Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What Is XML And What Can It Do For Me?

By Brad Jenkins

XML has actually become very popular these days and is used in many sites for many reasons. Anyone who is into web design or programming should probably learn about XML and how to use it. So what can XML do for you and what is XML anyway?

XML is used in many websites, especially large ones. It means Extensible Markup Language and serves as the foundation for several languages, such as XHTML and RSS.

XML code itself does not do anything. It is plain text that is used for transporting and storing data. It cannot replace HTML, but it does work well with it, since HTML can be used to display the information carried by the XML document.

Many websites use XML to make updating their sites easier. For example, let's say you have designed a website about cooking and new recipes are added daily. You could go through the HTML code and edit it each time you wanted to update the site, or you could integrate XML into your site and update a text file that works with your HTML instead.

To use XML effectively, you should have a basic understanding of both HTML and JavaScript. If you don't already, there are many websites that will help you learn XML, HTML, and JavaScript together.

In HTML, the tags are predefined. For instance, a specific tag means line break in HTML and you must always use that tag when you want to insert a line break. However, when you use XML, you define your own tags. For example, if we are making a website about cooking and are updating our recipes, then we probably want to use tags with names like title, ingredients, and instructions. It is up to you to define the tags, so try to use tags that make sense.

If you are designing a large website, there is no need to deal with the frustration of constantly editing your HTML. Instead, consider researching XML and using it to update your site.

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