Does anyone know if I can head directly for XHTML without learning HTML?
Is there a difference?

You can go right into XHTML and skip HTML... the two are very similar (XHTML should be roughly compatible with HTML but it does not really work the other way).

There are differences since XHTML is more strict since it has to conform to and XML schema but in the end they all sort of form a amorphous blob of tags. People often write HTML say things like "HTML can be passed though XSLT" -- which may or may not be true, but what they should say is "XHTML can be passed though XSLT" since HTML is sloppy and allows people to do sloppy things that will confuse a XSLT parser (you can still do it, but it is really aggrivating and generally has to be done on a case-by-case basis where as XHTML is far far far easier to work with).

Since it would seem that XHTML is more likely the future of HTML I would not worry too much about learning HTML (which in the end you will just begin to see as sloppy XHTML).

There's an online validator for (X)HTML by the way.

(More aimed at the OP.)

This post has been edited by Tom9729: 14 Aug, 2008 - 07:33 PM

I agree with the rest of your post and I do agree with the idea that learning XHTML is better for now, but they are working on HTML 5 as well as XHTML 2 so in the future HTML should be better than it is now. But this makes little difference to the choice of learning as if you know XHTML you should be able to code in HTML with minor changes.

If you don't mind me asking, why would you skip to XHTML anyway?

In a basic sense, XHTML is HTML that conforms to the syntax rules of XML, whereas HTML conforms to the syntax rules to SGML. That is the main difference. This means that XHTML can be parsed by XML parsers, whereas plain HTML usually cannot (as XML requires single tags to be written like <tag/>, so <tag> would make an XML parser generate an error. Also, I believe it gets rid of the <p> special case (it doesn't have to have an end tag, even though it's really an element that contains text).

XHTML can be manipulated by XSLT, whereas plain HTML usually cannot.

It is all about compatibility. Normal codes will not work when a internet user is surfing from his mobile(or other GPRS). To provide a global standard and compatibility, XHTML was used.

To completely learn about web-developing, visit www.w3schools.com