After a simple query from a colleague about the differences between HTML versions, I wrote this. I thought I might as well post it. Everything was from-memory, so there may be some minor errors.<\/p>\n
HTML 1 never existed (it was the informal “standard” that the first documentation implied).<\/p>\n
HTML 2 was a really minimal initial description of the language. The language was simple because the initial goals were simple. The browser makers made many de facto<\/i> extensions to this by implementing random stuff.<\/p>\n
HTML 3 was an abandoned attempt to standardize everything and the kitchen sink. HTML 3.2 was a really ugly standard that was basically “here’s what browsers accept today.”<\/p>\n
Which brings us to modern history…<\/p>\n
HTML 4 was an attempt to clean up the language: get rid of the visual stuff and make HTML a semantic markup language again. It included the transitional version (with most of the old ugly stuff) and strict version (as things should be).<\/p>\n
HTML 4.01 was a minor change: missed errors and typos.<\/p>\n
XHTML 1.0 is HTML 4.01 but with XML syntax: closing empty tags with the slash, everything lowercase, attribute values quotes, etc.<\/p>\n
XHTML 1.1 contains some minor changes, but was abandoned in a practical sense because nobody saw any point to the change. XHTML 2.0 was another very ambitious change (non-backwards compatible changes to the language) that was abandoned.<\/p>\n
HTML 5 is in-progress of being standardized now. If you ask me, there are two camps driving it. One who thinks “the web is more about more than just simple web pages now: applications and interactivity rule the day” and another who thinks “closing our tags is too hard; I don’t understand what a doctype is: make it easier. Dur.”<\/p>\n
As a result, there are some things I like and some things I don’t. I is showing signs of something that will actually be completed and used (unlike HTML 3 and XHTML 2).<\/p>\n
Most people don’t know that the HTML 5 standard includes an XHTML version as well. It will be perfectly legal to write HTML 5 with the XML syntax and call it “XHTML 5”.<\/p>\n
Addendum: The moral of the story is that I have no intention of teaching HTML 5 anywhere until the standards process is done. For 165 I also need real browser support: no JS\/DOM hack to get IE to work, and some defaults in the system stylesheet to let the thing display reasonably without any CSS applied. Even then I will probably teach X<\/strong>HTML 5 because I think it promotes the right habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a simple query from a colleague about the differences between HTML versions, I wrote this. I thought I might as well post it. Everything was from-memory, so there may be some minor errors. HTML 1 never existed (it was the informal “standard” that the first documentation implied). HTML 2 was a really minimal initial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}