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    dc:title="Setting the default style sheet language on your Web site"
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    dc:subject="HTML"
    dc:description="Very often Web creators are using an external style sheet, or a style element to add style information to their html pages. By doing, we specify what is the style language used in the Web page. For example using the..."
    dc:creator="Karl Dubost"
    dc:date="2007-09-27T06:45:11+00:00" />
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                        <h2 class="entry-header">Setting the default style sheet language on your Web site</h2>
                           <div class="entry-body">
                              <p>Very often Web creators are using an external style sheet, or  a style element to add style information to their html pages. By doing, we specify what is the style language used in the Web page. For example using the `link` element.</p>

    <pre class="html"><code>&lt;link href=&quot;cute.css&quot; rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; type=&quot;text/css&quot;/&gt;</code></pre>

<p>But if your page is  using the <code>style</code> attribute, the user agent may not know what is the language used for styling. This is a <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#orthogonal-specs">principle of orthogonality</a>. A company could launch a user agent with a new style language and a new mime-type. It will be difficult to impose and ensure interoperability because of the deployment base, but it is still possible.</p>

<p>If you want to <a href="">set up a default style sheet language</a> for your Web site, there are a few choices. You can use a meta name in each of your page:</p>

<pre class="html"><code>&lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"/&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>or you can specify an HTTP header:</p>

<pre class="html"><code>Content-Style-Type: text/css
</code></pre>

<p>With <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">Apache http server 2.0</a>, you can use <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_headers.html">mod_headers</a> and <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_setenvif.html">mod_setenvif</a> in the general configuration file or at a directory level in <code>.htaccess</code>:</p>

<pre class="html"><code>SetEnvIf response Content-Type [text/html|application/xhtml+xml] html-content=1
Header add "Content-Style-Type: text/css" env=html-content
</code></pre>

<p>PS: mod_headers and mod_setenvif are not activated in the base configuration of Apache httpd, you have to activate them.</p>
<p>Examples given for xhtml documents served as <code>application/xhtml+xml</code></p>
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                       <p class="postinfo">Filed by <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/karl/">Karl Dubost</a> on September 27, 2007  6:45 AM in <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/archive/technology/css/">CSS</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/archive/technology/html/">HTML</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/archive/technology/http/">HTTP</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/archive/w3cqa_news/technology_101/">Technology 101</a><br />
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<h3 class="comments-header" id="comments">Comments</h3>
<div class="comment" id="comment-68393">
<p class="comment-meta" id="c068393">
<span class="comment-meta-author"><strong>David Dorward </strong></span>
<span class="comment-meta-date"><a href="#c068393">#</a> 2007-09-27</span>
</p>
<div class="comment-bulk">
<p>It is probably worth fixing the code examples to make them conform to Appendix C of XHTML 1.0. The space before the / is missing.</p>

<p>I also suggest removing the word 'only' from second paragraph. Linking to a style sheet written in one language doesn't mean that the style attributes are going to be using the same language, does it?</p>

<p>You might also want to link to <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html#h-14.2.1" rel="nofollow">the relevant section of the specification</a>.</p>

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<div class="comment" id="comment-68517">
<p class="comment-meta" id="c068517">
<span class="comment-meta-author"><strong>karl dubost, w3c </strong></span>
<span class="comment-meta-date"><a href="#c068517">#</a> 2007-09-27</span>
</p>
<div class="comment-bulk">
<p>Hi David,</p>

<p>I have added a PS explaining the examples were XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml.</p>

<p>And fixed the only. Note that the user agents default to text/css anyway.</p>

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<div class="comment" id="comment-185107">
<p class="comment-meta" id="c185107">
<span class="comment-meta-author"><strong>Jitendra Vyas </strong></span>
<span class="comment-meta-date"><a href="#c185107">#</a> 2009-11-26</span>
</p>
<div class="comment-bulk">
<p>so no need to do this if i'm using content="text/html;</p>

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