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The Future is XHTML 2.0 290

Posted by Zonk from the to-the-future-infinity-boy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As with its past, the future of HTML will be varied, some might say messy, but I believe XHTML 2.0 will ultimately receive widespread acceptance and adoption. A big move in this direction will be in Embedded devices such as phones and digital TVs, which will have no need to support the Web's legacy of messy HTML, and are free to take unburdened advantage of XHTML 2.0. This Developer Works article examines the work of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in creating the next-generation version of their XHTML specification, and also their response to the demand for 'rich client" behavior exemplified by Ajax applications.'
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The Future is XHTML 2.0 More

The Future is XHTML 2.0

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  • Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:23AM (#14579317) Homepage
    Embedded devices such as phones and digital TVs, which will have no need to support the Web's legacy of messy HTML, and are free to take unburdened advantage of XHTML 2.0.

    I would have thought that if the devices didn't need to serve up web content, they would use a proprietary system that is best suited for the job. If they did serve up web content, than of course they should support HTML.
    • I think the idea is that a cellphone currently can't view most pages, only pages specificially designed for their use. So in designing the next generation of cellphone websites you can saftly ignore old standards.

      • Re:Really? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Eightyford ( 893696 )
        You're right in that the best cellphone webpages are specifically designed for the purpose. This site [msn.com] makes it possible to view regular webpages [msn.com] on cellphones, however.

      • Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by grcumb ( 781340 )

        "So in designing the next generation of cellphone websites you can saftly ignore old standards."

        You mis-spelled 'daftly'. 8^)

        Seriously, writing for specific devices is exactly what HTML was supposed not to do. It was designed to be platform and software-independant, able to be displayed equally well in a variety of methods, from CLI to Safari. Netscape and, later, Microsoft did there best to subvert this idea, in an attempt to bind the web to their particular browser implementations. I'll leave it as an

        • Let me put this a better way, you can saftly ignore old MS or NS specific standards. One can be sure that a browser that is XHTML2 complient will render the classic HTML tags properly, its more from a cellphone users perspective that they won't be able to browse many websites that use MS specific code. Such was the dream originally of Mozilla that they could make a browser that didn't bow to old strange standards, unfortunatly they were forced to. Luckily the the mobile phone world the expectation to brows

    • Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tengennewseditor ( 949731 )
      HTML is difficult to parse because it is so syntax lenient. The point is that an XHTML parser can be much slimmer and/or faster than an HTML parser and therefore more suitable for portable devices.

    • Re:Really? No. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AkaXakA ( 695610 )
      Existing web is in html (and bad html at that).
      ANYTHING offering 'web access' is going to support
      the existing web.

      Thus, HTML 5 is the future. Especially since xhtml isn't even supported properly in today's most used browser (ie. IE). And no, sending as html does not count and is even bad [hixie.ch] (yes, I'll change my own website to reflect this in the future).

      • Re:Really? No. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Xamataca ( 921539 )
        Thus, HTML 5 is the future. Especially since xhtml isn't even supported properly in today's most used browser (ie. IE)
        then the war is lost... fall back!!!...
        We can't fight IE's predominance so lets join forces and extend frontpage beyond the imagination!!!! yay!!!
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Sure, it's permitted, but what AkaXakA was saying is that it doesn't count as supporting XHTML properly when a browser can handle XHTML served as text/html, because the browser just treats it like buggy HTML and not XHTML.

  • HTML for TV (Score:4, Interesting)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:23AM (#14579325) Homepage Journal
    digital TVs, which will have no need to support the Web's legacy of messy HTML, and are free to take unburdened advantage of XHTML 2.0

    Digital TVs have no need to support XHTML 2.0 either. Maybe in the future they'll write their menus in XHTML 2, but why bother? No one is browsing their own TV as a server (although that might be a cool hack). TVs need custom interfaces, not web pages.

