I spent my lunch hour reading through Mike’s brilliantly well written article about the differences between the proposals for both html 5 and xhtml 2.0.
Normally, something like this would not have engaged my full attention, but recently, I have really been trying to touch up on my standards; for reasons that will get explained later. But reading through this, I found myself already seeing the code and putting ideas into place. I’m not going to re-trace the points; you’re better off reading the original. Whilst some ideas are stunning and a complete piece of ‘why was that not thought of earlier’ such as nl list’s for navigation. I cannot see it being a mass migration to new methods.
Let’s be honest, even now, we cannot get all browsers to play friendly and support the elements we have got. Add some more new clever bits in there and I can only see a mess of broken sites; I’m looking at your Internet Explorer!
That said, there are definitely some interesting times ahead, and they will both have their set purpose on and in the inter-webs. The development of these two standards is something to keep an eye on.