Browsers are seldom consistent in their quirks. The quirks of IE 4.0 are not those of IE 5.5, and those displayed by IE 6.0 are not all shared by IE 5.5.
For instance, it is impossible to get IE 5.5 or IE 6.0 to support the very useful position: fixed attribute of CSS, since niether supports it - even though more modern browsers do. You can provide a proprietary hack, which simulates the effect of position: fixed, but doesn't work in any other browser. Although this will simulate position: fixed in IE 5.5 and IE 6.0, there is no reason to suppose the future versions of IE will support this hack, either, or any of the other quirks currently displayed by IE 6.0.
Bear in mind, also, that future versions of IE are going to be tied irrevocably to their operating systems (active development of the browser within Microsoft, as an independant product has, in fact, ceased). The upgrade cycle of versions will thus become stretched across time even further, than it is now, as a result: users of Internet Explorer for Longhorn 1.0 simply will not be able to upgrade the version used by Longhorn 1.x, 2.x, etc..
Uing the 'bang-doctype' at least forces a browser into what it thinks is standards-compliant, and so you are, effectively, coding out what could well actually become and ever-increasing number of quirks in future browsers. (Yes, we're told that browsers in future will become more and more standards-compliant; and as long as efforts like Mozilla continue, and developers keep forcing browsers into at least some semblance of standards-compliance and ignore their many bugs, then there is a chance that they will). However, on current form, there is no reason to suppose that commercial browser manufacturers will suddenly discover any commercial imperative for them to remain standards-compliant, just for the fun of it - especially if coding-in new "cool features" (i.e. quirks) could cause older browsers to break, and become a means of driving operating system upgardes, or software purchases - I'm not singling Microsoft out in this respect, either. If Netscape had remained a commercial, paid-for product, then it would have been in Netscape Corporation's interest to introduce an ever-increasing range of non-standard tags, such as the scrolling <marquee> and the <blink> (which, of course, they did - for exactly the same set of reasons and motivations that people often come down on Microsoft so hard, for having).
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