    • Digital TVs have no need to support XHTML 2.0 either. Maybe in the future they'll write their menus in XHTML 2, but why bother? No one is browsing their own TV as a server (although that might be a cool hack). TVs need custom interfaces, not web pages.

      Why bother? Because using proprietary language and developing proprietary code can cost more than using an off-the-shelf solution. You should also ask the question "Why bother to use anything other than XHTML?" It's more than the coding language you use, to

      • TVs and boxes already have built-in custom software. Why add a generic OS and vulnerable browser? They only communicate with custom cable company servers anyway.

  • Time for an Internet Reboot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DigitalRaptor ( 815681 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:25AM (#14579344)
    I think it's time for the internet to stop catering to the past.

    Can you imagine our interstates if we still catered to stage coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's?

    Can you imagine television if we still catered to black and white TV's?

    Change happens. Get over it. It's not like Firefox cost's $3,995.00 per copy.

    When people can no longer recognize the sites they like, they'll get the hint and upgrade.

    It won't be sites like Amazon.com that bring about this change, it will be sites like HomeStarRunner.com, JibJab, that don't have billions of dollars in sales to lose, but can be just as influential in a grassroots way.

    • Re:Time for an Internet Reboot (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Daniel_Staal ( 609844 ) <DStaal@usa.net> on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:38AM (#14579508)
      Bad examples, for your point. Stage Coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's can operate on current roads. They just have to follow current rules. You'll actually see horse drawn carriages fairly frequently in some areas. They'd get a ticket on the freeways, but so would a car that has their top speed.

      Also: Television signals still are in a format black and white TV's accept. They can't read the whole signal, but they work just as well as they did before.

      This is how the web's evolving. The current standards are built on past ones, and older browsers can usually use most of a newer site. Same as horse drawn carriages and black and white TV's.

      • Stage Coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's can operate on current roads.

        Except for the latter of these, they are not permitted in many places. Actually, we have a problem much like this already; the fact that we have all these huge land yachts on the road stops us from being able to use smaller, more efficient cars (the really tiny cars don't make it here) because a '69 lincoln continental would just vaporize most of 'em, let alone a 3/4 ton diesel dually pickup.

        Television, of course, is h


        • I drive a Toyota Corolla in Colorado. Where would I have to go where I "Wouldn't make it?"

          Cause I've been having a great time so far. The only problem was that filing cabinet I bought wouldn't fit in it.
      • Also: Television signals still are in a format black and white TV's accept. They can't read the whole signal, but they work just as well as they did before.

        Not really. Last night I was watching a show that was only being broadcast in digital HD. Which is pretty much what's being proposed for the web--some content will only be available to those who upgrade to XHTML 2 browsers.

      • Re:Time for an Internet Reboot (Score:4, Informative)

        by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @03:19PM (#14582439)
        Bad examples, for your point. Stage Coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's can operate on current roads.

        That's funny, because I'm pretty sure that changing to XHTML 2.0 would still use the same Internet connection I already have, as well as the same protocol (HTTP 1.1). XHTML 2.0 has a different mime-type, so you can tell whether XHTML or HTML is being used.

        Before you say it, yes, XHTML 1.x does work with text/html, but you'll also notice that XHTML 1.x has not removed support for any tags, unlike XHTML 2.x.

        To be exact, XHTML 2.0 does away with the following tags:

        • br
        • hr
        • h1-h7
        • img (all elements will now support src=)
        • form, input, textarea
        • ins, del
        • script
        • frame functions - Has been relegated to XFrames
        It adds
        • nl - Navigation List
        • l - A container tag that replaces br.
        • section - For dividing a document into sections, works with h.
        • h - context-aware header tag, replaces h1-h7.
        • separator - hr renamed. It still isn't a container tag.
        • script has been replaced by handler, which uses XML Events instead of classic HTML listener events.
        • XForms - Replaces HTML forms
        • src attribute - Any element can now have an image replace it. No more futzing around with img alt=
        • href attribute - Any element can now have a linking attribute. a has been retained in the language, even though its functionality is now gone.
        • role attribute - You can now mark the purpose of particular elements.
    • No, it's time for people to stop trying to stuff everything into a web browser, pass everything over http. If you need a 'rich client', then make one. Borrow a canned html renderer, use premade networking libraries...

