The future of markup
A series of three articles published by xhtml.com recently came to my attention. They provide good background and great discussion about the future of markup as we know it. They're talking to guys in the know, so listen up.
First the good, bad, and ugly of XHTML 2 and HTML 5 are discussed. Then the two formats are compared head to head in some good detail (with really lame "cool!" comments after every point).
XHTML 2 has my vote. Keep it strict, put the hammer down! It's an investment were making in the future. As with any investment there's a certain amount of principal that must be paid up front. Yes, about 90% of the web would break. 10% would recover quickly. Another 10% would follow within a year. The other 70% is crap, so consider XHTML 2 to be the proverbial garbage man (or "sanitation engineer" 'cause these days everyone's an engineer).
What excites me about most, other than being strict XML, is the <section> and <nl> tags. Sections will help to prevent things like this from happening, where <h1>'s are used for every header, both in the body and in the navigation (that is 9 times, Google). NL, or Navigation List will be used on literally every website. Almost everyone uses a list as their nav structure now, even when its not the best option.