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XHTML 2.0 Drafted

C/C++ Developer (NYC)
Next Step Systems
US-NY-New York

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Links on many elements

For convenience, the XHTML 2.0 spec introduces special "attribute collections," or groupings af attributes, and applies these groupings to the individual element definitions (in addition to any element specific attributes). The main collection of attributes is called the "Common Attribute Collection," and itself is applied to the majority of elements defined in the specification. Since this Common Attribute Collection includes the attributes of the "Hypertext Attribute Collection," most elements can now make use of link attributes, such as href. This will shorten constructs like:

<h3><a href="#products">Products</a><h3>

to the more concise:

<h3 href="#products">Products<h3>

Objects everywhere

The object tag becomes the universal identifier for non-HTML content, img and applet are deprecated in XHTML 2.0. A type attribute specifies the nature of the referenced object, be it an image, Java applet, ActiveX control, or plug-in data like an SVG graph.

<applet class="Foo.class" archive="foo.jar"><param name="foo" value="bar"/></applet>
<img src="foo.jpg" alt="A foo" />

Although I am not sure about the MIME type for Java Archives (JARs), this would become:

<object data="Foo.class" archive="foo.jar" type="application/x-jar"></objectt>
<object data="foo.jpg" type="image/jpeg">A foo</object>

New stuff

One major addition to XHTML 2.0 is proposed:

Navigation lists

A new type of list is introduced besides the ordered, unordered and definition lists: The navigation list. It is a structure that is usually mimicked by a combination of unordered lists with anchor tags:

<nl>
  <name>Company<name>
  <li href="#history">History</li>
  <li>
    <nl>
      <name>Products</name>
      <li href="#sssd">Supersonic Screwdriver</li>
      <li>...<li>
    </nl>
  </li>
</nl>

This concludes our preview tour of the second version of XHTML for now. As is usually the case for a first draft, lots of things might get changed or amended during the review process. Don't hesitate to comment on the mailing list if you feel so inclined!


Produced by Michael Claßen

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URL: http://www.webreference.com/xml/column61/2.html
Created: Aug 21, 2002
Revised: Aug 21, 2002