XHTML in IE9

re: XHTML in IE9

the_dees — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:47:26 GMT

@Bertil Wennergren:

There is no problem with xml:lang (nowadays). But the xml:lang attribute has had the problem of being unrecognized by browsers or assistive technology. It's not a problem anymore.

However, note that in XHTML 1.0 you can use the lang attribute to define the language of an element, and in XHTML 1.1 you can not. Thus both are incompatible. A browser that implemented XHTML 1.1 wouldn't be allowed to look for lang attributes in XHTML documents. It would've to be treated like any other attribute xyz.

It works in modern browsers (and even older ones) because XHTML 1.1 documents are simply treated like XHTML 1.0 documents.

@Patrick Garies:

Let's assue a browser implemented XHTML 1.1 completly (including CSS Ruby and the Ruby Annotations Spec). In this scenario, HTML5 would automatically have Ruby support as well. That is not a thing of specifications but of implementations. And that is the crux of the matter. Something implemented in abrowser will work in any document. But if that meant either one document mode or another (which do not really exist) had a bug, a spec is not implementable.

Module-based XHTML sounds nice in theory but it is just a nice concept that wasn't ever needed. Technology evolved way too fast to make this concept needed. You see HTML parsers in mobile browsers. Something no one thought would be possible.

re: XHTML in IE9

Patrick Garies — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 08:34:03 GMT

@the_dees: XHTML 1.1 supports complex ruby markup whereas HTML5 does not. That, rather than |lang| attribute differences, is probably the most major difference between XHTML 1.1 and HTML5. That problem is more with Ruby Annotations and CSS3 Ruby specs being too vague and poorly thought through than with XHTML 1.1 though, so we may yet see more complete de facto XHTML 1.1 support in the future when those specs have been scrapped or rewritten.

There was another difference: modularity (hence the spec title: "Module-based XHTML"). But, given that implementors apparently don't plan to ever support validation against DTDs, that feature is optional per XML, and people can write their own XML schema, that feature has been pretty much invisible and will probably remain that way.

re: XHTML in IE9

JAB Creations — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:59:41 GMT

Firefox's RSS feed reader doesn't update regularly for MSDN for some reason...hm...

Well I applaud finally supporting XHTML as application/xhtml+xml however instead of rendering up to an error it would make more sense to not display the page and display an error message instead like Gecko and Presto do. Presto handles it best by allowing the user to render the page as text/html. This has a VERY large bearing on why I test with Gecko first and Presto secondly. WebKit doesn't break the page and I think KHTML doesn't either so I test with WebKit third and up to this point with IE last. Since IE9 isn't available on XP I will continue to test with it last because it's the least convenient requiring tons of RAM for virtualization.

Handling the mime with PHP...

------------------

<?php

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT']))

{

$mime_ua = stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'],'application/xhtml+xml');

if ($mime_ua) {$mime = 'application/xhtml+xml';}

else {$mime = 'text/html';}

}

else {$mime = 'text/html';}

header('content-type: '.$header->mime.'; charset=utf-8');

echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'."\n";

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "www.w3.org/.../xhtml11.dtd">

------------------

It should be noted that AJAX content loaded via importNode (innerHTML should NOT be used EVER) should be served as text/xml.

I like the idea of NOT implementing quirks mode for XHTML, that's a good move.

But limiting IE9 to Vista/7 is NOT a smart move. Want us to "upgrade"? Tell the Windows team to stop removing all the ACTUALLY useful things and shortcuts from Windows. Heck there isn't even an "Explore" option in the context menu on the My Documents or My Computer icon in 7 and I couldn't effectively move the ENTIRE My Documents folder to the D:\ for a client last week as IE was still saved files to the C:\. This isn't guess work or trying to figure out how to one-up Apple, it's listening to users who actually use their machines for production and as power users. Oh and fix IE9's totally borked GUI, less isn't more, it's less. Having you guys actually listen to CRITICAL input besides standards compliance is like trying to tell Linux fan boys to just make the start key with with their version of the start menu. End users and ESPECIALLY people like myself who do production are having to put up with worse and worse software GUI while hardware is getting more and more awesome.

re: XHTML in IE9

Bertil Wennergren — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:25:50 GMT

the_dees:

"Most XHTML 1.1 issues are resolved as of today, the only real issue in my opinion is that it still doesn't allow the lang attribute."

