XHTML, RIP

Published on July 4, 2009 (↻ February 5, 2024), filed under Web Development (RSS feed for all categories).

This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.

Let’s end this week of morbid posts: The XHTML 2 Working Group is expected to stop their work end of 2009.

Today [July 2, 2009] the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position about the future of HTML.

Now while this post’s title exaggerates a little—you know me—, the W3C sends some interesting signals for XHTML:

• Thanks to the most popular browser with its market share exceeding 90% in some regions, XHTML 1.0/1.1 cannot be used at all. No change in sight.

• XHTML 2.0 is exciting from an “ideal markup language” point of view—and from that perspective, I had wished it to succeed—but that turned out not to be enough, and so it perishes.

• HTML 5, however, will feature an XHTML serialization.

The point is, the future of the Web is HTML 5, not XHTML. (And you can already use it.)

For XHTML, until user agents broadly support application/xhtml+xml and application/xml, even XHTML 5 will have a hard time. Authors will have to keep waiting to use any true features of XHTML, whether extensibility or (maybe then user-friendlier) error handling.

For non-DH6 commenters, meiert.com is my only project that uses “XHTML,” solely because of WordPress refactoring pain. That means that at least for the English part of this site, the cost of solution is still higher than the cost of problem.

About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

With my current move to Spain, I’m open to a new remote frontend leadership position. Feel free to review and refer my CV or LinkedIn profile.

I love trying things, not only in web development, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

Comments (Closed)

1. On July 5, 2009, 7:59 CEST, Gunnar Bittersmann said:

   XHTML 1.0/1.1 can still not be used at all.

   ?? Both XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 may be served as ‘text/html’. XHTML 1.0 can be written 100% HTML 4 compatible, so there is no problem at all to use XHTML 1.0. In certain cases, this is problematic with XHTML 1.1, though.

2. On July 13, 2009, 15:12 CEST, Lenen Meer said:

   As you mentioned in your article, it’s just too bad XHTML 2.0 isn’t going to make it. So chapter closed and looking forward to 2010.

3. On September 8, 2009, 20:21 CEST, Sebastião Ricardo said:

   Hi, i’m a brazilian developer. In first, sorry if my english wasn’t wrote well.

   Well, I am developing an article about “XForms” and I’m worried by the fact of knowing that the project of XHTML 2 will be discontinued. Somebody could say me if, together within XHTML 2, the XForms concept will be discontinued?

   I thank everyone’s attention!