FAQs about the future of XHTML. The XHTML 2 Working Group charter will not be renewed after 2009—as far as the W3C are concerned, XHTML5 is the future of XHTML.
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FAQs about the future of XHTML. The XHTML 2 Working Group charter will not be renewed after 2009—as far as the W3C are concerned, XHTML5 is the future of XHTML.
So now it's confirmed, xhtml2.0 is canceled? I was so look forward to its strict syntax.
Torgeir - 3rd July 2009 02:27 - #
Masochists will be happy to hear that they can still have their strict syntax by using XHTML5, which is HTML5 but with an XML serialisation.
i was also looking to the clean and strict xhtml 2; i was really excited for:
non-numbered headings coupled with sections
forcing all html5 crap like audio and video into nested objects
html 5 is not clean at all, it has practically all of the same legacy messy tags and attributes, plus hand full of new ones to keap track of html 5 is not making Web development any easy; just more confusing
disappointed - 5th July 2009 07:03 - #
Many people, including the people involved in the development of (X)HTML5 get the terminology wrong when referring to (X)HTML5, this is something that the HTML WG will be clarifying in the near future. XHTML5 is not "HTML5 but in a XML serialisation", as HTML5 can be in a XML syntax too. XHTML5 is when the webpage/document is served with a XML mime type and processed as XML. The fundamental/primary difference between HTML5 and XHTML5 is not syntax, but processing/parsing. That is, basically, when a (X)HTML5 web page is processed by a HTML parser it's known as HTML5, when a (X)HTML5 web page is processed by a XML parser it's known as XHTML5. The syntax is secondary, it's the mimetype/file extension that distinguish the two variants of the language, not the syntax or a doctype like it was in the past.
Dean - 5th July 2009 23:56 - #
What is it that's so hard about closing tags for everyone so enthusiastic about HTML5? Hardly a day goes by without someone struggling with HTML parsing on the Python lists and groups, which just goes to show that anyone unlucky enough to be writing tools is, after almost twenty years, still a butler tidying up after the "write and forget" brigade.
Paul Boddie - 8th July 2009 01:09 - #
Most people are enthusiastic about HTML5 because it finally advances (and properly specifies) the language that the web is written in - there are lots of new features in HTML5 that people have been wanting for nearly a decade, even if they didn't realise they wanted them.
Just closing tags is a lot harder than it looks. Firstly, the vast majority of web publishing tools take no heed of well formedness - in a world where strict XML syntax is required we'll have to rewrite many (most?) of those tools from scratch. There's also the problem that huge numbers of embedded scripts (ads, widgets etc) are invalid or use document.write - which correctly served XHTML doesn't and can't support since it makes it easy to slip broken tokens in.
"I want a browser that refuses to render content more often" is not a feature any browser user has ever asked for.
But again... people who want to close their tags can do so in HTML5 - it's perfectly valid - and if they want strict error handling they can even serve it as XHTML5 by serving it with an XML mimetype.
I'll believe that when I see it, judging by the mess with application/xhtml+xml and the absurd content switching models that, unless one is spending way too much time studying every last dot in the specifications, end up with the document being served up as legacy HTML and the browser doing something stupid with it.
And I can't say I have particularly enjoyed the circus around the demise of XHTML, as little as I have been exposed to it. One wag felt it necessary to joke that no-one extends XHTML (justifying the "X"), presumably before going back to stuffing their microformat content into inappropriate HTML attributes.
No wonder people do stuff in Flash and other similar abominations...
Paul Boddie - 9th July 2009 01:05 - #