I use "xml:lang" as the XHTML 1.1 rules say I should. It seems to work, at least in Firefox. What actual breakage or problems do you see happening? I see none.

re: XHTML in IE9

IronTed — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:55:59 GMT

Your support of HTML5 is a bunch of BS! You only selectively support some elements of Canvas in order to protect Silverlight. I don't see any need for IE in my enterprise. Because I have Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

re: XHTML in IE9

the_dees — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:50:06 GMT

@Bertil Wennergren

"So how come my pages, served as XHTML 1.1 to browsers that claim support for XTHML in the accept, header, do work perfectly well in Firefox? Have I missed something? To me it does seem like Firefox supports XHTML 1.1. Actually I believe that Safari, Chrome and Opera do too."

Long story.

As you say, a browser can state it accepts the application/xhtml+xml media type. Note that there is no version indicator.

It's probably important to note that todays XHTML 1.1 is almost the same as XHTML 1.0, however that was a long fight.

When XHTML 1.1 came out (became a REC) it contained several contradictions to XHTML 1.0 (no lang attribute allowed, no text/html allowed, a bug in the handling of client side image maps, different CSS handling).

That wouldn't have been a problem, but unfortunately the W3C decided that XHTML 1.1 "lives" in the same namespace as XHTML 1.0 does. So if a browser receives a document labled application/xhtml+xml and namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/ it can not decide what version of the language the document is written in.

To solve this problem on the browser side there are three solutions: a) Implement doctype switching in XML, b) do not implement XHTML 1.1 or c) do not implement XHTML 1.0 anymore.

For a while, browsers tried a) which led to several bug reports and critic on the bad influence on the XML ecosystem.

It's not like browser vendors didn't want to implement XHTML 1.1 - they even tried for years to fix the issues in XHTML 1.1, but their tries were in vain.

Then, the WHATWG and HTML5 appeared. HTML5 defines its vocabulary to be backwards compatible to HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, so in the end, browser vendors decided to not implement XHTML 1.1 because a XHTML 1.0 is a perfectly fine subset of XHTML5.

Most XHTML 1.1 issues are resolved as of today, the only real issue in my opinion is that it still doesn't allow the lang attribute.

You probaly got it by now, your XHTML 1.1 code simply works because the browser can't tell it's XHTML 1.1 - and even if it could, you probably wouldn't notice a difference anymore.

However, keeping in mind that HTML5 introduced the widely used ruby elements for HTML and XHTML, there is no real advantage in using XHTML 1.1 anymore.

So in short, XHTML (without version number) sill simply work in IE9 and all other browsers.

re: XHTML in IE9

Green bars — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:37:04 GMT

Hello, you should Make it so that the status bar a.k.a the loading bar that tells you when a webpage is done loading still there but you just see it if you hover the mouse over the area where it is. but just make it do this when a webpage is loading :P

re: XHTML in IE9

Mario — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:31:35 GMT

Hello,

I downloaded The Newest platform preview and I saw that the buttons on sites like the tweet button on twitter is not round it should be round but it is a square on ie please fix this!

re: XHTML in IE9

yellowstone — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:29:46 GMT

.wdp File and .jxr File.... !!!SUPPORT(.wdp, .hdp, jxr etc Support...)

I'm can not Speak English ^^;;

Thank you

re: XHTML in IE9

mmm — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 11:59:18 GMT

Where can i find IE9 roadmap? Will be more public betas ?