Posted by Spartanicus on 06/19/05 10:42

Adrienne <arbpen2003@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>Look at HTTP_ACCEPT header, and if it supports application/xhtml+xml,
>then serve it such. I serve IE6 text/html because its HTTP_ACCEPT header
>does not include application/xhtml+xml.

UA preference part of the accept header should be respected, it's there
for a reason. Most (all?) renderers that can handle both XHTML and Tag
soup are primarily Tag soup slurpers and have better capabilities as a
Tag soup slurper. For example Opera =<7.2x doesn't recognize character
references in X(HT)ML mode. Opera's accept header says that it *prefers*
HTML, so it should be served HTML.

>The only caveat is that for some browsers that do support the mime type,
>if there is an error in the markup, the page will not render except for
>the error.

More importantly the renderer most people want to use
application/xhtml+xml for (Gecko) currently refuses to render anything
until the document has completely downloaded. Incremental rendering is
an essential function on the web, network & server problems frequently
cause pages to load very slowly, or not completely, for Gecko users this
results in them staring at a blank viewport when the author serves the
document as application/xhtml+xml.

--
Spartanicus

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