      Don't try to be everything for everyone.
      • I don't want to be everything to everyone. But I also don't want to cater to 50 different standards for every one of Microsofts bastardized browser versions.

        It takes all the fun out of being a web developer and serves no one.

        I could care less about fancy new features. I just want standards, and that is finally starting to happen (until IE 7 comes out and probably screws it all up again, who knows?).

        IE 5 and 5.5 are a nightmare. There are still people running on 4.x browsers on Win98 or even Win95. Those
      • Web browsers work. We were developing web applications before javascript and AJAX, they just make them faster and better (and do things they couldn't otherwise do.) And we're not going to stop doing this. Anything substantially server-based is probably best served by having a web interface. As hard as it can be to support multiple browsers (yes, I would prefer standards compliance myself) it's still easier than supporting multiple disparate platforms.
    • I think it's time for the internet to stop catering to the past.

      Why?

      Can you imagine our interstates if we still catered to stage coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's?

      But we do still cater to them. That why we have a non-interstate road system.

      Can you imagine television if we still catered to black and white TV's?

      Last I checked, all major TV broadcasts did still work on b&w.

      Change happens. Get over it. It's not like Firefox cost's [sic]$3,995.00 per copy.

      No, but a new computer that can run it ju
      • You can get a new computer with operating system for $328 [walmart.com] or . [dell.com]

        And Win95/Win98 will run Firefox just fine. So they don't have to upgrade their OS or spend a penny. They just have to give a crap enough to spend 10 minutes to stay semi-current (within the last 5 years would be nice).
        • WHy the hell should they have to spend *any* more money when they already have working equipment? There is no other piece of electronics you need to upgrade, unless it completely breaks. Unless you're into gaming or absolutely need to run something that only compiles on 2K or XP, buying a new computer is a waste of money. Which means its a waste for the vast majority of the nation.
    • "I think it's time for the internet to stop catering to the past."

      I think it's time to make way to the young people! Well, who's first to commit suicide?

  • Messy HTML? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Ancients ( 626689 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:26AM (#14579351) Homepage
    While XHTML 2.0 is more elegant - as always, the subject of this article depends on support. More flexible yes; however this also gives more leverage for non standards following types to screw with it.

    I'm not entirely familiar with XHTML 2.0 (we have code monkeys who concern themselves with this these days) but is this a case of the standards following the people who will or will not use this as is intended with a begging bowl in hand, or does it really address the many concerns surround HTML/XHTML/CSS?

    • Re:Messy HTML? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by EchoNiner ( 930773 )
      I totally agree. I recently worked at a web programming gig to put me through college/grad school and saw this exemplified quite well. HTML coders are not exactly the kind of people that follow the newest trend in programming abilities. I worked for a firm that designed huge sites for major clients, but most of us still used DHTML and *sometimes* CSS. This is after XHTML has been around for quite a while.

      I'm sure there was a huge article on slashdot about how XHTML (1.0) was going to be great and revolu

    • Re:Messy HTML? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Trejkaz ( 615352 )

      As far as the XHTML side, the main fix I see is that it will make it practically impossible for someone to write tag soup and call it XHTML2. First, serving as application/xhtml+xml is mandatory, and as Google published in their statistics, most so-called XHTML1 authors couldn't even manage that much. And second, the namespace is different from XHTML1, and a whole lot of elements have been completely changed, a whole lot were removed and a whole lot were added. This should mean that browsers, from the st

  • Actually, the Future is just 'X' (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:27AM (#14579369)
    Why is it that every new product has an 'X' attached to it?

    XBox, XForms, XHTML, OSX, Windows XP, x86, xChat, X Multimedia System, Adium X, X drive, and it goes on and on.

