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What a lame, useless article. Nerds.

*facepalm

Very very cool!

Haha, awesome post! Good way to clarify by using the illustrations and such :D I like the fat free cheese.

Certainly a good entry point for anyone who wants to find out more about XHTML, HTML 5 and whatever else might be looming out there.

In my opinionated view, defining HTML 5, implementing cross-browser support for it and spreading the word about deprecated tags (such as FRAMESET, among others) should be a top priority.

Thanks for keeping the buzz going!

Very cool and well done. I’m actually going to use this as I get asked about html 5 more and more often and my own explanation does more damage than good I think.

Bravo, Brad. Great way of clarifying Jeremy Keith’s point!

Is it just me, or the guy in the comic looks sick?

Kudos on “ham and hamster” metaphor.

What an excellent way to illustrate the problem.

Thanks!

Oh, Pandjarov! Don’t be jealous. Be happy, man!

Absolutely fabulous darlings! I read this this morning but it is even more wonderful as a comic. Great work!

all i can say is, you’re wrong – italian food sucks, thai food rules :)

nice cartoon, love it.

I’m even more confused right now =(

So this sucks, right??

I am not to sure why the cook knows better then real IT people, people that know (I am sure he starts cooking at the end of the article, right??)

anyways, what I don’t understand is why you would want to be backward compatible in a world where the BROWSER is backward compatible already in the first place.

HTML5 sounds like going back to the 9ties to me, xhtml2 sounds like going forward to a syntax a computer AND humans can understand much better, and I am sure that HTML5 in any browser get’s parsed in a DOM structure anyways.

I am baffled…..

Ries

this comic is misinformed, xhtml served as text/html has always been treated as a tagsoup (i.e. the same as the html 4.01 family), not as xml. And the only way to use the xml serialization of html5 (”xhtml 5″) will be to serve as application/xhtml+xml.
Since serving as “application/xhtml+xml” will create compatibility problems for many years to come without offering any benefit (unless you absolutely need xml because you are doing xslt scripting) xhtml is, in practice, dead.
Also, using html5 now that is not supported will do you no good (you will be treated as an html 4.01 tagsoup).

Overall the whole xhtml experiment was just a big waste of time.

Damn. XHTML is dead? I never knew. The shorter doctype is good though.

Thanks for the article – Smashing Magazine rocks!

Certainly a great way of clearing up some of the myths and misconceptions about XHTML 2.0 and HTML 5.0.

As great as it is, though, there are always some people who just don’t ‘get’ certain things, and I’m sure the argument will continue for a while longer.

I’m definitely up for XHTML ’strictness’ in my upcoming HTML 5 sites.

E[X] says: “this comic is misinformed, xhtml served as text/html has always been treated as a tagsoup (i.e. the same as the html 4.01 family), not as xml. And the only way to use the xml serialization of html5 (”xhtml 5″) will be to serve as application/xhtml+xml.”

Be aware that processing instructions are rendered on some user agents. Also, some user agents interpret the XML declaration to mean that the document is unrecognized XML rather than HTML, and therefore may not render the document as expected. For compatibility with these types of legacy browsers, you may want to avoid using processing instructions and XML declarations. Remember, however, that when the XML declaration is not included in a document, the document can only use the default character encodings UTF-8 or UTF-16.

So yeah unless you want to use something other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 then you can quite happily serve XHTML 1.0 documents as text/html.

This is just confusing to me in the directions the W3C is leading us with these languages.

First UPPER CASE tags were all right, then along came XHTML and upper case tags were a big no-no…. and now we’re going back to upper case being all right again? And then there’s a whole bunch of “you can choose to do this or you can choose to do that” stuff, which seems to undermine the whole idea of standards across the board… the standards sound like they’re becoming un-standardized.

I’m trying to learn all of this stuff… I started off hard-coding with the original HTML and then got sucked into the WYSIWYG mode of developing (I know, save me the grumbles)… so I decided to get back to understanding the hard-coding again, picked up some books on XHTML and was told to avoid the upper case stuff… and now it’s just going back again.

Oh well… guess that’s just the nature of the industry…

So the W3C gives up? Wow what a kitkat… I like XHTML and I like XML… I don’t like backwards… who wants to go backw….

Never mind, I have to deal with this for a moment…

still dont understand the difference between 1.1 and 1 xhtml

Very nice article! I definitely keep this article in my mind.

