XHTML 2.0 Working Draft

Rytsarsky writes: "W3C has released the first public working draft of XHTML 2.0. 'XHTML 2 is a markup language intended for rich, portable web-based applications. While the ancestry of XHTML 2 comes from HTML 4, XHTML 1.0, and XHTML 1.1, it is not intended to be backward compatible with its earlier versions.' Some notable changes are the introduction of navigational lists (<nl>), sectional hierarchy with <section>, and the long-awaited deprecation of <br> in favor of <line>."

Comments

Re:LINE tag long-awaited?

[merriam]

Read the definition, and you'll find it's not about the name of the tag. It's about the structure. Lines are now marked up like paragraphs -- they are not separated by empty tags.

Hmm...

[Karma Farmer]

So, when is Slashdot going to start offering XHTML 2.0 as a page rendering option? Actually, when is Slashdot going to start offering any sort of valid HTML as a page rendering option?

a resounding "eh?"

[StandardDeviant]

Most sites aren't even HTML 4 compliant, let alone XHTML 1.x compliant. That's ok, becuase most (as in, probably 75 percent or more) of all browsers out there have broken HTML 4 compliance (I include CSS support with that), so even if the sites did use Completely Correct XHTML, the fucking clients wouldn't render it as the new standard dictated. For all practical purposes, the only thing sure to work right now is HTML 3.2. It was only relatively recenly that we could sort of begin to forget about the 216-web-safe colors resulting from widespread 8bpp video adaptors and the layout restrictions of 640x480 mainstream moniter sizings. I wish I was wrong, I really do. New, logical standards are good, and I'm glad somebody's doing the work. But honestly, does anyone really expect for this to be available as a real-world development option any time in the next four-plus years? I'm sorry to be harshly realistic, but somebody please wake me up when the web's layout code is logical, clean, and supported by all the clients we have to worry about...

This is not to say that XML is not useful as a web development tool, quite the contrary. Nothing else comes close to giving you the multiple-generated-format flexibility (parse it to WML, parse it to HTML, parse it to PDF, parse it to VoxML, parse it to ...) needed to support all the crazy things people are using to access http resources these days. (The irony here is that as mainstream browsers have stabilized/stagnated, a combinatorial explosion of types of clients has taken place. The idyllic world of infinite permiability of information promised, in essence, by XML is a long way off... but it's close enough to be tantalizing. I can't wait for the day when I can really do just about anything from a web terminal that is my cellphone that I can do now sitting here in front of my workstation.)

Re:a resounding "eh?"

[Fweeky]

CSS 1 is about 6 years old, it's only seriously been usable for the last couple of years. Just because a standard isn't used much or handled properly doesn't mean it won't be eventually, or that the standard is worthless and hence shouldn't have been created.

XHTML is already quite popular, because it provides a path to XML without breaking legacy clients. The top three clients already support parsing XML and rendering closely to the standards when it's served with the right Content-Type.

XHTML 2 is another step towards this, loosing the legacy crap of HTML 4 and fixing problems without worrying about backwards compatibility. Hell, stick to the basics and you can provide for most of the tags for *current* clients with a bit of CSS.

This is only a working draft, anyway. I wouldn't expect it to reach recommendation stage this year. Don't forget, they need two interoperable implimentations of each feature to even be concidered :)

Main changes

[Fweeky]

For those who don't like reading WD's:

• Navigation Lists (<nl>), with a default rendering not unlike a DHTML menu. This will likely be controlable by CSS using display: and :hover as seen on CSS/Edge
• <q> becomes <quote>, a new <dfn> element, and <b> and <i> have been completely removed. <br> is going in favour of <line> which will help with DOM and CSS. <hr> is still there for some reason. (Text Module).
• New <section> element. <h1> and friends are still in the draft, but are accompanied by a new <h> element to go with each (nestable) <section>.
• <a> is still here; no XLink in this draft, despite it being a recommendation.
• Forms are now replaced by XForms, also a Working Draft.
• No more <img> or <embed>. They're replaced by the technically superior <object>. Let's hope certain companies can actually be bothered to impliment it properly.
• Frames replaced by XFrames (nothing public yet).
• A few more global attributes, and the use of XML Events for scripting events.

Also, for those interested in such things, the CSS 2.1 Working Draft has been released too.