Money from this richer content structure before the browser can handle the next generation of XHTML
The XHTML 2 specification is not yet completed, but it already has many advantages over XHTML 1, including richer structural features, which makes XHTML 2 as an editing format better serve as a central mode for a single resource publishing system than its predecessors. People who perform large or small releases can now start using the new features of XHTML 2 without waiting for the browser to provide support for its new user interface features.
About a year ago, an industry standards group asked me to introduce what XHTML2 might be useful to publishers. I don't know if it's practical, but they're willing to offer the fee to go to New York, so I decided to go and investigate.
The investigation I did didn't require much effort. XHTML 2 Adds richer structure to XHTML to make it a format that can be used to create and store content, rather than just passing the content to the browser. I exaggerated a little bit when I said XHTML 2 is already useful; many stores have some very wise policies for this unfinished standard, and XHTML 2 is still in the stage of Working Draft (see Resources for more information). Unlike nearly all HTML-related standards, XHTML 2 is able to provide a lot of valuable stuff before well-known browsers support it because it is more likely to store content in richer and more complex structures without too much deviating from familiar HTML elements and attributes. The current situation of XHTML: Where have we progressed
The W3C XHTML 1.0 standard creates an XML version of HTML. When browsers don't overestimate whether the web page is well-formed XML, Web site designers are tired of using one method for Firefox and another for Microsoft™ Internet Explorer, and they see more value in the standard. The stylesheets of many open source CSS collections such as Open Web Design and Open Source Web Design, see Resources for links to both, use the XHTML 1 sample files for demonstration purposes, and I have heard of some web designers who hardly know what a good format is proud to claim that their site is made of XHTML. As Internet Explorer and Firefox support more CSS features, these web designers add more design skills to CSS stylesheets, leaving simpler, more direct (and easier to reuse) XHTML in the basic documentation.
XHTML 1.1 (see Resources) does not include new features, but it divides XHTML into modules. Its value is reflected in two aspects. First, if we find that some modules have value and others have little value, we can more conveniently adopt a subset of it. For example, the Wireless Application Forum (WAP) has every reason to incorporate basic XHTML structures into its standard to deliver content to mobile phones, but it does not want to allow WAP documents to incorporate user interface features such as image mapping or editing module functions that are not very useful in a small screen of a phone.
Another benefit of modular architecture for DTD or mode is that it is easier to insert new modules proprietary to the user's application. Combined with the ability to pick existing modules, this feature brings benefits to the release industry: The PRISM Standards Group, dedicated to publishing industry metadata, selected a subset of XHTML 1.1 and then added some new modules with industry-proprietary vocabulary to make it easier to track content through the release workflow. (For more information about PRISM, see Resources.)
You can liken the development of XHTML 1.1 to cleaning up the basement: you may not have to throw away too much, by organizing better, you can use existing items more easily, and even make room to build a workbench and make something new on it.
Since May 2001, XHTML 1.1 has become a standard (or, according to W3C, a recommended standard). The latest developments in XHTML 2.0 are a new working draft (Working Draft) released in July 2006. Although it will have to go through several stages in the final formation, the RELAX NG pattern (see Resources for this link) allows us to create and use XHTML 2 documents now so that we can quickly go to XHTML when the specification becomes a recommended standard. A simple XSLT stylesheet will convert these files to XHTML 1 for your browser to display, or you can also display these documents in your browser (for now, Firefox should work better) using a CSS stylesheet that now contains XHTML 2 Working Draft (see Resources). XHTML 2: What are the new features?
XHTML 2 retains the ability to clear existing syntax in XHTML 1 to make it more concise, and also adds some new features. It adds support for XForms, a more complete successor to forms that has been used in HTML for more than a decade. XHTML 2 also includes XML Events, which allows us to identify events triggered by certain user interface operations, thus reducing the need to script using JavaScript or ASP. These features will be interesting, especially when the main browsers provide support for them, but other features will be more interesting for publishers even before the browser supports XHTML: A richer, more reusable structure with better device independence, easier access, more complete semantics and easier to add metadata
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