So, what do folks here use?<p>I was a fan of XHTML for a while, largely because it made it easier to use XML tools to verify my documents. But that became a non-issue as HTML parsing tools (specifically what I could use in Ruby tools while developing) got better.<p>I wasn't serving my pages as application/xml, and on consideration of what Ian Hickson wrote (<a href="http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml" rel="nofollow">http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml</a>) I went back to using HTML 4.<p>I'm puzzled by suggestions to use HTML 5. it seems a peculiar reversal from the "design with Web 'standards'" mantra. It's not a W3C recommendation, it's still a draft.<p>If XHTML is not working out as planned, why not use HTML 4.0.1, a current W3C rec that works?
<i>This was in 2000-2003. With the gift of hindsight we know now that XML was not the future</i><p>Some people at the time tried (un)common-sense. Fortunately they took the trouble to whack the ... erm, "rough edges" out of the fashionable groupthink (e.g. <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/01/14/thought_experiment" rel="nofollow">http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/01/14/thought_experime...</a> ).<p>Thanks to them, we now seem on the way to HTML5, which I agree it looks like a good idea.