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XHTML

Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same expressive possibilities as HTML, but a stricter syntax. Whereas HTML was an application of SGML, a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML . XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation on January 26, 2000.

XHTML is the successor to, and the current version of, HTML . The need for a more strict version of HTML was felt primarily as now web content needs to be delivered to many devices (like mobile devices) apart from traditional computers, where extra resources cannot be devoted to support the generosities of HTML . (The looser the syntax of a language, the harder it is to process.) A DTD defines the rules of XHTML, against which documents can be checked.

Most of the recent versions of popular web browsers render XHTML properly, and many older browsers will also render XHTML as it is mostly a subset of HTML and most browsers do not require valid HTML . Similarly, almost all web browsers that are compatible with XHTML also render HTML properly. Some say this is slowing the switch from HTML to X HTML .

XHTML's true power is realized when used in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets; this makes the separation of style and content an integral part of the web page's code and with mixing different XML applications (such as MathML or SVG) in a single document.

The text above is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL).
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "XHTML".

(Extern link: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/