    So just slap an 'X' on it and instantly beam into the future!

  • The future isn't XHTML 2.0. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's HTML 5. [whatwg.org]
    XHTML looks nice in theory, but HTML 5 is being designed for real world use. It can be sent with an xhtml mime-type too.
    • I really hope the future isn't 'html 5', given the presentation at XTech last year. It overloads the class attribute something awful, and adds foolish numbers of new elements. After watching hixie show a couple of pages full of new elements the browser wars of yesteryear came forcefully to mind.

      The xhtml 2 presentation, by contrast, was clear, well justified, and parsimonious.

  • I like the title example... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shotgunefx ( 239460 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:30AM (#14579408) Journal
    <h property="title">Welcome to my home page</h>

    This denotes the heading as the XHTML 2.0 title of the document, and specifies it as the inline heading. Finally, an end to writing the title out twice in every document!


    It seems to me that introduces it's own quirks...
    <h property="title">Welcome to my home page</h>
    <div property="title">Second title, what now?</div>

  • Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Da Fokka ( 94074 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:31AM (#14579420) Homepage

    I believe XHTML 2.0 will ultimately receive widespread acceptance and adoption.

    Yeah right, just like CSS2. and XHTML1.0... 'Adoption' is not just not exploding when encountering XHTML2.0 - it means full support for the entire standard. And unfortunately we're not there yet for standards which have been around for years. I don't see why things will go differently for XHTML2.0

    • Re:Yeah right (Score:3, Informative)

      by kawika ( 87069 )
      When you first glance at this data I would agree with you:

      Google stats on 1 billion web pages. [google.com]
      IE users: You need SVG support to see the graphs. (Hint: Firefox supports SVG.)

      I wish they had looked at DOCTYPES, that would have told us a lot. But even so, you don't know whether there are a few large sites that put out really bad (X)HTML, or a lot of little sites. That makes a difference. The little sites, especially the rarely-changed little sites, are not the ones that drive the desire for improved standards.

  • maybe it's just me.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by to_kallon ( 778547 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:33AM (#14579445)
    but i have a hard time taking a guy named Edd Dumbill seriously.

  • Yeah, whatever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:36AM (#14579481)
    Every so many years they come out with this new exciting standard that turns out to go nowhere. That is because technology isn't standards driven, it is standards that are freedom/technology driven. For example, Linux (in spite of all the distros) has done more to standardize the OS that all the POSIX standards committies and Motif (renember that one) and CDE (renember that one too) standards combined. Typically a good stnadard is one where people created it first to meet a need, everyone started using it, then the standards committie eventually get arround to formalizing it. If it doesn't happen in that order, it is most likely crap.
  • Why do I care what any anonymous person thinks about anything? Why does anyone think that cellphones are going to define *anything* about the generic content on the web? Who cares if my HTML is messy. Don't look at it.

    I guess I will prognosticate some... XHTML 2.0 adoption will have nothing to do with cellphones.

    • Re:Why is this a story?? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Who cares if your HTML is messy?

      People with disabilities who use screen readers, people with slow connections who would rather not download content with all the "fat" that HTML provides, and possibly even the standards-compliant browsers of the future - that's who.

      Why bother writing a webpage if you're going to ignore your audience by taking the "who cares? don't look at it!" approach. If you and only you will be reading your page, then the idea of a progressive approach to compliance does not apply to yo
    • Prognosticate - Transitive, Verb:

      1. To predict according to present indications or signs; foretell. See Synonyms at predict.
      2. To foreshadow; portend: urban renewal that prognosticates a social and cultural renaissance.
    • Simply put, software will be looking at your html in order to parse it and render a page.

      A parser written to very strictly interpret xml or xhtml can be smaller and faster. These two attributes allow it to function in a limited environment like a cellphone, pda, tv set-top box, or embedded devices.
      A lenient parser, like used in current browsers, tends to be slower and have higher memory requirements.

