[smallbeer]

Some really interesting discussion and comment going on at...

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/13/object_and_internet_explorer.html

Surrounding XHTML2 and the the fact that the IMG tag will be removed from it in favour of the OBJECT tag which IE f**ks up big time.

I find it interesting anyway ops:

[smallbeer]

More 'interesting' XHTML2 stuff.

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/16/dive-into.html

Those crazy bastards at W3C are out of their minds this time. Just as people were starting to become interested in migrating to xhtml they go and throw this on us!

With no backward compatability WHATSOEVER there's no way I could possibly think of using XHTML2 for anything other than personal projects. God damnit!

[vickygale]

I can see where the W3C is coming from in some of the cases pointed out in the latest article, but as you say smallbeer, backward compatibility was most certainly not thought about with the changes they're planning on making.

I can see why they want to get rid of the < img/> tag, as other visible and sound items are placed using the <object> tag, to make everything consistent, but as the articles point out there are problems with current browsers trying to implement this.

I can also see why they want to get rid of inline <style> tags, as this would aid accessibility issues by allowing the user to override styles on a page, which if you have inline <style> tags they take precedent rather than what the user wants.

What is with getting rid of <br/> and changing to &lt;l&gt;&lt;/l&gt; There seems absolutely no difference to me, except all current browsers will not understand you.

And as for XForms replacing HTML forms I can understand the principal behind why they might want to change it, but do they really think that is going to happen in practice, when it will not be supported by any of the current browsers. How on earth they think people will change to using XHTML 2.0 with the change in the forms, as practically every site has a form somewhere on it. I think this is probably going to be the killer part of whether people will use XHTML 2.0 or not

I try to keep up with the standards as much as possible, and do believe that the W3C have changed things for the better with being stricter about the coding and making it so that the code you write is automatically more accessible. However, even I think that they have gone a bit too far with what they want to do with XHTML 2.0. It's all fine and well to have standards, but if you make them so far in advance of what is compatible for people to use on existing browser technology it won't work.

[Luke Redpath]

I think, that just because XHTML 2.0 is on its way, that it means you have to use it.

It usually takes years for browsers to support new standards, and I think zeldman makes some pretty sensible comments on the issue:

http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0303a.shtml#ap1503