A couple of news items that signal trends in the way the web will evolve:
Internet Explorer has lost a significant amount of market share recently. This is good news in a couple of ways. First, it signals growing diversity among web browsers, and the people who use them. This strengthens the concept of web standards, and encourages design that is browser agnostic. The other way in which this is good news is that IE6 use has dropped below 10% and IE7 is heading that way as well. Internet Explorer 8 is superior to either one, and it is great to see people upgrading. There are also many fantastic browsers not made by Microsoft, including Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, and Opera. Whichever you choose (and why limit yourself to just one?), make sure you are using the most current version. Otherwise the only thing you aren’t missing out on is the security problems.
XHTML 2 will disappear at the end of this year. That I think this is good might surprise those who know that I have been designing using versions of the XHTML standard since around 2005. I like the separation of content from design, and some of the features of XHTML 2 look fantastic. However, I think HTML 5 is going to take the internet by storm, and it is better to incorporate as many of the good features of XHTML 2 in HTML 5, eliminate the problematic issues, and let one standard guide the design of general web pages. This requires that HTML 5 be as good as it looks. I have high hopes for it.
