More on XHTML 2.0

January 14, 2003 | 0 Comments

Today Zeldman weighed in on the whole XHTML 2.0 issue, and specificly addressed some concerns. As usual his comments are right on:

The sky is not falling. No browser will stop supporting XHTML 1 for years, maybe decades, to come. For that matter, no browser will stop supporting HTML 4 for years, maybe decades, to come. So why use XHTML at all?

XHTML 1 takes what we’ve long used and recreates it in XML so it can work better with other forms of XML-based markup and with XML applications and web services—marrying the old to the new. That’s what’s forward compatible about it. If you work with XML-based applications and web services, or expect to do so in your lifetime, it makes sense to use human-friendly XHTML 1.

My hope is that W3C will change the name of XHTML 2 to indicate that it is a different (and alternative) markup language, not a dead end for the XHTML we currently know and use.

No need to panic. XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 will be around for a long time. Long enough to not worry to much about XHTML 2.0 or whatever the W3C ends up calling it. I can still under stand the concerns, but I think most of the world hasn’t caught up to XHTML at all so there is no need to worry.

Filed under: Web General