Hello All -

Did you know that while the W3C.org works on the latest update to HTML... XHTML 2 (XHTML 1 is replacing HTML 4.01 now), the HTML5 WG is working on the latest update to HTML... HTML 5 (due in 2017). Huh? Yup. Two groups. Different players. Different goals. Both working on the next update to the language -- our language... the one we use every day.

• W3C.org XHTML 2 page
• HTML5 Wg HTML5 page

I not only write about this industry, but also teach college level courses, and I am as baffled/concerned as anyone about what exactly to teach students. One small example... in HTML 5 you don't have to close your tags. In XHTML 2 (and 1)... you do. Also... there's the tiny issue of whether to involve XML (that makes a lot of Web 2.0 possible) in HTML. Guess which group likes it, and which doesn't?

See a good comparison article here: HTML 5 versus XHTML 2

So, I thought I'd check in with you all and see what you think (take the poll). Are you aware of the two groups? Which flavor do you prefer?

Me? I want one flavor to teach, and the same exact flavor to to use. Just one upgrade choice. Just one that works in all browsers. Less headaches. Cool. That's right, I'd call it "Cool 1.0" if they got their heads together and combined their energy on producing one standard upgrade. Anything else is uncool for students, and the rest of us working webmasters.

Yours - Scott

As the article clearly states, there are pros and cons on each side. So let's take the best and forget the rest.

For me, it's XHTML 2.0. HTML is generally fading and a new version probably isn't going to draw back the crowds. XHTML, as mentioned, greatly benefits web 2.0 and web 2.0 (and eventually 3) is the future.

We're learning about HTML right now at college (although I seem to know more than the tutor). He's by nature a programmer and he said HTML isn't his thing - he told us we wouldn't be learning HTML 4! (which for the uninformed is 8 years old already). HTML 4 strict and HTML 5 (strict probably) will both be perfectly acceptable, but they seem to have limitations and I simply can't see them being so important now XHTML is with us. I voted XHTML 2 if my post wasn't clear

I knew both were going on but I hadn't realised HTML5 wasn't scheduled for release until 2017!! Flaming heck. And you thought Microsoft were slow.

As to what you teach, go with clean semantic whatever. By 2017 they'll have altered the spec anyway.

I'd say to make them work together. If we make them work together, we may not need XML anymore.

IMO the stuff I've seen on HTML 5 is a freaking nightmare. They have some good ideas, but allowing tags to remain unclosed .. that's not forward.. that's backwards. Some of what they're doing with XHTML 2.0 seems equally inane.

Since neither is going ANYWHERE for a LONG time to come, I'm just going to stick with my XHTML 1.0 Strict pages and watch the circus from the sidelines until something even remotely usable comes out of the tents.

When do the browsers start to understand code like

# <nl>
# <label>You are here:</label>
# <li href="/">Home</li>
# <li href="/products/">Products</li>
# <li href="/products/widget/">Widgit</li>
# <li>Features</li>
# </nl>

Originally Posted by coolkbk585

I'd say to make them work together. If we make them work together, we may not need XML anymore.

And why would you get ride of XML ?!
Seriously, I work with XML+XSL for a bit more than 1 year now, and I have to say that it's the more logical and cleaner way I've seen until today to have a really clean, semantically separated way of reuniting datas and presentation.

For me, it's Xhtml2 too.
Html5 looks like a big step backward, as said our ladyNred.
We need (I need, and I want it too) more separation between the different layers of our pages.
Right now, I using 3~3.5 layers:
* XML for datas
* XSL for Xhtml formatting
* CSS for styling (It's the 0.5 layer for me, as it blur with XSL)
* Javascript for enrichment

XML might be harder to get a grip on, but once you are used to it, it seems SO much logical and easier....

Originally Posted by tripy

And why would you get ride of XML ?!
Seriously, I work with XML+XSL for a bit more than 1 year now, and I have to say that it's the more logical and cleaner way I've seen until today to have a really clean, semantically separated way of reuniting datas and presentation.

For me, it's Xhtml2 too.
Html5 looks like a big step backward, as said our ladyNred.
We need (I need, and I want it too) more separation between the different layers of our pages.
Right now, I using 3~3.5 layers:
* XML for datas
* XSL for Xhtml formatting
* CSS for styling (It's the 0.5 layer for me, as it blur with XSL)
* Javascript for enrichment

XML might be harder to get a grip on, but once you are used to it, it seems SO much logical and easier....

Yeah, I've tried it. I guess it's not that bad. I suppose that I should give it another change. I haven't worked with it very much though, and I haven't tried to see how far I can take it.

Hmm..I didn't know about some of those other things about the new versions of HTML and XHTML. I guess I should just stick with what I know. Probably not worth it to try to learn how to make it work, and then realize that they changed it back again.

HTML5 makes me mad! It basically flies in the face of all the progress that has been made with XHTML and XML in the last 5 or so years. It remove any need for structure and is once again placing the majority of the responsibility for parsing the document on the browser and not on the author (XHTML gives you a lovely error message if you mess up - as it should in my opinion).

There are some tags which I like in HTML5 so lets steal them, make a module and incorporate it into XHTML 2! WHY should we need to take 10 steps back?? For the lazy web developers? For the lazy WYSIWYG editors?? Why should structured, unambiguous web pages be sacrificed for lazy web developers?

As was said by Tripy, XML for Data, XSLT for transformation into XHTML, SVG etc. (If you have ever used XSLT it is awesome!!!), CSS for Styling, JavaScript for enhanced features. What could be more simple and intuitive??

