X-Philes

A while ago, I wrote to the maintainer of the X-Philes list of properly XHTML valid websites. Yesterday, I got a reply - I’ve been accepted as the 81st valid site, which is nice. In order to be accepted onto the list, a site needs to pass the following tests:

  1. The simple test. The homepage must validate
  2. The Laziness Test. Three random secondary pages must validate.
  3. The mime type test. application/xhtml+xml must be sent as the mime type to conforming web browsers.

It’s the third test that the majority of good sites will fail on, and to be honest, until about february of this year, I would have failed on it too. Until then, the fact that XHTML should be sent with a different mime type than HTML hadn’t entered my head. Then, I saw the X-Philes list and the rest is history! The result of what I learned can be found in the article “Serving XHTML with the correct mime type using PHP”.

Thankfully, as I said, workingwith.me.uk passed the three tests with flying colours, and the website has now been included on The List. So, thank you very much to Evan for including me, and I look forward to seeing a lot more sites on the list in the future.

permalink | 17 October 2004

about wwm

workingwith.me.uk is a resource for web developers created by Neil Crosby, a web developer who lives and works in London, England. More about the site.

Neil Crosby now blogs at The Code Train and also runs NeilCrosby.com, The Ten Word Review and Everything is Rubbish.