Can someone please explain to me the differences between HTML5 and XHTML5 in simple terms.

Particularly:

- what is 'application/xhtml+xml', what is it used for, and what makes it different?

- what are the the pros and cons of learning/using/etc HTML5 instead of XHTML5 and vice versa.

I am interested in learning HTML and CSS coding, but I cannot get a simple, clear direction of what I need to study exactly.

Thanks!

http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_html.asp

They aren't different, it's just XHTML is more strict so it's more compatible with browsers.

i also couldnt figure out exactly. can any one explain in simple few sentences?

Technically there is no real difference - XHTML5 is HTML5 in xml.
You might want to read this Wiki - http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/HTML_vs._XHTML

In HTML 5, you are assured that you have a cleaner, neater code, and also you can remove most div tags and replace them with semantic HTML 5 elements.

you can remove most div tags and replace them with semantic HTML 5 elements.

Umm.. I don't think so, that's not what HTML5 is meant to do at all. There are some new structural tags that will be used, but that will hardly replace ALL divs.