Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft's deeply cynical appealto"standards compliance"

[Jason Diamond <jason@injektilo.org>]

If you save Opera's press release to your local drive, change the extension
to "html", add a base element to the document's head, and convert the
xml-stylesheet PI to a style element that imports the stylesheet, it renders
fine in IE 6.0 and probably older versions as well. Going through these
steps to view a perfectly valid XHTML file with IE only proves that Bob
Visse's claims that IE even remotely supports XHTML is the result of either
remarkable cluelessness or willful deceit. Take your pick.

But in Microsoft's defense, the (expired) draft at [1] says that XHTML
doccuments should not have an extension of ".xml" but rather ".xht" or
".xhtml". Is that what's tripping up IE?

Additionally, DJ Delorie's HTTP Header Viewer [2] says that Opera is serving
its XHTML documents as "Content-Type: text/xml; charset=iso-8859-1". The
draft I mentioned above mandates a content type of "application/xhtml+xml".
If Opera used an ".xhtml" extension and this content type, would IE display
it correctly? (I doubt it but I'm willing to keep an open mind about it and
would be delightfully surprised if it did.) Would Opera even display an
XHTML document correctly with the correct extension and content type?

What's the current status of this draft? How can we expect _anybody_ to
support XHTML if we don't all follow the same guidelines?

[1]
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-baker-xhtml-media-reg-02.txt
[2]
http://www.delorie.com/web/headers.html

----- Original Message -----
From: <John.Brooking@NA.SAPPI.COM>
To: <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>; <joshuaa@microsoft.com>;
<ken_north@compuserve.com>; <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>; <narahari@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 1:27 PM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Microsoft's deeply cynical appealto"standards comp
liance"


> Double irony: I blindly went out to Mike's link with my IE 5.5 browser (my
> company's standard), and of course my "user experience" of the Opera page
> was far "less than optimal" with IE. In fact, all I saw was a bunch of
> overlaid colored squares at the the top of the page and some of the link
bar
> at the bottom. Still not noticing that it ended in ".xml", I tried it on
NN
> 4.7, which of course was pretty much blank. However, NN 6.0 displays it
> fine, now if only it started up faster! (Maybe I'll download Opera, and
make
> my desktop support people even more annoyed...)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 3:52 PM
> To: Joshua Allen; Ken North; xml-dev@lists.xml.org; sateesh narahari
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Microsoft's deeply cynical appealto"standards
> comp liance"
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@microsoft.com]
> > Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 12:58 PM
> > To: Ken North; xml-dev@lists.xml.org; sateesh narahari
> > Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Microsoft's deeply cynical appealto"standards
> > compliance"
> >
> >
> > It is really hard to imagine any logic behind the recent
> > move, other than "ooops!"
>
> I don't really want to continue flogging this dead horse, but I just
> saw Opera's press release on this episode:
> http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/xhtml/20011026.xml
>
> "The irony of Microsoft's claim to standards-support is complete when you
> check the MSN.com site for compliance with the XHTML standard. Anyone can
go
> to the W3C's standards validation service at http://validator.w3.org/ and
> type in www.msn.com. The document returned demonstrates clearly that not a
> single document on their site adheres to W3C specifications, and many of
> their documents do not use XHTML at all, e.g. http://careers.msn.com/."
>
>
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