Straigth into the topic: within the W3C there is work in progress in two separate successors for HTML4.x / XHTML1.x: XHTML 2.0 bids for a revolutionary and entirely breaking approach, redefining the language from zero as an XML application. HTML 5, on the other hand, takes an incremental approach bidding for backwards compatibility and homogeneus error handling. If you ask Google, it spits out roughly 80k answers to the issue in less than half a second (fortunatelly, you can check only those that appeal you, and you can take as long as you want to review them ) Whatever happens there, it will surely affect us, the webmasters. And what a better place to discuss the topic that at Webmaster World? Basic guidelines: this is mostly common sense, but I think some points should be stated out. This is a debate, not some sort of exam: feel free to say what you think and, especially, why do you think so. There is no goal of achieving any "consensus" or common ground, the only goal is to gather as many opinions as possible, so we all end up with a bigger picture of the whole topic. This is a debate, not a battlefield: this topic is already polarizing in several sectors, and a debate like this might start heating up as soon as there are a few members on each side. I think it's worth to remind here the point 14 of the ToS: 14. Please keep your language clean and decent. This include personal inflammatory language as well as obscenities. As a general suggestion: if the discussion is too heated, preview your posts and read them; then decide whether to hit "Submit" or go to take a cold shower and rewrite the post afterwards. This is not a competition: it's unlikely that we will be changing anything from this thread, so don't get obsessed. There are no winers and losers in this debate: if we end up with a deeper understanding of the goings-on of the process then we all win; if we end up with everybody being upset or angry, or we manage to get this thread blocked due to uncivilized behaviour, then we all lose. In summary, try to exercise your freedom of opinion and speech, and make your best to respect these freedoms' of others. Ready? GO!