Is there a new html standard?

For example: <br />

[budbiss]

I've been seeing alot of tags formatted like this recently, is this the new way of doing things? If so, what are the advantages? Are their any drawbacks (ex: imcompatibility with older browsers possibly)?

[RammsteinNicCage]

That is XHTML [w3.org].

Jennifer

[vkaryl]

xhtml. I guess you could call it the "coming future of the language"....

[Mohamed_E]

XHTML requires all tags to be closed. So you need to say:

<p>this is a paragraph of text</p>

rather than simply:

<p>this is a paragraph of text

Now some tags, like the <br> tag, do not have any content. Rather than write:

<br></br>

you use the simpler syntax:

[pre]<br />[/pre]

How useful is XHTML versus HTML? Here is a recent thread [webmasterworld.com].

[budbiss]

Thanks for the replies...I kinda like the idea...it seems to make more sense. I'm going to check out the links you all posted right now.