Jamie

Hi All -

Great comments and discussion! I agree with the general drift of this thread thus far which leans way toward XHTML as the way to go. And, I agree that when you read up on the subject, and particularly understand the comparison, it looks like a no brainer. But, guess what? There are some big players slugging their way around over at the HTML 5 WG. Apple is there. Microsoft is there. Hmmmm. Why are they abandoning the W3C.org XHTML group?

And you know what? Each of us can make a difference. It's supposed to be democratic here on the web. Ok... the big money players get more votes... but we can still "vote". How? Some ideas to start us brainstorming:

• Go to each of the main sites for each working group and make your opinion heard
• Post in the comments for articles like this one, which was written to advocate and lobby for HTML5 (at aListapart -- a great blog)
• Bookmark, or subscribe to a blog feed via RSS for "HTML 5 versus XHTML 2" using Google Blog Search, and make your case in the comments at those blogs.

There ya go. A little WebMaster/BlogMaster activism for you. I look forward to more comments and brainstorms.

Yours -
Scott

Originally Posted by JamieLewis

As was said by Tripy, XML for Data, XSLT for transformation into XHTML, SVG etc. (If you have ever used XSLT it is awesome!!!), CSS for Styling, JavaScript for enhanced features. What could be more simple and intuitive??

I hate XSLT with a passion. But XML, and that means real XML not just a file with < and > in it, should never go away until they invent something so great we can't even imagine it yet.

I'm mostly amazed that they're even working on an HTML 5 in the first place. I thought the whole idea was for XHTML to replace HTML.

Scott if you need to decide what to teach I'd say go for XHTML. At least you'll go home at night knowing you're preparing people to code sites the right way.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I hate XSLT with a passion. But XML, and that means real XML not just a file with < and > in it, should never go away until they invent something so great we can't even imagine it yet.

Why hate XSLT?? Sure it takes some getting used to but it is an awesome tool (once used it to transform a table into a bar chart), once you do get a grip on it (and once browsers start supporting the side languages like svg fully) I can see it being a great tool.

And yes, properly structured XML, with a full DTD (Schema is hardly supported at all at the moment - which is another topic all together).

Jamie

Hi Jamie -

You mentioned one particular use of XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations -- an XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. A new document is created based on the content of an existing one), that sounded interesting.

You also mentioned the problem of full support (by browser makers). It sounds like this technology does something the others cannot. Interesting. I wonder if it will get implemented? Do you have any other examples of its use?

Yours, Scott

OSWebMaster: Heya, XSLT is very well supported by Firefox (I am unsure about IE combatibility), the main issue is the browsers having limited support for other XML languages like SVG. One of my side projects last year was creating a language to store articles that was less ambiguous that XHTML, I came up with a prototype named Smash (Smash Markup to Articulate Semantic Hypertext - I love complex acronyms), most of the time the XSLT sheet was basically transforming my tags into XHTML so they could be displayed by a web browser (although the underlying data remained the same and so could be manipulated by plugins or other browsers at a later date - the beauty of XML), however I did use XSLT to transform the data table elements in my language into bar graphs using SVG and some basic maths.

You can see a simple example of the language here: http://idevs.co.uk/SMASH/SMASH%201.0%20Draft.xml

You can also go here: http://idevs.co.uk/SMASH/ to see the underlying DTD and XSLT document used in the language. I am hoping to continue this project (as well as build applications to use the language) in the future.

Hoped that helped.

Jamie

Heya, XSLT is very well supported by Firefox (I am unsure about IE combatibility)

Don't be.
I, since 5.5, IE have the ms libXml activeX element at disposal. It's one of the most efficient implementation, as I've read.

As the tests peoples of this forum helped me to conduct, it seems than any actual versions of ie, firefox and opera can transform it without a hitch.
Safari2 could not, except when the developer toolkit was installed, but safari3 seems to have access to libXslt natively.

Hello All --

UPDATE: It looks like the W3C.org is now claiming and taking ahold of HTML 5... uh, that would be (X)HTML 5... a sort of combination of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1, I think (scratching head at how the W3C.org actually puts things together).

It does look like good news though:

• It will include XML - see Working Draft
• There is already a Validator (Alpha)
• Apple and Google are on board (see Editors of Working Draft)

BOTTOM LINE: It's probably a game of semantics and power play, but for us it looks like we will just have to worry about one major upgrade instead of two.

Yours, Scott

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/html-f...-head-tag.html

On XHTML 2 in the Working Draft:

However, it lacks elements to express the semantics of many of the non-document types of content often seen on the Web. For instance, forum sites, auction sites, search engines, online shops, and the like, do not fit the document metaphor well, and are not covered by XHTML2.

To me, this is complete and utter bull crap. Anyone with half a brain could easily format any of the above examples into xhtml pages. Auction sites are simply pages listing various items and prices, with descriptions and payment forms. Same with shops. Search engines are lists of related sites, and forums can be easily integrated into the table element (apart from the discussion aspects which do perhaps need an extended XML definition).

The truth is there is nothing that XHTML shouldn't be able to handle, and that the HTML 5 work group is made up of vendors unwilling to push the web forward because 85% of sites (including their own) are badly made and any new browsers using XHTML parsing instead of HTML parsing will render most of the web useless. Its down to business and market share at the end of the day.

It is a shame really and the only way to fix it is to encourage the majority of content providers to start formalising their content under agreed upon standards (which means most of these standards need rethinking as well to fit the XML vision of the future), realistically we need a standard for documents (XHTML), then the rest is up for industries (standards for encoding products in XML, standards for encoding tv/film listings, contacts, appointments, search listings etc. the applications are endless). While RDF tries to do this under one format, I can't see it as being a way forward for many industries.

Once data is all readily available in one easy to process format then, and only then, will we be able to make the most out of the web.

Jamie