Re: MIME specification clarification

On 10 Nov 2009, at 2:05 AM, Sue Hart wrote:

> To whom it may concern
>
> I have been teaching IT students learning Webpage construction to  
> use templates that follow the structure shown on the W3C's own web  
> pages. Namely:
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
>
>
> <head>
> <title>World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)</title>
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
>
> We have in our labs until very recently been using IE 6 but have now  
> upgraded to IE 7.
>
> I feel I should now be altering the MIME type to be 'application/ 
> xhtml+xml' but I note that W3C has not done this on their pages. Is  
> this be cause of backward compatibility issues with earlier browsers?

Yes, there are some compatibility issues.

>
> I have gone and looked at the http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#compatGuidelines 
>   "Compatibility Guidelines" for people wanting to serve XHTML as  
> text/html. In here it says you :
> "DO NOT include XML processing instructions NOR the XML declaration."
>
> However, as copied above, W3C actually have their web pages starting  
> with the XML declaration and serving as text/html?

That seems to be the case, indeed. I've not heard of any problems in  
using it.

>
> I am asking because I use what the coding used on W3C pages is as  
> guidance for my teaching. I find many of the recommendations very  
> difficult to understand so I am wondering if I have misunderstood  
> something here?
>
> Given I am teaching TAFE (Technical and Further Ed) students units  
> that ask them to develop pages to W3C standards, in today's world  
> what do you think the best standard is to teach? I have been using  
> XHTML 1.0 Strict, and getting students to make and work off a  
> template that starts with the (?xml dec, then a < ! - - comment  
> declaring their authorship, then the (!DOCTYPE, then the (html root  
> as shown above, then the (head, the (title and the (meta http-equiv  
> as specified on your pages.
>
> I hope someone is able to help me with a clarification on this.

Let me ask around and get back to you.

  _ Ian

>
> Thankyou in anticipation
>
> Regards
>
> Sue Dowson
> P.S. Thanks to every one of you folk that work on the W3C  
> guidelines. I hate to think where we would be without them.
>
> Win 1 of 4 Sony home entertainment packs thanks to Yahoo!7. Enter now.

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Tuesday, 10 November 2009 14:36:53 UTC