Wow, I didn’t see this coming. Zeldman reports that the W3C is not going to renew the XHTML 2 working group‘s charter this year. That effectively kills XHTML 2 in favor of devoting the resources to the HTML 5 working group.

This makes sense in that HTML 5 is already gaining traction, and we’ve seen lots of talk in the web community about switching back to HTML, but I never expected to see development halted like this.

“W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML.”

Nice to know that the W3C is clearly picking a side and throwing their support behind one product, though.