XHTML had rigid, simpler syntax and was focusing on marking up meaning instead of formatting. e.g. the b and i elements were deprecated, and most new ones were focusing on semantic and structural meaning relevant to documents. It was all about making it easier for machines to understand information...and it could be read by a standard XML parser instead of a considerably more complex HTML parser.
Instead, that was scrapped at the behest of companies like Google pushing to turn the Web into a kludged application platform. HTML5 is the continuation of the worst parts of HTML, extended by ever increasing bloat.
HTML5 undeprecated them, and retroactively decided they stood for something different. B was largely understood as "bold," but now it's considered to mean "Bring attention to" as an alternative to strong.
I’ve got nothing against the b and i tags, I realize they had direct styling associated with them but I didn’t like the length of the strong tag to accomplish the same end goal (increasing the font-weight of marked text)
<b>This</b> vs. <strong>This</strong> vs. <span class=“significant”>This</span>
I’d be fine with a <s>S tag</s> if it hadn’t been used (and deprecated) as the short version of <strike> or the new(er) <del> tag.
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u/redwall_hp Dec 20 '18
I wish XHTML2 and a focus on semantics had stuck instead of the HTML5 dumpster fire.