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Browser Support for XHTML?

Posted by Cliff on from the will-your-content-display-like-you-want-it-to dept.

eLoco asks: "What support do today's browsers have for XHTML? Maybe a better question would be: what support do the major browsers in current use have for formatting/display of XML with DTD defined? I don't have any browser prejudice per se (I use MSIE, Mozilla, Safari/KHTML, and Opera depending on the system I am working on and my mood), but I am primarily interested in the browsers with greater 'market share,' since my main reason for asking is this: If at least the "main" browsers in current use have decent support (vague, I know) for XHTML/XML rendering, why haven't we all converted over yet?" While it doesn't cover all browsers out there, this chart serves as a good starting point. For those of you working with application/xhtml+xml files, what issues have you run into when serving up your files to various browsers?

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. XHTML test suite by icemax · · Score: 5, Informative

    is right here! Seeing how you have all these browsers, run them against this suite, and see how they faire. Nothing like the fresh scent of google.

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    __________
    Love conquers all... except CANCER
  2. Need a jump start?? by Monty67 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/.
    Author of Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide. Or http://bluerobot.com/web/layouts/

    Both sites offer ready to go, CSS ideas that make moving to XHTML an absolute breeze. And the older browsers (including Netscape) have been covered.

    Excellent resource.

  3. Re:Backward Compatability by Markusis · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am the president of a Linux Users Group and I maintain the website we have. LUGSB The site is fully XHTML1.1 and CSS2 compliant. (There are links at the bottom of the page that will validate it) For the most part support is very good. All of the layout is done with CSS. (there isn't one table on the site) A lot of it even works with NN4. But, the beauty with CSS layout and semantically correct XHTML is that it degrades really nicely. So, if someone hits my site with lynx it still renders in a very readable way with important links at the top and the data presented nicely. Try reading slashdot with lynx and having to wade through all the links that normally show up on the left side bar before you get to the articles. How annoying is that?
    We also serve the pages as application/xhtml+xml to mozilla and other gecko based browsers. If you send that to IE it won't work. I think it just prints out the XHTML instead of rendering it. But, if you send the same data as text/html it works fine. If only IE would support transparent PNG images.
    I think the best bet is drop support for Netscape 4.x. When I say drop support, I mean, make sure that the content of the site is still accessible even if NN4 users lose a little bit of the layout, it pays off with the benefits of CSS and XHTML.

    Just my 2 cents.