Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>]

> IE is not an XML parser, period.

This is true but inexplicable.

IE5.5+MSXML3/replace mode was probably the finest widely available XML
browser on any platform. The mechanisms for installing MSXML3 were
somewhat arcane and many people were looking forward to IE6 when, we
were told, IE6 would default to MSXML3 and everything would be better.

But it's not better, it's much worse. It's gone from a fine XML system
with an unsupported installation procedure to not being an XML system at
all.

Being told that MSXML3 is available from the browser via script really
does not address the problems. XML was designed to be served on the web:
If I have a linked set of a few thousand XML documents I want to place
those directly on the web with just stylesheet processing instructions
pointing in a vendor neutral way to the style to be used. I don't want
to have to produce wrapper HTML files for each of those documents and I
certainly don't want to have wrappers pointing at a specific version of
a specific vendor's XML parser. What's the point in an open standard like
XML if it comes down to having to do that?

David

_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet
delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further
information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call
Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.