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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T09:04:07+00:00

XHTML 1.1 is intended to be used with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type. Yet almost

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XHTML 1.1 is intended to be used with the “application/xhtml+xml” MIME type. Yet almost no one does this, because IE doesn’t handle the “application/xhtml+xml” MIME type correctly, and draconian error handling is seen as being unfriendly to users.

If our site is stuck with the “text/html” MIME type, is there any advantage to using the XHTML 1.1 doctype over HTML4 or HTML5?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    See this 8-year-old discussion of this very topic, which leads to this in-depth article. In short: there are disadvantages to doing so. Do not do it.

    The executive summary, from the article:

    If you use XHTML, you should deliver it with the application/xhtml+xml
    MIME type. If you do not do so, you should use HTML4 instead of XHTML.
    The alternative, using XHTML but delivering it as text/html, causes
    numerous problems that are outlined below.

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