I will be back with more questions when I get a chance to study this a little (Gary this is the bomb! 
- ok that’s dated, but I’m excited.)
What was different about running XHTML on your intranet than HTML? I’ve never had the pleasure so I’m interested in what new things you were actually able to do and what was different about dealing with “real” XHTML vs. the fake stuff you usually see.
Was excited to use the figure/legend pairing but even Firefox 3.5 doesn’t like it too much.
Should also add that I am currently reading this thread on Netscape 9. I do also have Firefox and Chrome open at the moment…
Sorry about the delay, I apparently missed seeing that the thread had been updated,
Using xhtml or xml allows the web page to be treated as a database. Consider if you had a catalog page with item numbers, prices, available dates, descriptions, etc. How would you mark them up in html? You’re pretty much limited to describing the structure of the data, but not the data itself. XHTML lets you describe new elements that reflect the data in your page. Why wouldn’t you want a <price> tag to describe the price?
By extending the DTD to include new elements and attributes, the customer can request info from your DB and view on a web page. OK, nothing new there, but since everything is semantically marked, it becomes trivial for him to have a script re-arrange the data without respect to structure (as opposed to sorting a table), even comparing items from different structures.
There are microformats being formalized that, in my opinion, are trying to work around the lack of support from MSFT by using element attributes to simulate better semantic values. Microformats lack xhtml/xml’s self describing feature that allows for previously unknown data types (as elements and attributes) to be used by anyone opening the document.
cheers,
gary
Is anyone aware of any simple sites that use HTML5? It would be interesting to view a simple (kinda test) HTML5 site in current web browsers just to see how well they handle HTML5. Any site that uses HTML5 will have to take older browsers into account (especially IE6 & IE7).
Egor Kloos’ site is pretty simple I think.
Something like DutchCelt or CelticDutch dot com… lemme look for it.
He’s using Javascript for IE though.
I am sure there will soon be a proliferation of such pages available that can be used to test Doctypes, Header elements, document structure, etc. (and as test beds for new elements/attributes/constructs) by those wishing to experiment using HTML 5.
And of course If you wish to set up a test/development HTML 5 (XHTML syntax) page of your own, you can use a copy of one of your existing XHTML pages as a template and substitute the following:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
(just substitute the Doctype for HTML pages)
James
No problem, it was worth the wait.
I appreciate the insight, and remember seeing an old article that talked about the value of XML with a very similar example to your <price> tag. But without the pun of course. 
I’ve done work in XML but mainly trying to take data from XML documents and use XSLT to transform that into a webpage. I may have to play around with designing custom tags. I would assume that will mean getting a decent book on XSDs, and if so is there anything you’d recommend?
Sorry double post.
You’re easily amused.
I would assume that will mean getting a decent book on XSDs, and if so is there anything you’d recommend?
As I recall, I found enough info and detail on the web to write the DTD extension.
Be sure xhtml meets your purpose. In my case, it was data added to a rather normal web page. We found the xml/transform route to be overly complex for our needs, while not really appropriate to the documents we produced. By comparison, a site map for Google would be silly as an xhtml page.
Here is a trivial example of an extended DTD.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
[<!ELEMENT booktitle ANY>
<!ELEMENT author ANY>
<!ELEMENT publisher ANY>]>
They can get a bit more complex. Use the W3 xhtml1 DTD as a model. (The ANY is a keyword that you’d use only in the loosest description.)
cheers,
gary
Ive been using HTML 5 and it is wonderful!!!
I just want to say, nice article but it misses some very important points.
If you create a HTML 5 page you lose support of most CSS2.1 and CSS3 selectors in IE.
Note Combinators are enabled only in standards-compliant mode (strict !DOCTYPE).
Note Attribute Selectors are not supported in Web pages that are displayed in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 document mode (also known as “Quirks” mode). To use attribute selectors, add a !DOCTYPE directive that specifies a standard-based document. For more information, see Defining Document Compatibility.
So you lose support for: +, >, foo[x=“y”] CSS.
I’m afraid you’re mistaken. <!doctype html> triggers standards mode in IE exactly like a “strict” doctype.