      Lower costs and shorter development time: If you only have to worry about very strict standards compliant pag

  • Wait.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AnswerIs42 ( 622520 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:39AM (#14579517) Homepage
    I thought Web 2.0 was the future?

    Ow wait.. that's right.. that was LAST week's "future". So, shall we take bets on next week's "future"?
    • Ow wait.. that's right.. that was LAST week's "future". So, shall we take bets on next week's "future"?

      XWeb2.0 is the new future, and that XHTML is so history.
      • But if the Future was now a few years ago, then the Future was Web 2.0 which is now old, does this mean the new Future of XHTML is old? Does that mean the Future itself is old? That would mean... wait... I'm confused... This is just like Spaceballs!

        • Re:Wait.... (Score:3, Funny)

          by fbjon ( 692006 )
          Does that mean the Future itself is old?
          No, but in Soviet Russia, you are old in the Future!

          Ha, I'll bet no-one expected that one!

    • that was LAST week's "future". So, shall we take bets on next week's "future"?

      I think what you're referring to is The Long Now. Here's an essay on it and the grim meathook future [zenarchery.com].

    • Ow wait.. that's right.. that was LAST week's "future". So, shall we take bets on next week's "future"?

      I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gopher 3.1 is the future.

  • It looks like XHTML 2.0 is a lot like the previous versions (XHTML 1.0, 1.1) with some new features. I doubt the predicted "wide success" of XHTML 2.0 if no one really seemed to care about the older versions. I sure would have liked it if every web site author was enthuastic enough to have well formatted pages.
  • I thought HTML 5 [whatwg.org], a.k.a "Web Applications 1.0" was the future?

    (from the my-future-is-better-than-your-future dept.)

  • Who Accepts It? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Elixon ( 832904 )
    XHTML2.0 is nice. I would accept it immediately! But sadly this is not me and this is not you who decides what gets accepted... I'm a web developer and I'm supposed to do the best for my clients. My clients expect me to do the work in the way that the biggest audience available will be able to use it...

    I will not "accept" the XHTML2.0 as long as I'm not sure that my clients can loose any of potential visitors/customers.

    The right question should go to the major browser providers:
    "Hey, browser creators, when
  • Embedded devices such as phones and digital TVs, which will have no need to support the Web's legacy of messy HTML

    Phones and TVs only have no need to support the existing Internet if their users don't want to see anything but vendor-controlled proprietary content.

  • Umm... This is a all cool, but (Score:3, Insightful)

    by berndtj ( 848650 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:58AM (#14579742)

    Last I checked w3c complient browsers had less than 20% of the market share. Until IE is either updated or dead, the web is pretty frozen. Don't expect anything to change with IE 7 either.

    Microsoft knows that the web is the only real forseeable threat to their operating system. What do you need windows for if you can run your rich business applications on a platform independent web browser?

    I believe this a real conflict of interest that should have been addressed in all of the anti-trust hearings. Oh wait, nothing changed even after they were found to be a monopoly...

    Change isn't going to happen easily

  • What is it with those thick/thin client gyrations? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IgnoramusMaximus ( 692000 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:58AM (#14579747)
    the demand for 'rich client" behavior exemplified by Ajax applications.

    Here we go again. "Thin client is the future!" -- "No the users demand bloated clients with millions of animated doodads!" .. "No wait, the thick client is a mess full of security holes!" -- "No, the server-side processing and thin clients are future, again" -- "No, wait, the rich contents thick like a brick clients are the future!" --

    [interlude] Bah, "the client-server paradigm" is the future! [/interlude]

    .. "Idiots, can't you see that thin is the future again!" ... "Morons, thick is the shtick!" ... "Thin!" ... "Thick!" ... etc and so on ...

