What was surprising was how all of a sudden it seemed that it became open hunting season on insulting developers that used XHTML 1 (which is not XHTML2) and gloating over the corpse of the standard before it had even cooled. As two examples, Henri Sivonen produced an unofficial “Q&A” complete with snark, and Mark Pilgrim invented a taunting childish rhyme that reveled in the folly of those he disagreed with. Pilgrim in his case even named Jeffrey Zeldman directly in his taunts (and got even worse in behavior in his comments on that post.)

This sort of behavior annoys me on two levels. One, it’s not a great way to treat your professional peers, as it crosses the line from attacking a technology to attacking people. Two, it confuses (in some cases intentionally) XHTML and XHTML2, making it seem as if the death of the latter somehow invalidated the former, which isn’t the case at all.

Fortunately, good men didn’t let that sort of behavior slide. John Allsopp rightfully called some of the taunters out for their snark (as recorded in this tweet here), and that became the basis for today’s comic, which imagines a post-apocalyptic world where this sort of poor manners must be corrected by brave warriors in the wasteland.

Also helping correct misconceptions and bad behavior were good posts by Jeremy Keith and Jeffrey Zeldman. If you’re confused about the whole XHTML issue this week, take a look at what they’ve written. It’s instructive.

Was XHTML2′s death a good thing? I don’t know. I do know that we can discuss the technology in a fashion that doesn’t involve insulting the people involved, though. Keep it clean, folks.

Note: I wrote this in about eight minutes at the end of my lunch. As such, it might expand later when I have the chance to be more verbose and thoughtful.

However, today it’s been announced that the W3C’s XHTML2 working group will not be renewed after its charter expires this year, so that the resources can be focused on HTML5.

Considering the editorial bottle-necking the HTML5 spec has (aka, Ian Hickson as the sole editor and a track record for NIH mentality) I’m not sure how much these resources will impact the spec’s maturation speed. However, I am glad that they’re making this move as everyone and his cousin agrees that HTML5 is important, even if they’re not quite sure how/if it works.

In particular, I found John Allsopp’s recent tweets about HTML5 to be a very interesting look at the spec’s current status (here’s an example), which gives me the impression it needs all the help it can get to reach a stable state.

Speaking of help, I wanted to mention HTML5 Doctor, brought to you by snogtastic Bruce Lawson, Rich Clark, Jack Osborne, Mike Robinson, Remy Sharp and Tom Leadbetter. Got a HTML5 question? They’re here to help! (No, really, they’re really helpful.)