[wp-hackers] WordPress, web standards, and (X)HTML

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 14:38 -0800, Robin Adrianse wrote:
> It doesn't help that IE (I think it's IE6 and maybe IE7) chokes on
> application/xhtml+xml headers...

That's more or less right. Normally, IE will ask if you want to download
the file, rather than trying to render it. IE will render
application/xhtml+xml as though it were tag soup if you include a XML
processing instruction and use the .html extension. But going to such
lengths to serving document format to browsers that don't support them
in lieu of nearly equivalent formats that they support much better seems
rather pointless. Indeed, /no/ browser has better handling of
application/xhtml+xml than it does of HTML 4.01 strict, with the
singular exception of the Flying Saucer sample browser, which of
course /only/ handles XHTML markup.

This is why HTML 4.01 Strict is the simple option. But a mechanism for
transformation is more future-proofed.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis