Difference Between HTML & XHTML

XHTML comes with some changes as compared to HTML, It is an Extended version of HyperText Markup Language with the features of XML. Let us understand comparison of HTML and XHTML in detail.

What is XHTML?

XHTML is defined as  Extensible HyperText Markup Language, It is a stricter and more XML (EXtensible Markup Language) application version of HTML.

  • XHTML was developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
  • XHTML is strict with error handling it does not allow users to get away with lapses in coding and structure.

Using XHTML

There are several benefits for developers to write code in XHTML. It is used to make the code well-formed and does not ignore errors of the code and renders it to the website like in HTML.

  • XHTML is considered as a better extension of HTML. and the latest version is XHTML 5.
  • It uses XML markup language which is relatively easy to introduce new elements or additional element attributes.
  • You can easily maintain, edit, convert, and format your document in the long run.

As we have learned HTML in detail, so now let’s discuss some important changes in XHTML.

1. The declaration of <!DOCTYPE >in XHTML is must required for all the document .
xmlns attribute in <html> is mandatory and must specify the xml namespace for the document with required elements <html>, <head>, <title>, and <body> .

Example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"  
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">  
  <head>  
    <title>content title </title>  
  </head>  
  <body>  
    use of XHTML   
  </body>  
  </html>

2. XHTML requires that there be an end tag to every start tag and all nested tags must be closed in the right order and all,

Example:

    <b><p>This is a paragraph one</p>
<p>This is paragraph two</p></b>

3. Empty tag in XHTML  must always be closed by including a slash before the end of the tag.

Example:

<img src="/home/aman/Desktop/frames/sd.png"alt="codedec logo" />

4. XHTML documents have only one root element and all the Tags and Attributes must be lowercase elements.

 <body>
<p>This is a example</p>
<a href="https://codedec.com/course/step-by-step-html-tutorial/"> HTML tutorial on codedec</a> 
</body>

5. XHTML Attribute value must always be surrounded by quotation marks.

<td rowspan="5">

 6. XHTML forbids Attribute minimization as such attribute-value pairs must be written in full.

<option selected="selected">

Difference Between HTML & XHTML

S.NO                           HTML                           XHTML
  1. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. XHTML stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language.
  2. It is an extended application from SGML. It is an extended application from XML.
  3. File extension are .html, .htm Filename extension are .xhtml, .xht, .xml.
  4. Document file format. Markup Language format.
  5. developed by Tim Berners-Lee  and w3c in 1987. It was developed by World Wide Web Consortium.in 2000.
  6. Closing the  tags is not necessary. Closing the tags is neccesary.
  7. It has a Flexible framework  It is Restrictive subset of XML.
  8. Doctype is not necessary Doctype is necessary on the top of the document.
  9. all tags and attributes are not required to be lowercase. every tag and attribute must be lower case.
  10. HTML versions are HTML 2, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, HTML 5. XHTML versions are  1, XHTML 1.1, XHTML 2, XHTML 5.