title: Do ampersands still need to be encoded in URLs in HTML5?
body: <p>I learned recently (from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/3705591/254830">these</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/8874706/254830">questions</a>) that at some point it was advisable to encode ampersands in <em>href</em> parameters. That is to say, instead of writing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="somepage.html?x=1&amp;y=2"&gt;...&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>One should write:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="somepage.html?x=1&amp;amp;y=2"&gt;...&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Apparently, the former example shouldn't work, but browser error recovery means it does.</p>
  
  <h2>Is this still the case in HTML5?</h2>
  
  <p>We're now past the era of draconian XHTML requirements. Was this a requirement of XHTML's strict handling, or is it really still something that I should be aware of as a web developer?</p>