xhtml, did i hear wrong?

A few months ago, someone told me that xhtml, implemented xml, to make it easier to make dynamic websites. I went online and searched for some tutorials on basic xhtml, and i got quite a few. When i read them, all they mentioned was that xhtml has much sticter guidelines,and what they were. Is this all to xhtml? I know that now since, it is requiered to do formatting in css, html will be a lot cleaner, and will be easier to edit content. Also browers in small devices will be easier to fit into small amounts of memory, but is this really all there is to the "next big thing." To me it seems like just a new verison of html(w. lots of stuff depricated), and it isnt as powerful as i expected it to be. Am i missing something here or is that all there is to it?

well, it depends how you look at it.. from some angle, it is not really "the next big thing", but from the the other point of view, it is "the greatest thing since sliced bread".. ;)

there are couple of more adventages to xhtml.
1) style is separated from the content. you (designer) can change the looks of the page, without touching the HTML (and that measn often PHP) code. also, the code itself is smaller/simpler..
2) parsing of xhtml is easier. you can parse it (like any xml) from php, and manipulate. very handy in some situations..
3) since it is xml, you can embed other xml formats in it. so, for example, you can have an inline SVG (xml vector graphics format) picture in your xhtml document, and if the browser is capable of rendering it, it will show a picture in your document, without external files needed..

etc..

Wow, i looked around and this svg is amazing, its like flash in xml. Too bad its not incorperated into many browsers. I had to download the adobe plugin for sgv. Its mentioned a lot in w3c.org. Will it be something that becomes standard for all browsers, or will adobe try to keep control of it. I hope it doesnt become like flash with the plugins and stuff. This seems like something i want to know how to use, do you have any recomendations for a good svg book. is there one that will completely cover all of sgv or is it too complex for that?

no, adobe _did_ invent svg, but it gave it to the w3c, and it is a w3c recommendation now, so it is considered to be a standard..

as to wheather all browsers accept it, i wouldn't know..

btw, i didn't learn from the book, but from the specs/examples.. also, i think that there are a couple of editors for svg (google it), and at least two of them free/oss: Sodipodi and Inkscape..