You are correct - when IE sees the XML prologue, it thinks that it's the doctype, and gets thrown into quirks mode. However, having the XML prologue after the doctype (as in your second example) isn't proper. Per the W3C specs, XHTML should be served as application/xhtml+xml or application/xml or text/xml and should not be served as text/html. Serving XHTML properly requires the XML prologue. However, unfortunately, most sites serve their XHTML markup as text/html. I've never really understood this - it's very easy to use content negotiation to serve up HTML 4.01 as text/html to browsers that can't handle the proper MIME type, and XHTML 1.0/1.1 as application/xhtml+xml to those that can. Regarding IE 7 - who knows except the developers? My two cents :)
Collin Davis Web Architect Stromberg Architectural Products 903.454.0904 e [EMAIL PROTECTED] w http://www.strombergarchitectural.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Kennon Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:58 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [WSG] XML Declaration Hi, I vaguely remember reading if the xml declaration position the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> is switched (something like this): <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd";> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en" > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <head> <title>Virtual Library</title> </head> <body> <p>Moved to <a href="http://vlib.org/";>vlib.org</a>.</p> </body> </html> It does not throw IE into quirks mode. Is this true, necessary and what standard conformance changes regarding this issue are addressed in IE 7?: CK ______________________________ "Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do." ---Bruce Lee ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
