Overview
You spend hours designing and formatting your Web pages to look just right, but when users log on to your site -- wham! -- all your carefully formatted data is scattered helter-skelter across the page! Now there’s no need to curse the quirks of HMTL. Instead, skip over all those cumbersome and redundant HTML tags and jump to the head of the class with XML (eXtensible Markup Language), the new technology being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. XML offers all the power of HTML and SGML scripting without all the headaches, giving developers a robust new tool in managing information and page formatting with increasing flexibility and usability that's just not possible with today's HMTL.XML: A Primer takes Web developers through the ins and outs of XML, including tips on integrating XML with Dynamic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets; creating custom search tools, Document Type Definitions (DTDs), customized tips, and commercial Web solutions; managing documents with XML; and using XML for data-driven applications. XML offers developers the opportunity to create documents with built-in frameworks that make getting consistent results much easier, time after time. Best of all, XML is backward-compatible to help ease your transition from HTML into the next phase of Web-based formatting and architecture.
XML combines the strength of SGML with simplicity, versatility, and readability by people and machines. Now designers and developers can create and manage their own formatting tags, content, and hyperlinks, instead of relying on the idiosyncrasies of HTML. "XML," says author Simon St. Laurent, "is HTML done right."