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HTML vs XHTML

XHTML enforces strict rules on traditional HTML.

Read Time

5 min read

Difficulty

Beginner

Last Updated

Jun 15, 2026

Version

v1.0.0

Introduction

XHTML is a stricter version of HTML based on XML. It forces developers to close every tag and nest elements perfectly. Modern web development prefers HTML5 due to its flexibility and rich features.

Syntax

1<!-- xhtml strictness -->
2<br />

Example

1<!-- this shows strict XHTML -->
2<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
3<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
4  <head>
5    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
6    <title>XHTML</title>
7  </head>
8  <body>
9    <p>All tags must close.</p>
10  </body>
11</html>

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Hands-on Practice

Modify the code below to see how it affects the output. This is the best way to learn!

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Key Points

XHTML requires perfectly closed tags.
HTML5 allows more relaxed syntax.
XHTML demands lowercase tag names.
HTML5 replaced XHTML as the standard.

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