I understand that XML is the "parent" markup language XHTML, and that it allows data to be displayed in a variety of formats. However, is it necessary for good web design?
I'm currently the webmaster for two alumni sites and am editor of an astronomy newsletter which is posted on the web. Consequently, I'm learning more about CSS and XHTML. I've read that XML-compliance will be necessary for web sites in the near future.
Any thoughts on the subject?
Thanks in advance.
Megan posted this at 13:31—13th May 2008.
She has: 10,032 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Not for web design per se. You can't really use it as a replacement for xhtml or html because of the lack of support for native xml in Internet Explorer (they also have no plans to support the xml mime type in the future).
I don't really see html/xhtml going away anytime soon, especially with the renewed development on HTML 5.
Xml is usefull for various other types of actions. It's a good format for standardized data storage and can be used in many applications to maniuplate data. RSS and sitemaps work with xml.
Megan
My web design blog
teammatt3 posted this at 20:40—13th May 2008.
He has: 1,831 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Isn't Microsoft's .NET framework all about XML? I just started learning C# and XML is mentioned quite a bit. If the programming languages MS supports in Visual Studio are all about XML, isn't there a decent chance they're going to transfer that XML support over to IE?
If Microsoft is on board with XML, you can bet XML is going to be sticking around. I have no idea how it will affect your HTML code, but if you write web programs on the Microsoft stack, you'll need to be versed in XML.
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blater posted this at 13:26—14th May 2008.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: May 2008
XHTML is in XML, as is HTML5.
The XHTML/HTML5 languages are implemented in XML and the definition of the subset of XML that it uses is what you're referencing when you put the funny DOCTYPE statement at the top of an XHTML file e.g.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
So if you write XHTML compliant pages you are already using XML. XML-compliance means writing XHTML compliant pages, which isn't difficult.
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Abhishek Reddy posted this at 15:31—14th May 2008.
He has: 3,284 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
On the client side, I currently use no more XML than XHTML and RSS.
On the server side, I use either YAML or regular code itself: in particular, Lisp s-expressions have a similar tree-like notation, while Python or Ruby code is terse and human-readable.
As standardised interchange formats, XML applications really thrive, but there are better alternatives for pure storage. XML's formalisation and pervasiveness makes it almost ideal for sending data over networks in a client-agnostic way. Its limitations (verbosity) make it less than ideal for internal use.
Expect to continue seeing more XML application markup sent over the wire in the future, especially as web apps grow, but not so much within the server.
XML support is ubiquitous in all kinds of systems -- there's no risk of it going away (despite MS finally joining the party
). IE7 does support viewing and validating XML documents.
abhishek.geek.nz
webwiz posted this at 18:49—15th May 2008.
He has: 301 posts
Joined: May 2007
I was interested to come across an example of CITE and QUOTE tags that uses XHTML 2.0.
Work on XHTML is clearly going forward - More on XHTML is here.
Cordially, David
--
"Old web developers don't die, they degrade gracefully..."
Poll posted this at 05:44—1st July 2008.
They have: 3 posts
Joined: Jul 2008
The use of XML has become widespread, but much of it is not well formed. When it is well formed, it's often of poor design, which makes processing and maintenance very difficult.
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