What's the diff?

[BearState]

I suppose like a number of people, I'm not sure why things went from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0/1.1 and now, we have HTML 5 and oddly enough, even though XHTML 2.0 has not even hit specific internal usage, there has been a mention of XHTML 5.

That's surely confusing. I can understand if HTML 5 was generated by a group who didn't like the direction HTML 4.01 went and XHTML 1.0/1.1 with its strict standards. But really, what's the bottom line story?

Are we still having browser wars?

BearState

[zcorpan]

I suppose like a number of people, I'm not sure why things went from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0/1.1 and now, we have HTML 5 and oddly enough, even though XHTML 2.0 has not even hit specific internal usage, there has been a mention of XHTML 5.

That's surely confusing. I can understand if HTML 5 was generated by a group who didn't like the direction HTML 4.01 went and XHTML 1.0/1.1 with its strict standards. But really, what's the bottom line story?

XHTML 1.0 is HTML 4.01 expressed in XML. Likewise XHTML5 is HTML5 expressed in XML. (X)HTML5 is the new version of HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0.

Also see http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_the_WHATWG.3F

Are we still having browser wars?

Not like the browser wars in the NN4/IE4 era. Back then browsers competed by introducing new features ad-hoc without standardization. Today we're working together and going through the standards process before or at the same time as the new features are implemented, for the good of the Web and to foster interoperability between browsers.