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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T10:39:17+00:00

Imagine a fairly simple HTML document <!DOCTYPE HTML > <html> <body> <table> <tr> <td>

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Imagine a fairly simple HTML document

<!DOCTYPE HTML >
<html>
<body>
<table>    <tr>    <td>    This is a test    </td>    </tr>    </table>
</body>
</html>

where we are applying this css

body {background-color: ffffff;
font-size:100px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: MankSans,Arial,Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

In every single modern browser out there the font properties will apply. in my WebView however, they wont.

Looking around I found out that the problem is that the WebView goes into quirksmode, where the td tag lacks inheritance so the body css doesnt apply.

Im aware that there are ways around this, like using a more explicit 4.01 doctype, or adding this to the css

table, thead, tbody, tr, td, th {
font-size: inherit;
font-family: inherit;
}

these however dont fix the root of the problem, which is that WebView decides against all logic to suddenly “missunderstand” the HTML5 doctype and switch to quirksmode, when all other WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, etc) behave correctly.

Is there any way to programmatically fix this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ok, my stupid mistake

    it turns out that the doctype is getting screwed because before sending the HTML document to the webview im treating it, and adding an internal ID to all tags (this internal ID is required for features inside my app)

    but in case someone screws up in the same way I did and wonder whats going on, I’ll offer a lenghty explanation.

    DOMDocumentType has several fields, among them you have name, publicId and systemId.

    for example, consider the typical HTML 4.01 transitional doctype

    it can be divided in

    name = html
    publicId = -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN
    systemID = http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd

    and you can add a Custom ID to it as long as the format is preserved, like this

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" CustomID="1">

    the problem with the HTML 5 DOCTYPE is that while it looks like a)

    <!DOCTYPE html>

    for the DOM, it actually is b)

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "" "">

    long story short, adding my CustomID=”1″ at the end of a) caused the DOM to not recognize it as a valid DOCTYPE, hence switching my WebView into quirksmode. If you want to have an HTML5 DOCTYPE and add a custom id to it you should do

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "" "" CustomId="1">

    w3schools.com tells us that the id attribute is not valid in: base, head, html, meta, , script, style, and title.

    they should warn us that, poorly placed, it can also screw your DOCTYPE =)

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