i am a camera

10 Nov - Carl Camera - In Search of a de Facto Standard

2005-11-10T11:36:20Z

Tim,

Exactly. The problem doesn't go away when IE8 (assuming it will handle xhml+xml MIME) appears. The problem goes away when IE7 disappears.

10 Nov - Tim Groves - In Search of a de Facto Standard

2005-11-10T01:42:07Z

Looks as if IE7 won't support application/xhtml+xml either: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/15/467901.aspx

2010 may be a good bet...

02 Nov - Carl Camera - In Search of a de Facto Standard

2005-11-02T22:42:22Z

Dan, the geek in me definitely wants to be at the standards forefront, but there's more to it than that.

In looking to the future, there is no doubt in my mind that XML will be the basis of internet browser interactions. The sooner I get on board, so to speak, the better. Furthermore, I'm taking a pragmatic view of dealing with the browser landscape over the next five years.

IE6 is the reason people use to justify avoiding XHTML 1.1. "If I can't serve it with application/xhtml+xml", they say, "then I'll just serve up some previous standard."

Their rationale is complete W3C compliance, but I fear they might be hurting XHTML adoption as a result. If we all take this stance, then we won't even begin to see widespread adoption of XHTML 1.1 until about 2010. Here's why:

Flipping the switch to the recommended XHTML 1.1 MIME type doesn't degrade well, now does it? For all intents and purposes, it breaks IE6. Even if IE6 is one-half of one percent of the browser market, serving up XHTML 1.1 with application/xhtml+xml will erase your site from tens of thousands of users. For those taking the stance above: what percentage of the browser community are you willing to ignore, and most likely annoy?

I simply will not wait for IE6 to fade from existence before moving forward with my DOCTYPE. The XHTML 1.1 standard allows for serving it up text/html, so I'm in compliance.

More than likley, everyone will be client-sniffing and serving up XHTML in different formats in the near future. I'm certainly investigating dynamic MIME type solutions. Then, if we're all dynamically serving up XHTML with different MIME types based on browser capabilities, what reason is there to lag behind?

02 Nov - Dan - In Search of a de Facto Standard

2005-11-02T09:27:39Z

Are you sure doing stuff that the w3c says you should not do is a sensible basis for your choices here?

http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-xhtml-media-types-20020801/#summary

In order to serve XHTML reliably as text/html you have to follow the HTML compatibility guidelines, which means you need to use a subset of XHTML, which isn't tested by checking for well-formedness.

On the other hand it's perfectly possible to write very clean HTML4.01 (again using a subset of the published standard), the advantage is you can serve it as text/html and be within the w3c's recommendations.

Sounds to me like you have no real reason to want to use XHTML1.1 over XHTML1.0, or HTML4.01, other than it's got an 'X' in it, and 1.1 is bigger than 1.0.

Offer some real positive reasons for using it.