Will XHTML/Strict render slower on old PC?

[flashfan]

XP Pro: PII 400, 256M, IE 6;

Doctype: XHTML/Strict vs HTML 4.0/transitional.
Page: using css control the display of DIVs;
Code: <div id=Main>..</div><div id="Nav">..</div>
Display: Nav, Main;

It seems the second one rended faster. The pages almost identical; 1st one has end tag, like <meta ../>; the 2nd might not have (<meta ..>).

Anyone has similar experience? BTW, will doctype affect js execution time?

Thanks.

[tedster]

First let me address your title question, as best as I understand the situation. If xhtml is served with a "correct" mime type of application/xhtml+xml, then what happens is that Firefox, for instance, will no longer do incremental rendering of the page -- as it would if the mime type were text/html. The DTD itself is not an issue with the apparent speed of rendering, but the mime type set by the server is.

Will doctype affect js execution time? Not that I know of -- but an old PC definitely will. An old PC will also be slower to unpack a "lossy" compressed image format such as jpg

[flashfan]

In /usr/local/apache/conf/mime.types

application/xhtml+xml xhtml xht
application/xslt+xml xslt
application/xml xml xsl
application/xml-dtd dtd
application/xml-external-parsed-entity

In httpd.conf

TypesConfig /usr/local/apache/conf/mime.types
..
<IfModule mod_mime_magic.c>
MIMEMagicFile conf/magic
</IfModule>
..
DefaultType text/plain
..
AddType application/x-tar .tgz
AddType image/x-icon .ico
AddType application/octet-stream .asc
AddType text/vnd.wap.wml .wml
AddType text/html .shtml
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml
AddType audio/x-pn-realaudio .ram
AddType audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin .rpm
AddType application/x-java-jnlp-file .jnlp

Is the configuration right?

[flashfan]

Found the issue! We used htc to implement :hover for buttons. The htc is the killer.

[encyclo]

The htc is the killer

I've seen this phenomenon before - much of the .htc scripting available, such as the Dean Edwards IE7 project, works well only on fast machines: it struggles enormously on machines that a few years ago were top of the range models. It is an important consideration when thinking about implementing such scripted solutions on a live site.