Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 09/30/72 11:58

Jim Moe wrote:

> Delete the "<?xml ...?>" part. IE does not understand it and does not
> like it.

The problem with the <?xml ...?> part, with respect to IE, is that it throws
IE into "quirks mode". This is just a special case of IE's cluelessness in
"doctype sniffing": it treats _anything_ before a DOCTYPE declaration as
requesting compatibility with old, broken versions of IE, i.e. "quirks
mode". This need not be serious, and it might lack any observable effects,
though this depends on the page markup and especially the associated style
sheet(s).

IE does not understand XHTML _at all_, so skipping the <?xml ...?> part is
irrelevant. (Though it matters as "garbage before the DOCTYPE" to IE, in the
above-mentioned sense.)

Apparently the OP has the page in an environment where it is sent with HTTP
headers that specify the Internet media type as e.g. application/xml+xhtml
and not text/html. This is just fine except for the fact that it is
completely unsuitable in practice at present and in the near future in the
WWW context, where most people use IE, which fails to process that media
type in a useful way.

The morale is that XHTML should not be used as document distribution format
on the WWW anytime soon, but this fact has been presented and argumented so
many times in this group that I can safely leave it unmentioned here, can't
I?

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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