Haha, awesome. I like the visuals and very informative. Thanks again sm

The comic adds nothing to the text.

I wonder if Brad is a fan of “Good Eats” on the Food Network, the caroon has a very simular feel.

There are a few technical problems with this comic, but the glaring error is sociological: it ISN’T personal preference. When you are working on a team, you need to agree and use the same markup language.

The comic says that XHTML is no better or worse than HTML. That’s completely wrong! The loose syntax of HTML is much harder to parse: the parser has to take into account every retarded web developer’s “style” of syntax, which means: SLOWER PARSER. Your webpages will load slower in HTML than if they were XHTML!
HTML is for script kiddies who don’t know how to use a validator.

Is this fanboy ignorance, or flamebait?

For those who seriously think XHTML makes any difference to the speed of your pages: measure it. And if you can find any evidence that it matters (ha!), get in touch with Steve Souders — no doubt he simply overlooked this issue, and we’ll soon have a new Yslow rule: “Use XHTML”. ;)

HTML is for script kiddies who don’t know how to use a validator.

You can still use a validator with HTML 4.0; in fact there’s plenty of very experienced developers who do because they realise there’s no advantages to choosing XHTML if you’re going to continue serving it as text/html.

And as MikeHopley points out, I don’t think you’ll find any evidence that a well-formed, error free, validating HTML document will be parsed any slower than the equivalent document served as XHTML.

Great article !

Holy crap was this article/comic useful. I was confused whether I “could” use a trailing/closing slash for empty elements in HTML 5 or not… but thank God I can use either syntax (I prefer the XHTML style).

@Tyler
“HTML is for script kiddies who don’t know how to use a validator.”

So your logic states that those who do HTML are ’script kiddies’, but those who write XHTML only to have the assurance of a validator to help prevent them from error are the smart ones?

eh?

Brad – awesome job with this comic. I love the photo of you hanging in his house.

Very useful comic for every web developer. Everyone will surely love reading this.

Thanks a lot Brad! :D

superb way of telling techie things. Cool man Cool

Thanks for the strip, I was quite confused and it helped me to have all it clear

Very funny!

Now, I am even more confused than I was.

Pandjarov is a faggot.

thx for clearing things up.
Superb stuff!

Good effort!

Great article, still deciding whether or not to use the in my next design that I’m doing for my clothing company… Hmm…

You there, all HTML-5 lovers ! Who on earth can implement HTML-5 with IE6? Here goes claims of backward compatibility. If older browser can’t afford all the luxuries provided by new language then this comic guy needs to explain “backward compatibility” too, since I think I am not aware of it.

A web surfer is as backward or forward as his/her browser. It means everything depends on browser.

If browsers can implement HTML-5 then what was problem with XHTML-2 (yeah I am aware of it that its entirely new and I would like to announce, I wanted new).

If any developer want to use disgusting non-standard code he was most welcomed in HTML-4 squad. after all its all happening for shake of backward blah blah.

Is this change just for shake of change? XHTML-2 tried to do a total reform with javascript events too. Means total pure abstraction in markup, interface and behavior. I congratulate you guys who succeeded in making everyone backward. Who will waste your entire life either leaving marking up or dreaming about making css dynamic…anyone dreamt about css variables? huhhh. Grind your heads hacking each version of browser.

“Do what ever you want !”, what it means? Can I write in arabic or plain english? I can assume HTML-5 will understand, right? huhhh. Just tell me can “application/xhtml+xml” be parsed without upgrading browser? Its just nonsense.

I tell you, standards are not food nor it can be implemented without forcing. It could be choice what food one likes but it lies in recipe which defines whether food is Italian or Thai or Indian. We are not talking about coding xhtml in java way we are just refining the way markup must be cooked and how it can take benefit from other technologies evolving every neno second.

If anyone wants to live in stone age why interfering with metros? Use html-4 use IE6 and maintain peace. Hell Hell Hell. Did anyone read the docs f XHTML-2 and XForms and new events? No!!!…who has time ?

Ohhh well here is a quiz….

hhhh

Is this you want ? use what case you want (since this is what comics guy described as difference between html and xhtml).

Can anyone forget to start body tag and end it properly and still manage to render his page?

