The Evolution of HTML

I think we can all agree that HTML is fairly basic in syntax, it can do some pretty nifty things which is relevant (i still think the <marquee> tag is really handy). But it's flexibility is suddenly dwarfed by other languages such as:

• XHTML
• XML
• PHP / MySQL
• ASP
• JavaScript

Is there anything that HTML can do, or any way that it can transform to compete on any kind of level with the other languages?

Personally, I think not. But I'm a pessimist.

HTML is not ment to be any kind of dynamic language.

Standardisation with things like XHTML and XML will only help websites look accurate in every browser that supports the standards.

Good points, but is HTML fulfilling it's potential (would have been a better first question).

Do you see it being able to do more than it currently is doing?

No.
HTML 4.01 was to be the last update on standards of HTML.
HTML wil go no further, the standards are moving in towards cleaner and more efficient coding, in XML and XHTML.
HTML has fulfilled its potential, most elements can be style with the usage of CSS and efficient markup, rather than <font> tags, <bold> tags, and the such like.
So yes, HTML Has fulfilled its potential, clean markup is the new future. And it cannot be compared to programming such as php and asp.

Isn't the marquee tag a propriety tag, though? If I'm not mistaken, it would only work on IE based browsers.

If I were to categorize the languages you mentioned, this is how I would do it:
+ Markup languages +
- XHTML
- XML

+ Dynamic +
- Server side -
-- PHP
-- ASP
- Client side -
-- JavaScript
+ Querying languages +
- MySQL

Each of these categories are meant to do different things specifically so it would be wrong to generally compare one category with the other.

XHTML is the new HTML. HTML became a very messy language, very different from what it was inteded to be.
Initially, all SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language; X/HTML is a sub-class of this) branches was mostly meant to hold data in an organized manner, that is why there are all those header tags, and div tags and paragraph tags, etc. But during the browser wars, in order to make their browsers "better" they introduced various styling elements like <b>, <i>, etc. All of them style the page but don't have a semantic meaning. This is why you're supposed to use CSS instead of formatting tags because X/HTML is meant to only hold data in an organized manner.

I don't know how much further X/HTML can go...but with CSS3, we should be able to do some pretty cool things but nothing dynamic really sicne X/HTML isn't meant for that.

Exactly, categorize as theyt are meant to be categorized, each can do their own thing.

but html can turn into a dynamic language but the whole backend running the servers etc would have to be completly re-written.

Originally Posted by mxadam but html can turn into a dynamic language but the whole backend running the servers etc would have to be completly re-written.

But then any language can be made a dynamic language if it was rewritten

That will never happen, though.

HTML doesn't really have anywhere it can go, it's not a programming language but a mark-up. I'm sure there will be improvements here and there like the evolution of xhtml, tableless coding and css but as for html being able to actually turn into a dynamic language and perform calculations, never.

Originally Posted by Robson HTML doesn't really have anywhere it can go, it's not a programming language but a mark-up. I'm sure there will be improvements here and there like the evolution of xhtml, tableless coding and css but as for html being able to actually turn into a dynamic language and perform calculations, never.

That's exactly the way to put it
Except tables aren't a bad thing, it's just that people use it for the wrong things such as holding images on a layout and that makes it wrong because it's misused.