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Document trailers : can anything legitimately follow

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Subject Author Date
Document trailers : can anything legitimately follow Philip TAYLOR 08-06-2004
Posted by Philip TAYLOR on August 6, 2004, 5:36 pm
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 Configuring a new instance of IIS, I noticed that it
allows an HTML-formatted document trailer to be appended
to every document served. Unfortunately, on checking
its behaviour, I find that it appends the trailer
/after/ the closing </HTML> of the document, separated
by a blank line. I therefore have a few questions :

1) Assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, can anything
        legitimately follow the closing </HTML> tag ?

2) If so, can this be a container with text that
        a browser would be expected or required
        to display ?

        or

Can this be a comment which a browser is not
        required or expected to display, but which
        could be read if a visitor went into source
        view ?

3) Is it possible to generalise the answers to the
        above so that no matter which DTD is used,
        the material following the closing </HTML>
        tag is still legal and capable of being
        read in some way (when I say "no matter which
        DTD", I restrict myself to those currently
        promulgated by the W3C, i.e., the HTML 4.01
        family (frameset, strict and transitional),
        and the XHTML family).

Philip Taylor, RHBNC


Posted by Harlan Messinger on August 6, 2004, 1:00 pm
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> Configuring a new instance of IIS, I noticed that it
> allows an HTML-formatted document trailer to be appended
> to every document served. Unfortunately, on checking
> its behaviour, I find that it appends the trailer
> /after/ the closing </HTML> of the document, separated
> by a blank line. I therefore have a few questions :
>
> 1) Assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, can anything
> legitimately follow the closing </HTML> tag ?

No. However, you can put the </HTML> tag at the end of the trailer instead
of into the documents themselves. I don't happen to know *why* you would do
this, without a similar feature being offered for top of the document to
serve the same purpose.

>
> 2) If so, can this be a container with text that
> a browser would be expected or required
> to display ?
>
> or
>
> Can this be a comment which a browser is not
> required or expected to display, but which
> could be read if a visitor went into source
> view ?
>
> 3) Is it possible to generalise the answers to the
> above so that no matter which DTD is used,
> the material following the closing </HTML>
> tag is still legal and capable of being
> read in some way (when I say "no matter which
> DTD", I restrict myself to those currently
> promulgated by the W3C, i.e., the HTML 4.01
> family (frameset, strict and transitional),
> and the XHTML family).
>
> Philip Taylor, RHBNC



Posted by Chris Morris on August 6, 2004, 5:59 pm
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> Configuring a new instance of IIS, I noticed that it
> allows an HTML-formatted document trailer to be appended
> to every document served. Unfortunately, on checking
> its behaviour, I find that it appends the trailer
> /after/ the closing </HTML> of the document, separated
> by a blank line. I therefore have a few questions :
>
> 1) Assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, can anything
>         legitimately follow the closing </HTML> tag ?

Yes.

> 2) If so, can this be a container with text that
>         a browser would be expected or required
>         to display ?

No. Though many browsers *do* display elements that appear after the
end of the </HTML> element, this can't be relied on.

> Can this be a comment which a browser is not
>         required or expected to display, but which
>         could be read if a visitor went into source
>         view ?

Yes. You can also have as much whitespace as you like after the end of
the HTML element.

So basically you're limited to comments, whitespace scripts, and
combinations of the two.

--
Chris


Posted by Harlan Messinger on August 6, 2004, 3:23 pm
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> > Configuring a new instance of IIS, I noticed that it
> > allows an HTML-formatted document trailer to be appended
> > to every document served. Unfortunately, on checking
> > its behaviour, I find that it appends the trailer
> > /after/ the closing </HTML> of the document, separated
> > by a blank line. I therefore have a few questions :
> >
> > 1) Assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, can anything
> > legitimately follow the closing </HTML> tag ?
>
> Yes.

???

>
> > 2) If so, can this be a container with text that
> > a browser would be expected or required
> > to display ?
>
> No. Though many browsers *do* display elements that appear after the
> end of the </HTML> element, this can't be relied on.

Might that be because anything that follows the </HTML> tag is invalid and
therefore consistency of treatment, or any treatment at all, can't be
expected?

>
> > Can this be a comment which a browser is not
> > required or expected to display, but which
> > could be read if a visitor went into source
> > view ?
>
> Yes. You can also have as much whitespace as you like after the end of
> the HTML element.

Well, yes.

>
> So basically you're limited to comments, whitespace scripts, and
> combinations of the two.

What is a "whitespace script"? If you mean "script that produces white
space", you can't have a SCRIPT element outside of the HTML element.



Posted by Chris Morris on August 7, 2004, 1:50 pm
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> > > 1) Assuming HTML 4.01 Transitional, can anything
> > > legitimately follow the closing </HTML> tag ?
> >
> > Yes.
>
> ???

He asked 'anything', not 'anything useful'.

Thinking about it a little, the obvious solution to the OP's problem
is to take the </body></html> off the end of each normal file, and
(optionally, given that this is HTML 4) put them on the end of the
IIS-included file.

> > > 2) If so, can this be a container with text that
> > > a browser would be expected or required
> > > to display ?
> >
> > No. Though many browsers *do* display elements that appear after the
> > end of the </HTML> element, this can't be relied on.
>
> Might that be because anything that follows the </HTML> tag is invalid and
> therefore consistency of treatment, or any treatment at all, can't be
> expected?

Exactly. I thought the 'No' made that clear enough.

Hmm. Given that the OP specified HTML rather than XHTML, do you know
of any browsers that will actually not display text after the </html>?
It'd be reasonable behaviour, but not one I've ever seen in practice.

> > So basically you're limited to comments, whitespace scripts, and
> > combinations of the two.
>
> What is a "whitespace script"? If you mean "script that produces white
> space", you can't have a SCRIPT element outside of the HTML element.

No, it's a script written in a language consisting entirely of white
space characters. A couple of them exist. I wouldn't expect a browser
to do anything with them, obviously (even inside an appropriate
<script> element), but you could put something even less obvious than
a comment after the </html>.

--
Chris


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