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XHTML 1.x was well implemented in most browsers and was highly used by a subset of web developers. XHTML 1.x also did a lot to help shake out things like "quir

XHTML 1.x was well implemented in most browsers and was highly used by a subset of web developers. XHTML 1.x also did a lot to help shake out things like "quirks mode" versus "standards mode". HTML 5 imported a lot of things that worked from XHTML 1.x. It's true that XHTML 2.0 was murdered before the spec finished but that was part and parcel of the WHATWG coup. We have no idea what the final product from XHTML 2.0 would have looked like (it certainly didn't look useless, though it aimed for the stars and probably wouldn't have met them) or if it had implemented if it would have been used because the browser implementors had already decided they were going to take charge instead.

bawolff 4y ago
> it certainly didn't look useless, though it aimed for the stars and probably wouldn't have met them That one sentence pretty much sums up why w3c is a bad standards body. A standards body is not a research group. If you are aiming for the stars you are doing it wrong. A standards body is supposed to be doing the boring work of formalizing what is known to work well, not try and invent new untested things.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I think there is a large spectrum of standards bodies and working to productize outside research and aspirations is a part of some good standards bodies. Not a lot of people are calling WHATWG a bad standards body, but it is even worse at taking stuff directly out of Blink research and labeling it a draft standard with only a single implementation with sometimes seemingly very little study into its safety or long-term viability. I suppose there is a small distinction between Ivory Tower academic aspirations and research versus Walled Garden corporate aspirations and research, but at the end of the day it certainly feels the same, and I have more reasons, myself, to admire the academic aspirations that aren't tied to corporate interests and profit motives, but I can understand why some feel what Google and WHATWG is doing is better for the web because they start with that first "implementation" of their research instead of a chalkboard and a hope for a better web.
- willseth 4y ago
  In order for a standards body to be successful, it must be possible to attempt standards and fail them before they leave the standards body. Otherwise they would lose credibility by publishing recommendations that won't get wide acceptance. XHTML2 is an example of a W3C WG exercising restraint. That is a good thing. You seem to think standards should only be built in reverse, which is essentially the WHATWG philosophy: Browser vendors implement something they think is useful, then try to negotiate to get it standardized. That's not bad per se, but it's limited and it's a different system of accountability.
goto11 4y ago
XHTML 2.0 was not backwards compatible with HTML and was therefore doomed from the start. It would never have succeeded.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  As I recall even in draft standards you could mix XHTML 1.0 namespaces and XHTML 2.0 namespaces to use "backwards compatible markup" where you needed to. It wasn't pretty as most things involving XML and lots of mixed namespaces isn't, but it was possible. We still don't know if it would have gotten more backwards compatible had browsers tried to actually implement it.
bentley 4y ago
> XHTML 1.x was well implemented in most browsers and was highly used by a subset of web developers. Well, the XML part wasn’t. Serve your XHTML as text/html and it was “supported” by virtue of being treated like HTML with some minor syntax errors. Serve your XHTML as application/xhtml+xml, as required to get any XML features, and it wouldn’t display in Internet Explorer at all. XHTML 1.0 was allowed to be served with text/html for compatibility reasons, if you were careful to not make it too different from HTML (don’t self‐close an empty <textarea>, for example, and add a space before every “/>”). XHTML 1.1 didn’t allow the text/html MIME type at all, and so basically nobody used it. That’s not even getting into XML’s unpopularly draconic error handling for pages that did get served as XML…
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I recall I had XHTML 1.x Strict served as XML working in Internet Explorer (that would have been my primary testing/dev browser at the time, even). It was certainly no cakewalk, but it was briefly possible. As I recall it the XML mime types stopped working again shortly after HTML 5 became the headwind.

bawolff 4y ago

> it certainly didn't look useless, though it aimed for the stars and probably wouldn't have met them That one sentence pretty much sums up why w3c is a bad standards body. A standards body is not a research group. If you are aiming for the stars you are doing it wrong. A standards body is supposed to be doing the boring work of formalizing what is known to work well, not try and invent new untested things.

WorldMaker 4y ago
I think there is a large spectrum of standards bodies and working to productize outside research and aspirations is a part of some good standards bodies. Not a lot of people are calling WHATWG a bad standards body, but it is even worse at taking stuff directly out of Blink research and labeling it a draft standard with only a single implementation with sometimes seemingly very little study into its safety or long-term viability. I suppose there is a small distinction between Ivory Tower academic aspirations and research versus Walled Garden corporate aspirations and research, but at the end of the day it certainly feels the same, and I have more reasons, myself, to admire the academic aspirations that aren't tied to corporate interests and profit motives, but I can understand why some feel what Google and WHATWG is doing is better for the web because they start with that first "implementation" of their research instead of a chalkboard and a hope for a better web.
willseth 4y ago
In order for a standards body to be successful, it must be possible to attempt standards and fail them before they leave the standards body. Otherwise they would lose credibility by publishing recommendations that won't get wide acceptance. XHTML2 is an example of a W3C WG exercising restraint. That is a good thing. You seem to think standards should only be built in reverse, which is essentially the WHATWG philosophy: Browser vendors implement something they think is useful, then try to negotiate to get it standardized. That's not bad per se, but it's limited and it's a different system of accountability.

goto11 4y ago

XHTML 2.0 was not backwards compatible with HTML and was therefore doomed from the start. It would never have succeeded.

WorldMaker 4y ago
As I recall even in draft standards you could mix XHTML 1.0 namespaces and XHTML 2.0 namespaces to use "backwards compatible markup" where you needed to. It wasn't pretty as most things involving XML and lots of mixed namespaces isn't, but it was possible. We still don't know if it would have gotten more backwards compatible had browsers tried to actually implement it.

bentley 4y ago

> XHTML 1.x was well implemented in most browsers and was highly used by a subset of web developers. Well, the XML part wasn’t. Serve your XHTML as text/html and it was “supported” by virtue of being treated like HTML with some minor syntax errors. Serve your XHTML as application/xhtml+xml, as required to get any XML features, and it wouldn’t display in Internet Explorer at all. XHTML 1.0 was allowed to be served with text/html for compatibility reasons, if you were careful to not make it too different from HTML (don’t self‐close an empty <textarea>, for example, and add a space before every “/>”). XHTML 1.1 didn’t allow the text/html MIME type at all, and so basically nobody used it. That’s not even getting into XML’s unpopularly draconic error handling for pages that did get served as XML…

WorldMaker 4y ago
I recall I had XHTML 1.x Strict served as XML working in Internet Explorer (that would have been my primary testing/dev browser at the time, even). It was certainly no cakewalk, but it was briefly possible. As I recall it the XML mime types stopped working again shortly after HTML 5 became the headwind.