W3C to drop XHTML 2 in favour of HTML 5

XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5

The W3C announced yesterday that they plan to allow the XHTML 2 Working Group charter to expire and put the remaining available resources into developing HTML 5.

It also appears the W3C plan to leave XHTML 1.* where it is and end further development, again in favour of HTML 5:

The expectation is that HTML 5 will define the next generation XML serialization of HTML. Therefore, W3C does not at this time plan to allocate resources to the maintenance of XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.1 Basic, and XHTML Print beyond the current round of revisions. W3C does not plan to revise the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation.

Unsurprisingly for some I am pleased to see this happen. Thanks to lack of support from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer proper XHTML was little more than a myth. Furthmore XHTML 2 was never really going anywhere, HTML 5 is already being implemented by browser vendors and some developers have started using it in their work.