XHTML

       XHTML was born January 26, 2000, as a combination of HTML and XML. HTML was at the time the standard for making documents for www. And XML was a new standard, that made tests for correctness easier, i.e. Despite the extra X, the suffix is the same for these documents - .html - e.g. ship.html.
       The abbreviation means eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. Extensible - you can extend the group of legal XHTML tags by inventing and using your own. HyperText - this is the ability to jump from one document to another - across machine and country borders. This was one of the ground breaking abilities, that originally made www so popular. Markup - XHTML has tags, that mark how the content should be interpreted and shown - this is called markup. Language - well, some call XHTML a programming language, some don't. Personally I call it a formatting language.
       Originally XHTML was supposed to win and become a part of the browsers, so the advantages of the new standard could be had. This hasn't happened yet - the browsers will still happily show "anything", and many (myself included) still don't write valid XHTML.
       The easiest way to get a home page is to construct one or more XHTML documents, and then place them on a webserver.

Concept last updated: 09/09 2003.