Slide 3.5: XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language)

XHTML (eXtensible HTML)

XHTML is a stricter and cleaner version of HTML.

XHTML stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language.
XHTML is aimed to replace HTML.
XHTML is almost identical to HTML 4.01.
XHTML is a stricter and cleaner version of HTML.
XHTML is HTML defined as an XML application.
XHTML is a W3C Recommendation.

XHTML is a combination of HTML and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XHTML consists of all the elements in HTML 4.01 combined with the syntax of XML.

Why XHTML?
We have reached a point where many pages on the Web contain “bad” HTML.

 <html>
  <head>
   <title>This is bad HTML</title>
  <body>
   <h1>Bad HTML
  </body>

The HTML code will work well in a browser even if it does not follow the HTML rules. On the other hand, everything in XML has to be marked up correctly, which results in “well-formed” documents.

XML was designed to describe data and HTML was designed to display data.

Today’s market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run Internet on computers, and some browsers run Internet on mobile phones. The last-mentioned do not have the resources or power to interpret a “bad” markup language. Therefore—by combining HTML and XML, and their strengths, we got a markup language that is useful now and in the future—XHTML. XHTML pages can be read by all XML enabled devices.

Demonstration
The following demonstration shows how the script of HTML is displayed on the Web.


<html> <head><title>HTML Working Area</title></head> <body> <p>This demonstration shows the use of textarea tag.</p> <textarea rows="6" cols="40"> The cat was playing in the garden. </textarea><br /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </body> </html>