RSSOver on the XHTML Reference site, the differences of upcoming, competing standards X/HTML 5 and XHTML 2 are explained.
Some select highlights from 'What's Cool about X/HTML 5':
The input element is enhanced to support email, url, date-related, time-related, and numeric data types. This means more validation can occur on the client instead of on the server.
The development process for X/HTML 5 is more open than for XHTML 2. Everyone is welcome to participate on the X/HTML 5 mailing list.
Some select highlights from 'What's Cool about XHTML 2':
Navigation lists are designed to create navigation menus. Navigation lists are defined using an nl element and must contain a label element that contains the title for the list. For example:
<nl><label>You are here:</label><li href="/">Home</li><li href="/products/">Products</li><li href="/products/widget/">Widget</li><li>Features</li></nl>
Any element can be an HREF! An href attribute can be added to any element to transform it into a hyperlink. For example:
<q href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong">That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind</q>
It's exciting to see where this is going, however, as with any big standard upgrade such as these two competing technologies (like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), this type of rollout will take a significant amount of time, even if IE 7.5/8 rolled it out quickly. This technology will have to be on a number of machines before (non-elitist) designers will begin to adapt it for a wider audience.
One of the biggest signs of these two competing technologies are the developer's openness to discussion and forum. The developers of X/HTML 5 are open, allowing free discussion and suggestions, while XHTML 2 are not.
I'd encourage any of you tech folk to read the writeup on XHTML.com.
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I love hearing about new standards and their tasty new features, but like you said, its years before you can start using those new features.
I like some of the features, the tag-agnostic href will certainly come in handy. However, some proposals seem like the Web 2.0 nazis were unleashed on the standard. I totally understand depreciating the b, i, small, big, font, etc. tags, but totally eliminating them is a little extreme.
Flash seems to be more of an exception to that rule. New versions seem to roll out quickly, thanks to high profile websites, such as Agencynet's, that promote the upgrades. I thought it was fantastic when MySpace forced an upgrade to v9 to all their users. Huge websites like that may become an unexpected ally to us designers because of that.