    Seriously though, thin, simple and reliable client coupled with powerful server-side processing is the staple of reliablity and usually the highest performance and security. The "rich client" is a fancy word for going back to "everybody needs a huge multimedia client (i.e a 23GHz CPU 3-core phone) to access this page with 4 lines of text on it!" and fat servers because the clients although bloated and huge are too dumb to do anything besides being pretty and acting like the swiss cheese of security. I think we've been there before, and it was called ActiveX, no?

    • Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it as the saying
      goes. The problem with the computer industry is that the people in
      the driving seats are so busy looking forward that they don't bother
      to look in the mirrors to see the wrecks on the side of the road.
      Throw in a bit of marketing logic (ie any change is good no matter
      whether is a throwback to a bad idea) and you've got the current
      computer industry.
    • No, the new interactive pages allow a person with a fairly limited machine can now communicate more directly with the server therfore redcing the need for a large pipe, which is currently the major limitation on applications.
    • It's probably because there are tradeoffs with any approach:

      1) thin client - low demands on end user hardware, but heavily dependant on working central server. One point of failure for many users (server) and one place to concentrate attacks - server must be very robust because it is a single, fixed, information rich target.

      2) thick client - high demands on end user hardware, and a maintainance nightmare for tech support. The security situation will vary widely between individual setups. However, a failur
    • "the client-server paradigm" is the future!

      I knew that if I held onto that VT100, it would come back in style.
      Long live the mainframe :)

  • Read [diveintomark.org] those [diveintomark.org] first. It seemed at the time of the publication that the XHTML 2.0 team were making all the mistakes of the designers of HTML 3.0 - creating teh perfekt markup language, instead of contributing called-for improvements, even if the two overlap a lot to our benefit. And I don't think that's changed. (I don't mean to disparage the many good changes in XHTML 2.0, but I ultimately think that their goal (stripping down and semantically cleansing XHTML 1.1?) is a different one than mine, and that that

  • XHTML? Not for IE (Score:4, Informative)

    by MagicM ( 85041 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:05PM (#14579832)
    As noted on the IE blog [msdn.com], IE 7 won't support the "application/xml+xhtml" MIME type. That means that all of your XHTML 2.0 documents will still need to be sent as "text/html", and will thus be parsed as HTML. Yay, progress!

    Sounds like, when they say "future", they mean "fuuuuuuuuuuture".
  • ...is it Web 2.0 compliant?

  • The two futures of HTML (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:11PM (#14579915)
    Just wanted to point this out:

    XHTML2 [w3.org] -- with navigation lists, links on any element, sections and headings -- is optimized for web documents.

    HTML5 [whatwg.org], officially Web Applications 1.0 -- with canvas, a drag and drop API, and XMLHTTPRequest standardization -- is optimized for web applications.

    CSS3 [w3.org] is going to be extremely [w3.org] cool [w3.org].

  • XHTML 2.0 is the future, and will always be (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stan Vassilev ( 939229 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:31PM (#14580161)
    XHTML 2 is doomed to remain forever "in the bright future" of geeks, where noone cares for compatibility and real technology benefits, but is entirely consumed by semantics and how pretty his code is.

    Look at the benefits if XHTML2 and compare it to HTML5, and you'll quickly see why WHATWG was formed.

    As HTML5 offers answers to actual problems in web development, and offers backwards compatibility, XHTML2 pointlessly restructures the language, making it harder to read in the process (quick: count the nested sections spread accross pages of text to guess the heading level you're at).

    Also while the author dreams about our XHTML2 future, the next major release of the dominant browser on the market (IE7) doesn't even support XHTML 1.0 yet. And this is the browser that most people will use in the next 5-6 years at least.

    The author also calls XHTML's semantics better. This is subjective. HTML5 also offers more semantical tags, but according to my practise, it'll be easier to build sites styled with CSS in HTML5 than XHTML2. XHTML2 doesn't have better semantics, it just has different semantics. HTML5 is the one with better semantics IMHO, that build on top of HTML4.

