EXtensible HyperText Markup Language is what XHTML is short for. It is a mix of the HTML language and the XML language.
XHTML is very similar to HTML, but it is more strict. HTML as an XML application is what XHTML is. It works with all of the major browsers.
Even though XHTML is almost the same as HTML, it is more important to write your code correctly in XHTML because its syntax and case sensitivity are stricter than those of HTML. Unlike HTML, which needs a flexible HTML-specific parser, XHTML documents are well-formed and can be read with standard XML parsers.
XHTML History
On January 26, 2000, XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation. On May 31, 2001, XHTML 1.1 became a W3C Recommendation. The standard called XHTML5 is being made as an XML version of the HTML5 standard.
Why should you use XHTML?
XHTML was made to make HTML easier to add to and to make it easier for it to work with other data formats. There are two main reasons why XHTML was made:
It makes a stricter standard for making web pages, which makes it easier for browsers to work together. So it works with all the major browsers.
It makes a standard that can be used the same way on many different devices.
Let\’s look at an example to see what I mean.
HTML is mostly used to make web pages, but many web pages on the internet have \”bad\” HTML (not follow the HTML rule).
Most browsers can read this HTML code just fine (even if it does not follow the HTML rules).
For instance:
<html>
<head>
<title>This is an example of useless HTML</title>
<body>
<h1>unwell HTML
<p>your text goes here
</body>
Even though the code above works, it doesn\’t follow HTML rules. There are now different ways to use browsers. Some browsers run on computers, while others run on mobile phones or other small devices. The main problem with the bad HTML is that it can\’t be read by devices that aren\’t as big.
So, XHTML was made to bring together the best parts of HTML and XML.
XHTML is HTML that has been remade as XML. It helps you make code for your site that is better formatted.
XHTML doesn\’t let you write badly-formed code that works with XHTML. In HTML, simple mistakes like forgetting to close a tag aren\’t noticed by the browser. But in XHTML, the code must be exactly as it is told to be.