Standards-compliant mode not supported

I have spent quite a lot of time trying to design the grid stylesheet for a standard-compliant mode - and I gave up. The problem is with IE not supporting 'box-sizing' rule. In a standard-compliant mode IE forces you to use 'content box' model, which makes building any complex layout incredibly difficult.

So the conclusion is - standards-compliant mode is not supported and probably will not be.

Alex,

what about this solution:

http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/boxsizing/boxsizing.html

My company is considering purchasing a site license, but our requirement is XHTML Strict support.

I believe fixing the size of EVERY element with a script would kill the performance.

Just curious, are you really prepared using 'content-box' model for your application? Imagine the following scenario: you have to set the column size to 200px wide and your column header template has 2px border with 5px padding while the cells are 1px right border only and 3px padding. Frankly I am having difficulty now to calculate what the width setting should be and if I really want to specify it separately for each cell depending on the cell inner content...

How would you approach this? One solution I can think of is to replace each DIV with two - outer DIV with no border and no padding just for setting the size and another inner DIV for border and padding. Is there any better solution? I am looking for any advice here.

To answer your question:

We make two DIVs - outer DIV with no borders, margin an padding, only size, WHERE NECESSARY.

As IE in standards mode doesn't support 'border-box', we plan using maybe something like IE7 Hack or that box-sizing behaviour that I mentioned before.

Our main goal is XHTML Strict compliance.

It's a shame that we continue to allow Microsoft to stifle innovation and impede efforts to implement web standards. Personally, if I can do a work around for the rendering bugs in their browsers I will, only because so many sheep are using their crapware. But if there is no work around, then tough. I will not use any code that won't validate as xhtml strict. Everybody is entitled to make their own call of course but giving in to their arrogance and incompetence just perpetuates the problem.

I hear you're not planning to support "strict" mode, but what about "transitional"? I thot this was supposed to be loose enough to support most features.
Thx,

Isn't that the default mode for browsers unless you specify what mode

Wouldn't it be nice if Mozilla released Firefox as an ActiveX control that would just be hosted by IE?

It's a shame that we continue to allow Microsoft to stifle innovation and impede efforts to implement web standards

Agreed, and here is how one counters such an impedements.
Promote and use other browsers, which are not proprietarily supported and support actual STANDARDS. Just this past year Firefox is gaining more ground on IE than ever before. Once IE is even with Firefox, M$ will have to re-evaluate their stand and support these standards to exist in a world where standards, should be forced, and not be implied so loosely. Take a look at IE 7, it is a Firefox knock off if I have ever seen one. And they are going to support native XMLHttpRequest and depreciate the ActiveX equivalent. That tells you something right there. They know they are up a creek with one paddle. They can't afford to lose the only paddle they have left.

Mozilla does have a activex control can't remember the address for it but it's out there