Hi Mark, Did you know that your statement "XHTML is currently a waste of time. It might be useful in a few years" promotes the use of IE? It certainly doesn't promote the use of standards-compliant XHTML browsers like Mozilla/Firefox/Opera. For the first time, these browsers have a technological advantage over IE and you are missing it. Do you happen to work in Redmond by any chance?
Anyway, too many people focus on browsers and their ability to consume XHTML. Today, the real benefit of XHTML is on the content production side. Without XHTML, the average Web developer could not parse content for re-purposing because HTML makes parsing difficult. Here is an example of how some of our customers build Web sites (it would be impossible for them to do this if the content was in HTML): they have a single script (PHP, ASP, etc) that provides the layout of the page and sucks-up content from a data store. Depending on the type of document (FAQs, press release, staff list, etc), they run an XSLT to re-format the content. For example, for FAQs, the XSLT goes through each header, anchors it and creates a list of hyperlinks at the top of the page to jump to each FAQ. You can only do this if you author your content in XHTML. Mark, you made a bold statement, so I will counter with a statement just as bold - Authoring content in HTML immediately devalues that content, because as soon as you capture content in HTML it become legacy data, difficult to parse and difficult to re-purpose. Regards, -Vlad XStandard Development Team The first standards-based XHTML 1.1 WYSIWYG editor ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Stanton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 9:03 PM Subject: RE: [WSG] Serving XHTML as application/xhtml+xml > Hi > > I haven't bothered messing with this yet - but Simon Jessey has: > > http://keystonewebsites.com/articles/mime_type.php > http://jessey.net/blog/2003/sep/ > > > > I have created an index.xhtml file, changed the content in it > > to "application/xhtml+xml" (<meta > > content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=iso-8859-1" /> ) and > > uploaded it. > > Meta tags are almost useless for this sort of stuff. HTTP Headers are where > the action is. > > > > Now, IE is served the xhtml file as text/html and Mozilla is > > served application/xhtml+xml. Is it? > > > > You can test both files with IE and Mozilla, for instance: > > > > http://excellentsite.org/index.shtml > > http://excellentsite.org/index.xhtml > > Seems to be working - Firefox is getting served application/xhtml+xml for > the second link. > > > > Could it be this way? If yes, why doesn't IE load the xhtml page ?! > > IE has broken mime support. > > > Don't take this too seriously but I'm just going to add my usual disclaimer: > > + XHTML is currently a waste of time. It might be useful in a few years. > > + All the features that XHTML adds are currently supported so badly by > user-agents at large that there is almost no point in using it. > > + HTML4.1 is the right choice for web documents at the moment. > > This argument has been outlined at length on this list so search the archive > at: http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg%40webstandardsgroup.org/ if you are > interested in more details. > > However having said that I think the approach you have taken (serving as xml > mime type where possible) is one of the more responsible ones at the moment. > I still don't think its worth the effort though. > > > Cheers > > Mark > > > ------------------ > Mark Stanton > Technical Director > Gruden Pty Ltd > Tel: 9956 6388 > Mob: 0410 458 201 > Fax: 9956 8433 > http://www.gruden.com > > ***************************************************** > The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help > ***************************************************** > > ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
