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254

answers:

4

Ignoring the IE case, are there any other browsers that can't understand the application/xhtml+xml content type? And what about the search engine spiders?

I could not find any answers on the web that would not be a few years old and thus possibly inaccurate.

Edit: Somehow related question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/278746/what-problem-does-xhtml-strict-solve

+2  A: 

If you ignore 80% of the market (yes, IE) then XHTML is very well supported, and search engines have no problem with it whatsoever (after all, XHTML is a lot simpler to process).

Overall, XHTML support isn't really a problem. IE doesn't support it, but as long as it's served as a contenttype it does understand, will render it okay anyway, and everyone else support it properly.

Do you have more specific use cases in mind?

jalf
Ummmm... Where did you find that IE is 80% of the market? http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp says it's closer to 50%.
S.Lott
I guess it depends on what statistics you look at. A customer's site (approx 700 visits per day) gets 77% IE browsers. This customer makes laboratory instruments. SO visitors would by comparison be far more likely to not use the "industry defaults" of Windows and IE.
_Lasar
"Do you have more specific use cases in mind?"Not really, just accessibility in general - whether always sending the page as xhtml with proper content-type header will block only IE or some other visitors too.Because if it is only IE, then it is worth the prank ;)
Krzysztof Sikorski
+1  A: 

Check ou a related question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/278746/what-problem-does-xhtml-strict-solve

Hope it helps, Bruno Figueiredo

Bruno Shine
A: 

Since new browsers are invented at a steady pace, there's no definite value for "any" in "any other browsers".

You have to (1) pick some browsers you think you'd like to support, (2) check those specific browsers.

Look at a page like BrowserShots to see a list of browsers you might be interested in supporting.

Look at Free HTML Validators for XHTML compatibility.

S.Lott
A: 

Webdevout has a very good browser comparison on various standards, including (X)HTML.

Erik Hesselink