Last but not the least can anyone explain what is transition? XHTML was incremental process towards big changes. The time everyone enjoyed and the xhtml it was a grace period for big migration. This is for all of you who say XHTML-1 is not related with XHTML-2. Did you say changes should have been applied overnight at time of launch of xhtml so you could have seen the thick relation between xhtml1 and xhtml2? Ohhh then please make that 2022 thing closer.

Alas but I can’t do anything than mourning.

@Gorden hehehe

Good effort, “you can still use xhtml, html5 allows strict code” kinda sums it up, though, huh

Wow, that is truly amazing dude!

Excellent explanation. Thank you.

garbage

Nice post… I think the same way, but some people like to follow this “hype” and say that “xhtml is dead”…

Lol

Great Article offering short and compact info about the markups history

The thing is there hasn’t been anything standardized just yet.

To be exact, there is no such thing as web standard.
While we all want the same thing, the standard, but we have to admit that there
never be and will never be standardized.

All human creations are the same, it comes bundled with flaws and bugs.
And it constantly is changing, think of anything other than the web, car industry, engine technology, medical science, ect.

There is nothing standardized, all of these human-made.

The best way to prevent the confusion is to avoid or stop using the word “standard.”
Just go ahead and call it ( the markup ) with whatever it’s named.

Then whatever brand of markup is the most popular, we will just say that…
right now ( the year 2009, for instance ) this brand of markup is very popular
because this feature and that feature, and we will leave it at that…
don’t try to call it standard because it will never be.

Admit it, there will never be a web standard.

Just like the comic in this article comparing markups as food.
Be it Thai food or Italian food, there will never be a standard food for all the human.

There will be only the popularity or the preference, but not the standard.

The need or the crave to have anything standardized will never be fulfilled,
because we are human.

–> HTML5 and CSS3 will grow and come alive and will never be standard.

–> Internet Explorer 8 and later will never comply with the majority.

Web Developers will always have to work it out in order to make website look good
( to make it look standard across browsers with different standard of its own. )

The complaints about this or that particular browser or machine not working standard-ly will always be there.

The comic character’s eyes are really creepy. Yes, he does look sick, like someone said in a post. Im half and half, i kinda like the effort put into it, but i didnt really get the point. All i learned was HTML5 is backwards compatable.

very simple, i love it

So what if my DOCTYPE looks like:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 plus SVG 1.1//EN” “http://www.w3.org/2002/04/xhtml-math-svg/xhtml-math-svg-flat.dtd”

What’s the HTML5 way to declare I’ll be validating it with MathML and SVG namespaces?

The only thing I could find is that SVG was removed from text/html HTML5, so MathML will automatically work with the plain HTML5 doctype with any Content-type, but SVG won’t. This page suggests that, while SVG is technically part of HTML5, the only way to get it to work is with the old XHTML1.1 doctype (and probably served as application/xhtml+xml, as before).

At least, that’s how I’m interpreting it, though it’s hard to find information about it. Where XHTML1.1 seemed overly strict about namespaces, HTML5 seems very hand-wavey: authors do whatever’s easiest, and browsers make it work. (That sounds like a recipe for the kind of incompatibilities I used to have with HTML!) Today I can write and serve valid XHTML+SVG+MathML and it works flawlessly in every browser but IE, but I don’t know how to do this with HTML5.

If you needed a comic strip to explain the difference between html and xhtml you should not be building web pages. It saddens me to think of how many stupid people there are hiding in my industry. Shocking!

I thought this was a helpful explanation — I’m less confused as to what’s actually going on with HTML 5 and XHTML now… (lol, the cartoon character does look sick.) I still have some lingering questions though, like this: does HTML 5 officially support closing tags like this? <br/> — i.e. without the space between the end of the tag name and the slash and closing angle bracket? It would be nice to reach a point where browsers could be assumed to support that, since that’s what the XHTML standard is supposed to allow (and encourage).

Also, I thought one of the arguments for XHTML was that you can parse it just like an XML document and do stuff like searching and easily extracting the data structure using existing XML tools and functions (PHP’s XML functions, for example). What about that?

I don’t think we should be so quick to abandon the idea that XHTML syntax is a better practice, since if you change your mind and want to do XML things with your documents in the future, it would be a real pain to try to go back and change all your markup. Sure, the choice should be left to the HTML author, and if they know they’re never going to need any of the features that are unique to XHTML, then fine. But I think it’s more than pure preference — these things should be considered. Based on pure preference I think plain HTML would win in most cases simply because there’s less typing involved — but does that mean we should all feel free to forget about XHTML if we want to? I don’t know, but I don’t think so…in any case, this comic doesn’t answer that question.

