This Site Crashes W3C Validator

06 Nov 2005 by Carl Camera

The W3C validator started showing this error message after I started serving my XHTML 1.1 pages via application/xhtml+xml.

W3C screenshot stating "Internal Server Error 500"

I'm not actually crashing the validator, but for some reason it does not like validating my website now. Apparently, the switch to application/xhtml+xml is causing a much-unwanted side-effect. The CSS "jigsaw" validator doesn't seem to have this same problem.

I did switch back to text/html temporarily, and the W3C validator found my site and validated it. Then, as soon as I switch to the correct MIME type, the Error 500 message reappears.

Browsers

I checked other browsers to see if they had problems with my site. They all served it up as they should (NS4 unstyled, but the site was shown.)

Does anyone have any ideas why a simple change such as this...

Content.Type = "application/xhtml+xml";

...would cause an error in the W3C validator? I only send via that MIME type when the Request object's Content.AcceptTypes array includes application/xhtml+xml as an acceptable MIME.

DNS?

And the reference in the error message to DNS -- what's with that? Does application/xhtml+xml expose DNS problems?

Something's definately wrong on my end because scores of other XHTML 1.1 sites are sending the correct MIME without any validator hiccups. I'm just at a loss as to where to begin to look.

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Comments

Funky... I use the web validator where you can also post the XHTML of your page to them and that works fine with their validator. But, as you say, when you give them the URL, it crashes... Weird.

Robert Nyman 07 Nov 2005