[whatwg] IE6 vs XHR vs XMLNS

[Julian Reschke]

Seen in <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20080214#l-339>:

> # # [16:49] <hsivonen> on a second though, that won't work for XHR
> # # [16:49] <hsivonen> so, no
> # # [16:50] <hsivonen> since IE XHR is DOM Level 1, stuff like the Flickr API have to be XML 1.0 without XMLNS
> # # [16:50] <hsivonen> yay for XMLNS
> # # [16:51] <annevk> i don't understand
> # # [16:51] <annevk> xhr requires a conforming xmlns parser
> # # [16:52] <hsivonen> IE6 doesn't expose a namespace-aware API for XHR-loaded docs, IIRC
> # # [16:53] <hsivonen> and Safari as shipped with Panther missealized namespaced XML
> # # [16:53] <hsivonen> so RESTful XML APIs that want to be XHR-compatible have to live in the namespaceless XML 1.0 (< 5th ed.) world 

That is incorrect.

IE6 XHR is part of MSXML, which deals just fine with XMLNS, except for 
the absence of some DOM L2 methods.

Keep in mind that XHR has been invented for the purpose of Outlook Web 
Access talking WebDAV to MS Exchange, which certainly would not be 
possible without support for XML namespaces.

BR, Julian