Moving Toward XHTML 2.0

Assist in planning migration from legacy HTML standards to the evolving
XHTML 2.0 standard by learning the new (and removed) features of the
new version.

Instructor(s): John Cowan, Senior Software Developer, The Associated Press

Pre-Requisites:  Understanding of XML, HTML 4.0. Understanding of XHTML
1.0, 1.1, and XHTML Modularization useful but not required.

Technology Requirements: None

XHTML 2.0 is an evolving standard being worked on by the HTML Working
Group of the W3C. It is the first major change to the semantics of HTML
since HTML 4.0. Obsolete syntax has been discarded, the separation of
content and presentation is essentially complete, and genuinely new
features are being introduced. XHTML 2.0 is intended to be more usable,
more accessible to different kinds of users and display devices, easier
to write by hand or with tools, and less reliant on embedded scripting
languages for commonly used functionality.

While it is impossible to predict at this point the degree of market
uptake that XHTML 2.0 will have, it is prudent to plan ahead for several
reasons. Although support of legacy HTML will probably be provided
forever for practical reasons (there is just too much Web out there to
convert it all), it is already possible to avoid most deprecated and
obsolete features in favor of version-neutral equivalents using HTML
and CSS facilities.

In addition, the ability to generate both old and new HTML from the same
XML foundation using XSLT will allow early adopters of XHTML 2.0 to offer
an enhanced user experience to early adopters of fully XHTML 2.0-aware
browsers. (The existence of cross-platform open-source browsers, plus
the presence of major browser companies on the WG, pretty well ensures
that at least some such browsers will in fact come into existence.)

The not-yet-complete XHTML 2.0 draft comprises almost 200 pages of
material. By taking this tutorial, you will have the major new and
deprecated features presented to you in easily digestible form. Although
this is not a tutorial on XForms or XEvents, since XHTML 2.0 uses
these existing W3C specifications, a basic introduction to them will
be provided.

Lastly, because of its fully modular definition, it will be easy
to provide subsets of XHTML 2.0 for use within other document types
to provide rich textual annotations or embedded presentation-ready
material. This tutorial will clearly indicate the module boundaries and
suggest possible modules and sets of modules for adoption into other
document types.