[WEB4LIB] RE: Moving from HTML4.01 to XML

[Thomas Dowling]

Drew, Bill wrote:

>I am using Dreamweaver 4.0.  I am also using templates.  I have just
>about got my template converted to XHTML.  I am wondering about IE
>though.  Will converting to XHTML cause problems in my displays?
>
>  
>

I hope I wasn't too oblique in my reference to IE's problem.

The preferred MIME content type for XHTML is "application/xhtml+xml", 
which IE fails to handle.  For XHTML 1.0, you may use "text/html", which 
IE is happy to use, but more modern browsers look for the content type 
to decide whether they should turn on their state of the art XML 
parsers, so they'll continue to parse "text/html" documents as plain old 
HTML.  In other words, IE support will require you to dumb down the 
XHTML you serve, and everyone will treat it the way they currently treat 
HTML.

If you weren't really counting on all the XML bells and whistles anyway, 
you haven't lost anything, but that goes back to the question of why you 
want to move to XHTML in the first place.


BTW, there are some implications for inline stylesheets and scripts 
within XHTML.  That may be the biggest potential for syntax problems 
when and if you convert.  See for example 
<http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/xhtml-style-script/>.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu