I think XHTML failed because it didn't give web devs any new capabilities, so most didn't feel the need to learn it and do the extra work of getting their tags correct.
replyThen html5 came along, providing all kinds of shiny goodies and saying not to bother with the tags. In the end, a more rigid standard would have been nice.. (Though this is mostly about the skin deep part of the standards.)
That is not how I remember it (for a data point of one shop in New England during the time): we embraced it because of the binary validation under multiple theories. There was a strong suggestion valid html did better from an SEO perspective, so we could sell that, a suggestion browsers would be less buggy with properly formed xhtml and a number of theories about what the future held for bots and scrapers to be able to easily ingest and parse your content (seen as a good thing then).
replyIt failed because the smallest error by a client after the fact was like a server crash. Plus it would have created a mild barrier to entry when learning html at all.
> I think XHTML failed because it didn't give web devs any new capabilities,
replyand what new capabilities does this new proposal provide?
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