Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Is there any reason why someone would need an XML prolog in an HTML5 document? I’m not talking about XHTML5. I’m just talking about a regular run-of-the-mill HTML page that uses the HTML5 docytpe.
Would there be any reason to have to include an XML prolog at the top of such a document?
The XML prolog (specifically the XML declaration) indicates that a document is XML. If the page is not well-formed XML, then you should definitely not include it.
However, data is good… The browsers I tested this on (Firefox and Chrome in Ubuntu) had no visible problems with an XML declaration at the top of an HTML 5 page, even though the page was not well-formed XML. The reason, of course, is that the HTTP server continued to serve the pages with the
text/htmlcontent type.Even though my small test didn’t reveal errors, I can’t think of any reason why this would be a good practice. If the page is HTML5, then it may not be XML, and should not be indicated as such. Browsers may not have a problem with this, but other tools, which look at the declaration instead of the content type, might make other assumptions.