The evolution of HTML

Today, on the IBM website, I saw a article about XHTML 2.0, the future of HTML, and some feelings.

XHTML 1.0 plays a role in transitioning HTML to XML, while XHTML 2.0 's main evolution occurs in XForm, Web APIs, semantics, device compatibility, and the use of scripts that replace portions of HTML upgrades. XHTML 2.0 is still the Working Draft of the current consortium, and to become a recommendation, it is at least 2007 years, according to the article. At that time, due to the plethora of new features introduced by XHTML 2.0, the extent to which the browser vendor support is bound to vary (it appears that Gecko's support for the HTML & XForm standard is ahead, while Khtml's support for new CSS features goes In the front), and on the other hand is the learning curve of the practitioner, so the characteristics discussed in the article are not possible to see large-scale applications within 5-10 years. However, there is already a browse x-smiles (PR i orz for this site) that can be initially parsed for XHTML 2.0, and may be tested when thinking of a mature application model.

HTML is really getting more complex. Recently, I tried out two very good software products, one is Apple IWeb, and the other is Sun Java Studio Creator 2. If you want to say the similarity between the two products, although they are used to "do the site", but the actual opportunity to write HTML is almost no, in IWeb drag & drop will produce very good browser compatibility code to build very beautiful personal site, while in Java Studio Creator 2, drag & drop can also accomplish many very complex interface implementations.

So, I see a trend from which, as HTML evolves more and more complex, the best way to derive the benefits from such evolution is to use higher-order tools to generate HTML instead of the handwriting I'm using. So, in the future, familiarity with the Xhtml/xform/web API will be a special skill for a few, and these skills will be available in the following areas.

Create a tool like IWeb

Optimize HTML template or optimize template engine

Be geeky

So, for my own present situation. I think the next thing I should do is as follows.

Read through the Working Draft of XHTML 2.0 and CSS 3.0 of the Consortium

Be familiar with Mozilla's extensions for HTML and CSS

If possible, read the entire source code for an Open-source browser this year, and then do some hacking based on your own understanding of the document.