snookie - 1:11 pm on May 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

Short answer: it adds complexity yet delivers zero benefits.

Well, I'd say that's hard to quantify. The principle of nesting tags "correctly" is something you should be doing when writing HTML 4 anyhow - think about styling things using CSS.

As for the mime type issues can someone show me a real scenario where this is a problem.

How many people are using XHTML 1? A quick - and possibly unrepresentative - poll of the top 10 sites for the search term "MP3 Player" on the google revealed 8/10 sites prefer XHTML (strict/transitional). how stuff works do need to check their code though...

Is it too easy to break. Yes, but it's easy to break C++ or whatever... But I guess the answer to that is publishing on the web should be easy for everyone. So let's make decent tools for people to use then. Or has that been done already?

Don't get me wrong though. HTML 5 looks good! Some great ideas. I've no intention of starting a HTML 5 vs XHTML 1 feud!