Posted by jojo on 01/22/60 11:59

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>>> I've decided to switch to xhtml and I've added the following at the
>>> top of my page:
>>
>> Why?
>
> I guess the usual explanation is that people have no idea of XHTML or
> its practical usefulness or uselessness, but someone told them it's the
> "newest recommendation".

Yeah, I suppose that's the reason. But unfortunately the "newest" is not
always the best recommendation (Not that the idea behind XHTML is bad,
it's just the poor support in "modern" browsers which is...)

>> Where do you expect the warnings to appear? Definetly not in the
>> browser...
>
> Actually, a browser _could_ have a validating XML parser. That was
> really more or less part of the idea. Of course, that would not mean
> warnings but error messages.

Right, it could have one. But most browsers have none or do only use it
on properly served XHTML documents (Which means the MIME-type is set to
application/xhtml+xml and not text/html). And I guess the MIME type is
not set properly...

>> A XHTML document should look like this:
>>
>> <?xml version="1.0" ?>
>
> Well, in theory it could start with the <?xml ...> declaration, but in
> practice, that throws IE to "quirks mode", making it simulate some
> errors of IE 5. How modern...
>
Oh, yes, I remember... the quirks mode is enabled if there is no Doctype
(with URL, the ones without enable quirks mode ASFAIK) specified in the
*first* line of a html document...

But there maybe is another problem with the xml declaration: if php is
available on the server and short-tags are enabled the <? is recognized
as beginning of a php-statement...

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