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Sorry this probably doesn't solve your problem Burnzy, but in respect to Highlanders doctype check, using the doctype alone without the URL to the DTD will throw IE and Firefox into 'quirks' mode, but only if the doctype is for HTML 4.01. Deleting the URL was like having no doctype at all. In quirks mode, virtually everything works unless it's really badly coded.
AFAIK, with the XHTML transitional doctype that you are using, Firefox will use 'almost standards' mode, with or without the URL. The 'strict' doctype triggers 'full standards mode'. To trigger 'quirks mode' you have to omit the doctype completely.
There's more at Mozilla's doctype sniffer page:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/quirks/doctypes.html
Lots of interesting stuff on the effect of doctypes here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/doctype.html
Is it really worth using XHTML? Some good points raised here:
http://www.hut.fi/u/hsivonen/xhtml-the-point
and here:
http://www.ookingdom.com/design/quitting
See how various browsers deal with XHTML served up as text/html here:
http://www.goer.org/Journal/2003/Apr/index.html#results
And some PHP and htaccess trickery for XHTML here:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/19/dive-into-xml.html
Hope some of that may be of help!