If it's used to render a css for example, and a regular page referencing this css is rendered in the author instance in non-preview mode, the css is rendered surrounded with html, edit bars etc. with text/html as a content-type.
Safari sort of works around this but isn't giving perfect results, and firefox plain ignores that css.
MAGNOLIA-2338/ : merging r18316 from trunk: render plainly while in preview mode