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Is there a practical reason to learn xhtml still? Should I learn to make my webpages in xhtml instead of html5 still or does it matter?

maxfielden
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4 Answers4

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If you are new to HTML then you need to learn the fundamentals of HTML first before diving in to HTML5 (which is to some extents still a moving target). Why? Because nearly every web-site, tutorial and example code you will encounter regarding HTML will be written in HTML4 or XHTML. You can only really understand the problems that HTMl5 is addressing by first understanding HTML4 and XHTML.

If you hope to work as a web-developer or designer then you won't be able to avoid encountering "legacy" code - so you need to at least understand it and be comfortable with what it is doing. Unfortunately you'll find that the "web" and "standards" are often two different things - for many years HTML has been a mess because of the way different browsers have interpreted (and often blatantly flaunted) the standards. So, at the very least, you need to be aware of this.

Dan Diplo
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Start with HTML simply and then slowly adopt other variations. HTML is a well-defined language just like XHTML

View already answered question on stackoverflow.com

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/413114/html-vs-xhtml-does-it-still-matter

Community
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Pir Abdul
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"bother" with as much as you can (since you seem to be in the early stages). you only stand to learn more. nothing to lose

Chani
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XHTML has always been an invalid choice to start with. Essentially no site that advertises it will validate anyway, and the rare that do almost never serve the correct header.

Serve good old HTML 4.01, or HTML 5.

Denis de Bernardy
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