Step 10 of Feed/HTML sniffing (part of detailed review of "Determining the type of a new resource in a browsing context")

Step 10, as of writing, is an unresolved issue: "If, before the next  
">", you find two xmlns* attributes with http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22- 
rdf-syntax-ns# and http://purl.org/rss/1.0/ as the namespaces, then  
the sniffed type of the resource is "application/rss+xml", abort  
these steps. (maybe we only need to check for http://purl.org/rss/ 
1.0/ actually)"

The first, and most obvious issue, is that RSS 0.90's namespace  
(<http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/>) should be an alternative  
for RSS 1.0's here.

Secondly, testing current browsers, I've found that Fx2, Op9.22, and  
IE7 require both the RDF and RSS namespace to be present. Saf3/Mac  
requires just the |rdf:RDF| element.

I'm yet to come across any site that breaks in Saf3 (if Saf2 used the  
same feed/HTML hysterics, I haven't had a single site break since May  
2005) due to this sniffing, so I'm in favour of just putting | 
rdf:RDF| within the above table with a sniffed type of "application/ 
rss+xml" (which is simplest solution to this issue).

- Geoffrey Sneddon

Received on Friday, 17 August 2007 16:37:30 UTC