Head First HTML with CSS

I don’t get it. We changed
the DOCTYPE and added a couple
of new attributes, but the rest of
this example is totally like HTML
4.01. So, what’s the big deal?
This is going to sound very anticlimatic, but
XHTML is XML while HTML is, well, just
HTML. The big distinction may be difficult for
you to see at first glance, but the reason XML
is a good thing (and the reason the W3C and
others have gone to all the trouble of creating
XHTML, when they already had HTML) is that
once your pages are written in XHTML, all sorts
of things become possible that aren’t possible
with HTML. (You’ll get a feel for some of those
things in just a sec).
There’s another way to look at this: the
differences between HTML and XHTML can
all be seen on the previous page. You’ve got a
new DOCTYPE, and some minor changes to
attributes and the way you write empty elements.
These small changes are all that is required to
turn your HTML into XHTML.
Now that you know that moving to XHTML is
so easy, it’s time for you to get a better idea of
what it gets you.
moving to xhtml
you are here 269