W3C resumes HTML development

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Consortium has officially confirmed the resumption of HTML development. Presumably, the new version of the key Internet standard will appear by 2010, and any interested user of the network can take part in creating HTML5 - the working group currently being formed will be as open as possible.
The specification of the next version of HTML (presumably, the fifth one) will take into account the long-term developments of the WHAT WG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, hypertext applications web technology working group), in particular, the Web Apps 1.0 specification. HTML5, while maintaining backward compatibility with the previous version, will bring clear rules for processing old HTML content and a number of new relevant features, with the ability to use XHTML to process new web content.

Some skeptics call the resumption of HTML development a “return to the stone age”: in their opinion, shifting accents from XHTML to HTML will complicate parser programs and will encourage developers to carelessly. The fact is that the strict XHTML syntax disciplines developers, preventing them from making mistakes in the layout: an unclosed tag will cause the browser to display not an page, but an error message. When processing HTML, the browser has to correct the "misunderstandings" and mistakes of the layout maker, which causes "different readings" of pages by different browsers.