Web 2.0 Applications and Solutions

The challenge with today’s Web is that it is not the same
place created in the 1990s. The W3C tried addressing the evolution
of the HTML standard with a new, updated standard called
XHTML 2.0. The contributing vendors did not warmly accept
the technology standard and a subsequent standard, HTML5,
developed by the Web Hypertext Application Technology
Working Group (WHATWG), is now in active development. The
result is XHTML 2.0 has died on the vine, and all of the major
technology companies, including Microsoft, are pledging to
support HTML5.
Overall, all web browsers have adopted the HTML4 standard.
Web site development can now be easily accomplished
using tools such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s
Expression Web. But, it has taken a decade to get here.
Arguably, Microsoft is the company that has been the weakest
in supporting Web HTML standards with their Internet
Explorer. It is only with the release of Internet Explorer 8 that
Microsoft was compliant with HTML4—a full 12 years after the
standard was published.
New web browsers (Apple’s Safari, Opera Web Browser,
Google’s Chrome, and Mozilla’s FireFox) and new Web-enabled
devices (Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, Palm’s Pre, and RIM’s
BlackBerry) are pushing what can be done on the Web. Each of
these competitive companies agrees on one thing: HTML5 is the
next standard, and they are already supporting it.