Justin Stambaugh

Take Charge

December 9th, 2009

Today I took the time to look into the development of XHTML2. Yes, that’s XHTML with a 2. But found out in July of this year the working group announced it would be dropping the spec and closing the book on XHTML2.

Is it dead?

No, XHTML is very much alive and well. However, there is hope. If you’re the type of person who likes the strict rules of markup design that runs everything carefully through a validator then you’ll be over the moon to know two things:

Firstly, HTML5 supports all the lowercase, self-closing tags, double quoted attributes – the works. And if you don’t like these things, it supports that too!

Secondly, if you absolutely have to have XHTML in your bag of tricks, XHTML5 will satisfy your thirst. XHTML5 is quite simply HTML5 + XML, ie all the normal rules of XHTML.

HTML5 is available and ready to use today. In fact, the really important HTML5 date is October 2009. That was the last call for the HTML5 working draft. Google is using it already, just check out their homepage.

HTML5 is here to stay. The semantic elements are ready to be used today, and a decent amount of the JavaScript APIs are available in the latest browsers to be played with and integrated into your cutting edge applications. So go play!