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xhtml is still supported in html5... but will anyone use it?

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Yes there is an xml serialization of HTML5. However, an earlier versio of the spec would actively discourage people from using it - because the author believes strict error handling is a bad thing. This is very unfortunate because no one has the time and resources to validate their markup, especially when it's dynamically generated. I've come across many respected libraries that litter your code with naked ampersands or use document.write(). This will get even worse. With the W3C officially requiring tag soup parsing from browser vendors, generating a valid page will only be possible if you're working on a one-man project without using any third-party code. What about XML tools? Forget it! WHATWG and the Rails crowd together already managed to convince the Web that XML sucks because it sucks because it's XML. Ironically, no one has ever complained about compilers and interpreters not second-guessing invalid C# or even invalid PHP