Overview
eXtensible HyperText Markup Laguage (acronym XHTML) is a growing Markup Language (based on the XML markup language itself) that extends that of SGML Markup Language currently well known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and defines how web pages are written and presented in Web Browsers. Whereas HTML maybe considered as a very flexible language to use when writing up websites, XHTML is based upon the XML standard whereby standard are more restrictive. This in turn requires pages to be written in a well formed and structured way in order to pass the online validation services offered.
Document Type Declaration
<!DOCTYPE HTML
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> //Note for XHTML 1.1 DTD
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
History
XHTML was developed to be a step in the right direction for the Web by working on a language which would be fully compatible and compliant with Web Browsers and the HTML 4 specification. By using the XML standard (approved in 1998 link) the HTML language would hopefully be more (ideally completely) compatible XML tools, servers and proxies would be able to transform content, as necessary, for constrained devices such as mobile phones as well as other mobile devices.
For any webpage to be written within XHTML (Transitional or Strict) and pass validation, there must be no styling elements within the XHTML page itself. Whereby these styling elements can be written into a separate styling file (such as CSS or XMS files) and referenced from the XHTML page.
XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation on January 26, 2000. XHTML 1.1 became a W3C Recommendation on May 31, 2001. XHTML5 is undergoing development as of September 2009, as part of the HTML5 specification. link.
Relevent Extensions
.xhtml, .xht, .xml, .html, .htm
Responses to “XHTML and Brief History”
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