- From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:56:36 -0500
Henri Sivonen wrote: > (Still, I am against efforts to make it appear that the text/html and > application/xhtml+xml syntaxes are one thing.) I actually do serve some pages as application/xhtml+xml, and they are real, valid XHTML 1.0. However I get periodic complaints about these pages because IE6 (and possibly other versions) won't even try to display these. It's important to understand that resistance to distinguishing text/html from application/xhtml+xml derives primarily from lack of legacy browser support, not from any deliberate desire to conflate the two. Poor default MIME type mappings in server software, and an inability of many document authors to specify their own HTTP Content-type headers also contribute substantially to the problem. Both of those issues really need to be fixed before you can expect XHTML publishers not to overload text/html. Consequently I think any effort to distinguish between XHTML and classic HTML based on MIME media types is doomed to fail for at least the next two or three years. Hmm, it looks IE7 doesn't fix this bug: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/15/467901.aspx Consequently extend that estimate to 5-6 years before we can even consider expelling XHTML from the text/html MIME space. :-( -- ?Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo at metalab.unc.edu Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
Received on Thursday, 30 November 2006 09:56:36 UTC