The Xhtml Standard

What is xhtml ?

Xhtml is the xml version of html. It is both simpler and more strict.

Xhtml is the replacement for the out-dated Html 4.0 and was approved by the World Wide Web Consortium - W3C (23/1/2000)
The W3C sets the standards for Internet technologies including html, css, xml and Xhtml.

Why do we need to use Xhtml?

Access to the internet is gradually being embedded into a variety of devices from PC based browsers to pda, mobile phones, internet aware fridges, webTV etc

Browsers of 15-70 mb are simply too large for these appliances.

We can reduce browser error checking and hence size, by using more precise syntax when marking up pages.

The new standards allow you to program any part of a web page, but only if the page conforms to the standards.

More and more web pages are being generated from databases.
It is important that the people responsible for writing the programs that generate the html know how to write standards compatible html.

With the development of Web Applications the data inside web pages is being used more and more as a data source.
As other web applications use that data the need to properly structure it increases.

The days of sloppy html coding is coming to a close.
If you have already created some html, the sooner you change to xhtml the better.
Although xhtml and html are very similiar the differences and time required when you have to convert several hundred pages is significant .
(Believe me I have had to do this !)