    No major browser supports XHTML2, but they support parts of HTML5 (like the canvas tag, invented by Apple's Safari browser, and included in the spec by WHATWG).

    I won't even comment the section about XHTML2 "toys" because the subject is serious.

    In conclusion I'll say that it's not likely XHTML2 will become a supported standard while most of us are alive, so better concentrate on good HTML4/XHTML1/CSS/JS/SVG/Flash code and applications, and follow the developments at WHATWG.
  • My prediction is that XHTML 2.0 will more likely establish itself first in scenarios other than the classic web (and Web 2.0, for that matter). Now, whenever an XML application designer has a need to spec "rich text"-like embedded payloads, they consider XHTML as the most natural candidate. Look at this XMPP extension proposal [jabber.org] for an example. The modular nature of XHTML 2.0 adds versatility: you can lock down your next-gen instant p2p hyperblog protocol to use a safer and saner subset of XHTML and have sche

  • I skimmed TFA, and I can't see anything to suggest that CSS has been improved to a point where it is going to enable the sort of layout that most people still implement using TABLEs. As long as managing to produce a webpage with three columns entirely in XHTML and CSS is something to get really excited about, I can't see that strict XHTML compliance has a hope of becoming the de facto standard.

    And before everyone bangs on about how CSS is really neat if you understand it, see Eric Meyer - who bought us the

  • XHTML is a good illustration why it is a good rule to never finalize a standard without a usable reference implementation. Right now it's just a boring document. I suspect the people who are supposed to implement it have barely read it. And frankly, I don't think they will.

    XHTML 2.0 is part of a fictional roadmap that was tossed around late last century and then was discarded. Microsoft decided to sort of stop developing their rendering engine and Netscape was sold to AOL and eventually was liquidated. Micr
  • A lot of people won't adopt a new standard until it offers a clear benefit over what they're already using. So far, most of what you get from XHTML is a bulkier page with more restrictions that no longer displays in 1% of browsers. XHTML 2 will work in even fewer browsers. XHTML 1.0 has been around for 6 years, and hardly anyone uses it. IE tries to parse it as HTML. Browsers parsing XHTML often don't fail gracefully. Sometimes the slightest typo results in a blank page. Google doesn't even use DOCTYPE tags
  • ...standards do not define the product in the software industry. In contrast, it is the products usage of a standard that defines its validity. The W3C does a fantastic job of establishing their recommendations, although it is up to corporations to adopt them. Even if users demand compatibility, it does not mean that the product will comply. This is bitingly obvious in the web browser segment. Today, we currently having varying level of compatibility with a number of different recommendations - and not
  • Has the W3C finally gotten over its hatred of providing any easy tools for centering both text and block elements?

    The best way I found so far which I find devious is using
    left-margin:auto;right-margin:auto;

  • XHTML 1.0 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Baavgai ( 598847 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @01:39PM (#14581088) Homepage
    Personally, I'm still waiting for XHTML 1.0.

    Seriously, how many pages currently on the web would survive a simple XML validation? Most commercial tools I've seen, even those current, make no real attempt to break away from HTML 4 + cute junk standard. And XHTML 1.0 was introduced in January 2000...

    Until the browsers that constitute the bulk of the market share support this kind of thing in a meaningful way, it's doomed. Period.

    One way to move this stuff along would be a develop a fully compliant plugin for current browsers that could support standards in spite of the platform. Once it's clear you need 3rd party tools to support what's supposedly a web standard, maybe the bigger browsers will be guilted into supporting it natively.

    I'd love to see something like XHTML 2.0 adopted with gusto, but if history is any indication then something major will have to change.

  • the future? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drew ( 2081 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @03:20PM (#14582457) Homepage
    XHTML 2.0 may be the future, but it's certainly the very distant future. Especially when you consider that not only the current version, but also the upcoming version, of the worlds most popular web browser doesn't support XHMTL 1.1, and ony supports XHTML 1.0 when it is written in an HTML 4 compatible manner.

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