The World Wide Web Consortium states four reason in their introduction to XHTML 1.0 that are there to explain the benefits for moving the XHTML
- XHTML documents are XML conforming. As such, they are readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools.
- XHTML documents can be written to operate as well or better than they did before in existing HTML 4-conforming user agents as well as in new, XHTML 1.0 conforming user agents.
- XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object Model or the XML Document Object Model [DOM].
- As the XHTML family evolves, documents conforming to XHTML 1.0 will be more likely to interoperate within and among various XHTML environments.
They’re very good reasons but are written from a considerably higher view than I would take. XHTML 1.0 should be migrated to in every possible case.
That’s it, really. Because of the wholesale adoption of XHTML on the web, and the focus on web standards we are starting to see the Semantic Web take shape.
The content can now contain microformats that make it easier to push and pull information. Even if the page is structured without use of the microformats themselves, the use XHTML still allows other people to more easily set up scraping utilities to get information from your site if you neglect to provide feeds or other methods for accessing the data programmatically.
Jon Hicks and Drew Mclellan and Ben Ward have all been proposing ways in which the UI could represent and allow for interaction with and management of certain microformats. Drew Mclellan is also putting up tools that allow for better use of these microformats with some help from existing tools. It must be said, though, that his tools are still fairly high-level and will not yet end up affecting the average user. The UI enhancements and uses being put forth are more likely to be things that will start to affect the average user.
Another project rose that shows the power that might be possible through XML, the FOAF project. The thing about FOAF is that it is just a cool idea, but has yet to be implemented reasonably anywhere. Places that could use it and actually output it into a reasonable web do not (MySpace, Friendster, Monster, LinkedIn, Facebook, et. al.). Of course, if these sites provide this sort of information and file, they make their data a little too portable in their eyes, I would imagine.
While I enjoy XHTML for these tools and technologies, I love it more for it’s ability to greatly ease problems and browser differences when dealing with stylesheets.
