Problem in auto-generated HTML

Ben C wrote:

On 2009-06-28, C A Upsdell <cupsdell (AT) nospam (DOT) not> wrote:
Jack Crenshaw wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Jack Crenshaw wrote:
I've encountered a problem with HTML files generated by Mathcad using
the "save as HTML" option. Among other things, Mathcad allows for
text, math, and graph objects. When I try to display the generated
file in Firefox, the equations overlay the preceding text.
Also not mentioned is that "style" properties created by this Mathcad
are invalid as well

The problem seems to be the use of constructs like this:

div style="position:absolute;top:96;left:20"
^^ ^^
Position 96 what? Bananas? Left what?
Pixels. Which right off the bat seems like a Bad Idea, right?
NOT pixels. This is a absolutely crucial point: with CSS, the units
*must* be specified unless the value is zero, and if the units are
omitted with a non-zero value, the CSS is invalid, and should (according
to the standards) be ignored.

The problem is that IE traditionally does NOT ignore such CSS:
traditionally IE has assumed that the units are pixels if the units are
not specified, but this is simply wrong, and has resulted in IE
*apparently* displaying pages correctly when standards compliant
browsers do not.

I think they mostly allow that to mean pixels in quirks mode, which my
guess is this content is going to be in (if you're clueless enough to
emit crap like that you probably don't emit a DOCTYPE at all).

How did you guess?

Jack