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Universal344
May 31st, 2010, 05:24 PM
Hi,

I am trying to learn web development and have been reading through some tutorials at w3schools. It is my current understanding that the HTML5 standard is going to replace the HTML 4 / XHTML 1.1 standards. Would it be better to stick to XHTML 1.1 until HTML 5 becomes more solid and better supported? And is XHTML being merged with HTML for HTML 5 or it still retaining a SGML-like version?

Thanks, and I apologize if I abused any terms here, I'm still trying to understand the differences between these things.

WebDrake
May 31st, 2010, 10:25 PM
Hi,

I am trying to learn web development and have been reading through some tutorials at w3schools. It is my current understanding that the HTML5 standard is going to replace the HTML 4 / XHTML 1.1 standards. Would it be better to stick to XHTML 1.1 until HTML 5 becomes more solid and better supported? And is XHTML being merged with HTML for HTML 5 or it still retaining a SGML-like version?

Thanks, and I apologize if I abused any terms here, I'm still trying to understand the differences between these things.
It depends on what aspects of HTML 5 you want to use -- if you use the tags which are common with earlier HTML/XHTML releases, it will be no problem, if you want to use the new tags you will face compatibility issues with some browsers. See: http://caniuse.com/

dv3500ea
May 31st, 2010, 10:28 PM
I don't think XHTML is going to merge with HTML 5 as XHTML is pure XML and HTML is not. I think it would be best to go ahead and use HTML 5 as this is the future. Also you can use HTML 5 tags such as <video> and contain 'fallback' HTML tags inside such as the <object> tag, for compatability with older (or uncompliant) browsers, and also give a note that the person's browser is out of date and they should upgrade to the latest firefox or chrome.