From what I've heard, it's fine to server XHTML, but you really should server it as text/html rather than application/xml+xhtml. The reason is because if it's broken (i.e. non-validating), the browser still understands it as text/html but not as application/xml+xhtml. This is because Firefox and Safari (I don't know about others) uses a full-blown XML parser to read application/xml+xhtml files, but it uses a regular HTML parser to read text/html files, so any non- validating stuff will break completely as application/xml+xhtml but will work as text/html.
So basically, XHTML is perfectly fine to use. Just don't use application/xml+xhtml as your MIME type unless you're 100% sure that your page validates, because if any part of it doesn't, the entire page will be rendered unreadable as the parser says "hey this isn't valid!"
On Oct 9, 2005, at 4:43 AM, Allan Odgaard wrote:
The link is currently down (it seems), but there's also this:
http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml
Which basically says: stick with HTML 4, because what's currently happening is, that a lot of people deliver broken HTML (as text/ html), and it probably wouldn't validate as strict XHTML (if delivered as application/xml+xhtml, which one can't really use because of lacking browser support, but which changes how the document should validate).