Thanks to Andrew for all his help and informative presentations!!

XHTML2 and HTML 5

§ one from the W3C that attempts to redefine HTML completely

§ one from the WHATWG that builds on the existing HTML spec

XHTML2

XHTML2 takes out all presentational tags and relies purely on CSS for all styling, and utilises a systems much like the “class” system to identify parts of the document.

The main difference with XHTML2 from HTML 5 is that all browsers will have to be updated to display it. It relies on the idea of all information on the page having meaning and relationships easily distinguished by both humans and machines.

Another point of difference is anything can be made into a link- assign an element with a “href” attribute and it becomes a link.

It is a much more accurate language than HTML, meaning the document must be well formed and all the elements must be explicitly closed, all elements, attributes and predefined values in lowercase, and all quotations much be enclosed.

 

HTML 5

HTML 5 theology, is to take HMTL 4 and improve it rather than completely overhauling the entire language/standard.

HTML 5 introduces new elements that divide content up into easily identified sections. Theses divides should assist search engines and other technologies process information in a more productive manner. The implication of these new elements should make markup more readable.

A list of some of these new elements are as follows:

 

Article A section of a page that consists of a composition that forms an independent part of a document, page, or site.

Aside A section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content.

Footer The footer for the section it applies to.

Header The header of a section.

Nav A section with navigation links.

Section A generic document or application section – a grouping of content.

contextmenu and menu Elements to for menu creation

canvas an area that allows drawing and compositing of images

 

Many new form controls including

Date & time (also a combined control)

Month, Week, Number

Range (between two numbers)

Email, Url, Datalist (a spreadsheet-like grid)

New attributes for existing and new controls

Type (specifies what kind of input to accept, eg. “email”, “url”)

Pattern (for regular expressions)

Required (indicates a value is required)

Min and max

Auto-validation for controls

Provide a “type=email” and the control will validate its contents without script

Uses new CSS Pseudo-classes so that controls that don’t validate can be styled with CSS

 

Pre-defined class names that denote areas of the document, eg.

Copyright, Error, Example, Note

This ties in with Microformats, the idea of giving elements on your page particular class names that search engines and other programs can read, and use the data

 

A non-fugly doctype

And a whole bunch of other stuff.