Re: [MACCAWS] Fwd: Re: [thelist] XHTML 1.1 and content type

On Wednesday, July 31, 2002, 6:29:53 PM, you wrote:
> > The more I am reading about the troubles with XHTML 1.1, I'm not sure
> > we want to go further than 1.0 for an XHTML recommendation at this
> > point (to be discussed of course.) It seems to me a lot of people I
> > talk to that are using XHTML and CSS, still avoid 1.1
> 
> Can you provide some links to 'the dark side of XHTML 1.1'?

Well, the main problem with XHTML support is IE.

IE/win simply has no XHTML support. It happens to render XHTML through its HTML
parser, but it working is really down to luck more than anything.

With XHTML 1.1, there are a few practical problems with IE. The first is the
obvious content-type problem, you must serve it as text/html for IE to render it.

Second, XHTML 1.1-compatible image maps won't work with IE. The usemap attribute
changed in 1.1 so it has to point directly at the id of the map - usemap="bleh",
not usemap="bleh" - which IE doesn't understand.

Of course on top of that you have the removal of frames, link targets, etc - the
idea is they are replaced via CSS, but the support (and in most cases, the base
standards) just isn't there yet - which can cause some problems.

So if you don't mind serving as text/html (or using content negotiation for IE),
dumping image maps and not having frames or targeted links then XHTML 1.1 is
pretty much workable.

-- 
Tom Gilder
http://tom.me.uk/