XHTML media type test - results: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0SP2

Last Updated: $Date: 2005/04/27 06:33:57 $

media type	text/html	application/xhtml+xml	text/xml	application/xml
xml-stylesheet PI and link	recognized as HTML	not supported	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively
link only	recognized as HTML	not supported	recognized as XML, linked style sheet was not recognized and document tree was rendered	recognized as XML, linked style sheet was not recognized and document tree was rendered
xml-stylesheet PI only	recognized as HTML, xml-stylesheet PI was not recognized	not supported	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively
without xmlns	recognized as HTML	not supported	recognized as XML, parsing failed due to the omitted xmlns declaration	recognized as XML, parsing failed due to the omitted xmlns declaration
without DOCTYPE	recognized as HTML	not supported	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively
without DOCTYPE and xmlns	recognized as HTML	not supported	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively and inline style (incorrectly) worked	recognized as XML, XHTML-specific semantics were not recognized but the type selector in style sheets matched case-insensitively and inline style (incorrectly) worked
Broken XHTML	recognized as HTML, well-formedness error was not detected	not supported	detected error, showed blank page	detected error, showed blank page
HTML 4	recognized as HTML	not supported	failed correctly while parsing the DTD	failed correctly while parsing the DTD

Notes

IE 6.0SP2 seems to disregard the media type, and IE tries to recognize a resource based on its suffix. So while IE doesn't recognize an XHTML document served as 'application/xhtml+xml' with the suffix '.xhtml', if it is served with the suffix '.html', IE suspects it as an HTML document (not XHTML) and renders it as HTML.