[whatwg] IE6 vs XHR vs XMLNS

[Julian Reschke]

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Feb 14, 2008, at 19:45, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Perhaps. I can't verify now. However, I have developed a cross-browser 
> XHR-intensive app when IE6 was the current IE and what came with Panther 
> was the current Safari. The problems with namespaces were very real.

In which case blame Safari, not IE.

> The practical effect of the lack of Level 2 methods in IE6 and the 

The only problem in IE6 I'm aware of is the lack of createElementNS and 
createAttributeNS, for which there's a simple workaround. (No, I'm not 
defending MS, just clarifying; the lack of these methods has caused 
thousands of postings in mailing lists and news groups, and is a nice 
indicator about how MS thinks (or use to think) of their developers).

> brokenness* of the XHR XML serializer in older WebKit is that using 
> namespaces with cross-browser XHR is at least hard and using Level 1 DOM 
> APIs with namespaceless XML 1.0 (< 5th ed.) is the practical 
> single-codepath cross-browser solution.
> 
> * http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5262

XMLSerializer is neither part of DOM level 2 nor XHR, right?

BR, Julian