab1' <%=tab1%>>
                    <h4>features</h4>
                </div>
                <div class="models_container" id='tab5' <%=tab5%>>
                    <h4>Order Now</h4>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

What I have researched:

I read ~6+ stackoverflows on IE 7 / 8/ 9 quirks mode and found the initially correction of pulling anything from before the <!DOCTYPE html> out of the file. I also experimented with, what I read on one Q&A,

Code:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

, and while I got IE to render correctly the layout, I wasn't certain it was a best practice from what I was readoing.

I also read but did not try but this may be relevant with my server question try doing this other response I found,

Code:

Response.AddHeader "X-UA-Compatible", "IE=edge,chrome=1"

My experimentation were working in IE 9 and not defaulting to quirks mode when I inspected in the developers tool:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
    </head>
    <body>
    <!-- sample for stackoverflow -->
        <div class="scontentsub">
            <div id="leftcolprod">
                <h5>Hello</h5><img src=”big-product.jpg”>
            </div>
            <div id="rightcolprod">
                <div class="models_container" id='tab1' <%=tab1%>>
                    <h4>features</h4>
                </div>
                <div class="models_container" id='tab5' <%=tab5%>>
                    <h4>Order Now</h4>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

After experimenting with pulling any text that is before <!DOCTYPE> I began to wonder what is best practice on where to place a operation that renders pages uniquely based on inbound link query. To answer this I read another half-dozen stackoverflow post / sitepoint forums / reviewed w3schools.com / asp intro through a few segments (which I had read previously)

Question restated:

Where is best practice for placing the


and



After <html> but before the <head>,
in the <head></head>
first thing in the <body></body> other ideas?

Thanks Casey enthusiast / learner

**gidday** · Nov 21, 2011 15:03

Hi Casey
Doctype at the top of the page. No question about that. I place my includes directly below that line.
As to  my response would be to put it after the includes.

**Doug G** · Nov 22, 2011 18:13

Includes happen on the web server. DOCTYPE is html in the browser. Your includes need to be above any HTML such as DOCTYPE if you plan on doing any server-side response.redirects or cookies work in the included server code. The first bit of HTML will write the html headers out to the browser and things like redirect will not work after the headers are written.

Remember that whatever code is in the included file(s) will execute on the server as if all the included code were typed in the original page at the point of the include.

**caseyburnett** · Nov 24, 2011 12:52

thanks everyone...

I need the HTML <!Doctype ... > to be read first. But the comment was in HTML format...

there was a mix up on the comment... if it was left 'default to order tab or not that would be read on server and not HTML.... so I pulled the HTML comment  off and things seem to be working great.

Originally Posted by gidday

Hi Casey
Doctype at the top of the page. No question about that. I place my includes directly below that line.
As to  my response would be to put it after the includes.

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