Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML

Posted on Wed 01 November 2006 in XHTML

"Work In Progess"

This article is work in progress. It will be expanded upon and become more reader friendly - at the moment it is just a brief list of my ideas.

This is a topic of much debate, but I have decided on my strategy.

  • XHTML has a much stricter markup than using HTML 4. This is one of the most appealing aspects of using it. If you decide to use it you must abide by the rules.
  • I wish to use XHTML, but also want it to be as compatible as possible with older browsers (if compatibility with really old browsers is of the utmost concern, you should probably stick to HTML 4.01 Strict).

Serving up XHTML:

  • Use XHTML 1.0 (Strict / Transitional). XHTML 1.0 should be served as application/xhtml+xml, however it may be served as text/html. Any version of XHTML later than 1.0 should not be served as text/html.
  • Serve as application/xhtml+xml to user agents which support it (e.g. Mozilla FireFox, Opera).
  • Serve as text/html to user agents which do not specify acceptance of application/xhtml+xml, but do accept text/html (e.g. Internet Explorer).
  • Serve as application/xhtml+xml (i.e. as it should be) to user agents which do not specify acceptance of text/html (e.g. the W3C Validator).
  • Using ASP.NET 2.0? See: Serving the Correct MIME Type for XHTML using ASP.NET 2.0.

Implications:

  • Use UTF-8 character encoding.
  • Only add the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> declaration if serving as application/xhtml+xml. It should normally be included, but is not required when using UTF-8. Because IE6 switches to "quirks" mode when this is included, omit when serving as text/html.
  • Only add the <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> element if serving as text/html.
  • Mark all <style> and <script> contents as CDATA (using the backwards-compatible method). See: Marking Script and Style as CDATA.
  • Follow the XHTML 1.0 Appendix C HTML Compatibility Guidelines.
  • Stick to the 4 XHTML Safe Named Entities: &lt; for <, &gt; for >, &amp; for &, &quot; for ". &apos; for ' is not supported in IE6. For this and all others use numbered entities (e.g. &#39; for ').
  • Check that all your JavaScript works. You can't use document.write() or innerHTML (this is from my reading and is unchecked/tested).
  • Make sure you style the <html> element, as the <body> element doesn't cover the entire viewpoint.
  • Validate, validate, validate! Make sure your XHTML is perfect, and that your pages work in a multitude of browsers.

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