Does XHTML have a future?

[samaru]

Just wondering if you guys think there's a future for XHTML. If you don't know what XHTML is, it's just HTML ala XML. It's HTML with the structure and benefits of XML. The only reason I bring up this question is, if in fact XHTML replaces HTML, think of how many pages on the WWW have to be updated (if browsers no longer accept HTML, only XHTML). Also, because it's not as forgiving as HTML, it well make it a bit harder for beginners to design web pages. It's not just up to the W3C to set the standard, but also browsers and companies to accept it.

Currently for me, XHTML is not on my agenda. I think eventually we will move to XHTML but the transition will take time. Of course, there's no harm for me coding in XHTML rather than HTML, (browsers will still interpret it) but it will take the industry time to accept it. Just my two cents.

[jasonb]

XHTML benefit is in the server production side. If you need to change a lot of pages you can use XSLT to change the pages or use XPath to look up entries. This is a neat technology, but people are still learning how to use it.

[aeinstein]

to my understanding XHTML was implemented to bridge the HTML & XML paradigms, and as such was not intended to be an evolving "language."

[samaru]

I still see no reason why companies should be rushing towards it. I understand when it would be useful, but I don't think there's a huge benefit for it, yet. What you're saying has been traditionally done with a backend language and has been faster and easier to implement. Trying to parse through fields using DOM/SAX could be time consuming. But then again the benefits of controlling the data in a structured way and presenting it (using CSS or XSL stylesheets) does seem very appealing.

Now don't get the impression that I'm against XML. This post is in regards to XHTML (referring to the presentation layer). I just think that there's no need to rush towards it yet, but I guess it wouldn't hurt.

Using XHTML can be tricky when implementing a CMS. Some CMSs (like Spectra) can have a free form container where the user can take clump of HTML and make an object out of it to put on a page. Now, one of the reasons CMSs exists is so users don't have to worry about technicalities, just about their content. So if they DO create an object where they just paste HTML, most likely (if they're not a techie) it will not be XHTML compatible.

There are a few converters out there (HTML-->XHTML) but none of them are 100% accurate. You know you always get the one exception where a user puts crazy HTML and then it breaks the parser (or get unwanted results). However, it can still be done.