BREAKING: XHTML2 will be discontinued in favor of HTML5
The XHTML 2 Working Group is expected to stop work by the end of 2009 and, instead, reallocate its resources toward the development of HTML5.
Today 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 Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML.
This is HUGE news for the web development industry. I only hope this dramatic shift will speed up development of the HTML5 draft specification.
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Reader Comments
seyDoggy | Jul 2, 2009 at 05:53 pm
Well I guess that settles it then. Nice to finally have a clear path to work towards.
Mark Arnold | Jul 2, 2009 at 07:46 pm
Josh,
What will this mean to all of the RW themes and plugins written to XHTML2? Anything?
seyDoggy | Jul 2, 2009 at 08:17 pm
@Mark it means that at some point we will all have to transition to HTML5 but it’s still quite a ways off. Browsers need to support it and the standard itself needs to be completed. Plugins and themes will continue to follow the XHTML path for a while yet.
Josh Lockhart | Jul 2, 2009 at 08:26 pm
@Mark Like @seyDoggy said, most themes will eventually transition over to HTML5, but this transition is a long ways off. The HTML5 spec is only a working draft right now and won’t be completed for at least a year or so at minimum. However, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, and Internet Explorer 8 all support a few features of HTML5 already. But until IE8 assumes the majority market share of IE browsers, most web developers will continue to use HTML4 or XHTML1. XHTML2 has been a work in progress for several years, and it has never really gained traction. So it’s basically a non-event. So nothing to worry about.
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