XHTML bridges the gulf between HTML and XML

If you take any interest in Web technology, you'll have come acrossreferences to XML over the past two years. XML - eXtensible MarkupLanguage - has been touted as ending the theoretical mess of thecurrent HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and enabling a new generationof Web data exchange.

But until now, the gulf between XML and HTML has restricted XML'sspread on the Web. The two are both mark-up languages. They speak verydifferently. It has taken an ingenious new language called XHTML tobring them together.

HTML mixes data and presentation simplistically together, not caringwhat's in a heading or a list. Partly because of this, HTML is aninflexible monolithic standard - an inflexible monolithic standard thatmillions of browsers understand right now, and on which a powerful newmedium has been built.

XML is a language for describing sets of data, and it has alreadybeen enthusiastically adopted by leading-edge software engineers,document publishers and people who exchange data. It leaves a separateacronym - sorry, language - called XSL to take care of presentation.And unlike HTML, XML can be extended with sets of tags defined by thecreators of an XML document. But it's very different from HTML. Many ofthe browsers out there today don't understand it; many of the Webdevelopers are equally mystified.

XHTML brings XML to today's Web, relatively painlessly and withoutthe five-year wait for everyone to adopt XML-compliant browsers. XHTMLtakes many of the merits of XML and plugs them into a revised versionof the current HTML 4.0 specification. It's a stricter, neater HTMLdialect, but you'll recognise it instantly if you know HTML. It letsyou "modularise" your site mark-up, explaining to browsers and otherWeb-readers just what tags each page requires. You can also includesnippets of non-HTML XML in your XHTML documents wherever that'sappropriate. And XHTML lets you define your own tags in a way that anyXML-compliant browser will understand. Think of XHTML as HTML 5.0; justremember that it's a particularly significant and powerful upgrade.

It's also one of those upgrades that's beautifully compatible withprevious versions. Build your pages as XHTML, and most browsers willstill understand them just fine.

XHTML does ask you to change your current HTML documents, but itdoesn't ask the world. Your documents will need some alien-looking newheaders; you must put quote marks around tag attributes; the humblebreak tag, <br>, now becomes <br />, and so on. But a goodsearch-and-replace tool will take care of much of the XHTMLtransformation. And Web sites that already create pages out oftemplates and databased content using code-based editing tools willfind the transformation particularly easy.

That copy of FrontPage on your PC won't create XHTML pages. But acombination of standard text-based Web editors and the tools detailedbelow will let you start building XHTML pages.

XHTML became an official W3C recommendation back in January 2000.With that recommendation, the Web's past and its future were officiallylinked.

This site has made a practice of questioning alleged "breakthroughs"in the Web industry. But XHTML really does deserve to be takenseriously right now.

HTML To XHTML
If someone just says that this is the high time when you should convert your site from HTML to XHTML - you can halt or not. But if he can say this with proper logic then you must be going through his decision - adaptibility is another thing. So at first you must know basically what XHTML is. XHTML i...
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