That was a well thought out comic. I really liked it.

Now I know more about xhtml and html5 then ever before!

Very cool, creative article. I’ve never read an informative cartoon on web design.

Amusing markup fail irony: You cannot view the comic in a small browser window, because the page auto-resizes itself and the comic gets covered up by the ads :D

I like the XHTML way. I learned the HTML 4 way but prefer XHTML. Closing tags just make sense and text editors put them in for you anyway.

There shouldn’t be a choice to use which ever syntax YOU want. We might as well go back to using IE 6 (not really).

Brad, your work is inspiring and informative. And thanks to Jeremy’s great article, you were able to illustrate a very important topic. I’ve been a fan since I first saw your work, and will remain one for life. Thanks.

I just use XHTML 1.0 strict. It’s strict for a reason; It’s to keep you from being bad.

Good Post. Great Submit. Excellent Article. Nice How-To. Loving Comics.

Hi All,

When I started to read Misunderstanding Markup: XHTML 2/HTML 5 Comic Strip, I thought how informative and pleasant to read something that can be technical and confusing at times. I also enjoyed most of the comments that debated over the xhtml / html issues. Long live the xhtml/css/javascript code nerds :)

hmm, i think i yet need simple comics to understand difference. Am i alone here?

1. Doctype of 5 is horrible. It used to serve as version specification (at least in DocBook, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1…) . Now it will not be known if the document is html 5, 6 or 7. Greate – since the doctype says basicly that the main element is html, which can be easily seen on following line why bother with doctype at all?
2. XHTML biggest advantage is not strictness but the ability of embed other data in XML format (SVG, MathML – anything you want).
3. I regret that XHTML 2.0 was killed. It was nice way of clearing the syntax.

It sucks for the fact that I can’t yell at people for using uppercase tags and stuff and say it’s wrong, but I guess maybe I can say that it’s really messy. Who the heck wants to see uppercase tags with no quotes? I get really annoyed when Google does it.

Awesome comic though, finally an assurance that HTML5 is not the killer of XHTML, instead just a long lost friend. I wish to continue seeing proper standards and markup though, and especially for beginners. just won’t do. In fact, HTML5 could have been simply the continuation of XHTML. LONG LIVE XHTML!

I love the article, now I understand things better; and the fact it is a comic helped a lot, better than just plain text in my simple opinion.

Saludos desde México

Thanks.

EPIC FAIL! EPIC FAIL! EPIC FAIL! EPIC FAIL! EPIC FAIL!

HTML5 sucks. Really. Its doctype is one of the worst ideas ever. Like the choice to have xhtml and sgml syntaxes. xhtml is more than just a XML serialization of HTML, it allows to embed in the document xhtml, svg and whatever xml spec you wish.

Thankyou. Loved the comic and clarified it all for me. Hope to see more comics on web development in the future :D

Ham to Hamster
Perfect!
Can’t be better =D

Wait, so this is saying that soy milk and fat free cheese are bad?

but am I wrong? does having a verifiable (through XHTML verifier) page just mean that there are balanced close-offs, and nice use of quotes and case? I dunno, as someone considering spending big bucks to take web design courses I don’t see the X-ness of this.

Hm, great job making it look like we HTML4.01 Strict writers are continuing with UPPERCASE tag soup garbage and that the only way to be strict is what that seXy X. Bull.
I’ll use XHTML when browsers can properly deal with all that nifty stuff XHTML was supposed to give us. They haven’t and I’m not going to hold my breath thinking they ever will.
@Paul Freedman there are XML parsers and there are XML validators. There are validators what can tell you if your XHTML document is both valid and well-formed. If done correctly, and sent with the right MIME type, Firefox, Opera, etc should give you a yellow screen of death on your error. : )
@Jeremy Keith I loved the ham to hamster. That’s a keeper next time someone asks me about Java.
@Brad While I disagree with the text but I still love the comic. Why wasn’t this article prefixed with the “XHTML, you’re dying!” comic?

The freedom to choose is great if there is only one website maker. It will be a ball and a chain for people with different tastes which work in a group. Not to mention adopted projects, etc.

Could you recommend any specific resources, books, or other blogs on this topic?