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xml tutorials XML School
This is a concise introduction to the basic issues of XML design, including its syntax, elements, Cascading Style Sheets, and ‘behaviours’. It’s also a model of good site design in terms of clarity and usability.
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/

 

xml tutorials The XML Elements of Style
In honor of Strunk and White, who wrote the inimitable writing guide, Elements of Style, O’Reilly author Steve Muench presents his own succinct and lucid list of rules for creating a well-formed XML document.
http://oracle.oreilly.com/news/oraclexml_1000.html

 

redbtn Tizag.com
This is a slightly geeky, but reasonably useable introduction to XML.
www.tizag.com/xmlTutorial/

 

redbtn XML Files
This is a bare-bones introduction to XML set at intermediate to advanced level. It assumes you already know about HTML coding and protocols.
http://www.xmlfiles.com/xml/

 

redbtn XMLhack
This site offers a digest of the latest XML news, opinions, and tips. Very useful for keeping up to date.
http://www.xmlhack.com

 

redbtn Quackit.com
The designer of this site says – “My aim with Quackit is to ‘de-mystify’ web technologies as quickly as possible and to provide a general overview of each technology first, rather than jumping straight into the technical details.”
http://www.quackit.com/xml/tutorial/

 

redbtn W3CXML
This is the official site of XML standards, provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Their documents are extremely thorough, but notoriously dry. Don’t expect any ‘useful tips’ or hand-holding. The site also has online validators for checking your work.
http://www.w3c.org

 

redbtn The Apache XML Project
This is Open Source XML software, provided by Apache, the free, industrial-strength Web server.
http://xml.apache.org

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Guide to XML for Web Designers

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full explanation of XML coding and web design

XML is a set of codes which allow you, the user, to define the structure of your documents. These might be any tags – from <title> to <footnote>, from <quotation> to <caption>. People familiar with HTML will feel on home ground here. These tags mean that data can be displayed in whatever way you choose. For instance, once they have been tagged, a collection of books could be displayed in order of author, title, or publication date – with only one command – say, a click on a tab or a menu item.

Guide to XMLHowever, before you get too excited, XML has nothing to do with the manner in which the information is displayed on screen. For that, you need to add cascading style sheets. As Teresa Martin points out:

Insert some XML tags into your page and… they’ll just sit there. But, combined with style data, scripting data … you can create some powerful ways to present information

So – XML doesn’t make actions happen: it is used to define and describe a document. She provides quite a lot on the history of these standards – why and how they came into being, and who brought them about. There’s even a chapter on how the W3C deals with submissions and makes decisions about standards. This delays the hands-on instruction if read in page order, but I felt glad for the background.

In fact, en passant, there is a lot of interesting information on how and why XML has grown out of SGML, plus information on the Document Type Definition (DTD) and the Document Object Model (DOM). All this will be of interest to those people who want to know the difference between SGML, HTML, XML, and CSS, as well as those with a curiosity about information design and architecture. She also points to some of the latest developments which will be available soon – XPointer and XLink, which will allow a menu of potential destinations when you click on a hyperlink.

When the XML instructions eventually arrive, they are relatively simple and very similar to HTML. The one difference is that all tags have to be opened and closed without exception. She describes document structure, elements, and format via metaphors – which will be laboured for the technically-minded but reassuring for those like me who want their hands held as we walk into this complex world.

She includes the sensible suggestion that writing the document and adding the tags are kept as two separate processes. Trying to do both at the same time can easily result in a longer writing process, or missing some tags.

XML will be of most interest to people who are working with complex documents such as catalogues and instruction manuals which need to be consistent, or very big single documents such as reference manuals and dictionaries. It’s for creating the possibility of displaying the data in a number of different forms – alphabetically, by subject, author surname, date of publication, or even selected topic.

And if you feel you are going dizzy with all the acronyms and markup language, Teresa Martin has a valuable piece of advice. She suggests that you repeat as a mantra – ‘I can’t do it all’.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Teresa A. Martin, Project Cool Guide to XML for Web Designers, London-New York: John Wiley, 2006, pp.298, ISBN 047134401X

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Learning XML

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overview of XML concepts and applications

Learning XML is for anyone who wants to understand what XML is and how to use it. Erik Ray shows how to employ the appropriate structure and format to demystify the process of creating XML documents. XML is relatively simple (but very rigorous) set of tags which describe the content of documents. The problem is that you still need to learn Cascading Style Sheets in order to control the appearance of text on the page. Ray covers all that, as well as the other important technologies – such as the Document Type Definition. He also shows how style sheets can be used to format documents – though in a rather abstract manner.

Learning XMLOne or two illustrations would have been useful here. He also explains the principles of Transformation, using XSLT, which allow you to convert an XML document from one form into another. He explains very persuasively why XML is superior to HTML for preparing documents for multi-purpose use. There is also an introduction to the use of XLink and XPointer, which can create bi-directional links between data. These are extremely powerful technologies which will make the next steps in XML programming an exciting prospect for those who want to pass beyond the frustrating limitations of HTML.

This is a book which is suitable for readers who already know some HTML, but who want to know what is coming next. And it’s an overview: the finer details of XML language will have to be acquired elsewhere. It is written in a persuasive and authoritative manner. This is somebody who knows what is going on in the latest phase of Web development.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Erik T. Ray, Learning XML, Sebastopol (CA): O’Reilly, 2nd edition 2003, pp.432, ISBN: 0596004206

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XML Hacks

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one hundred industrial-strength tips and tools

XML is everywhere today – from web pages to mobile phone messages and automatic feeds from blog sites. On the surface it’s simplicity itself: just put everything between tags. But as Michael Fitzgerald admits here in this excellent new guide XML Hacks, once you get below that surface it’s complex stuff. Fortunately, his approach simplifies matters by splitting up his explanations of how to get the best from XML into easily digestible chunks.

XML Hacks Each explication or hack covers a single topic, and each one is followed by suggestions for further reading, free downloadable resources, and web links to either specifications or other tutorials on the topic. And all the working examples he discusses can be downloaded free from the book’s own web site – which is a very good idea.

He starts off by explaining the basic structure of an XML document and how its content can be displayed in a browser using style sheets. There’s also a brief discussion of the free tools available for XML editing, and where to find validators to check your results. I liked the fact that the outcome for each new line of coding is shown in a screenshot, so you can see what you are doing at each stage.

It’s assumed that you may wish to convert existing data into XML format, so there’s plenty of advice on using a whole range of conversion tools, and even the latest version of Microsoft Word.

Every now and then you’ve got to be prepared for some of the abstract language in which these explanations are often expressed

XML has a concept of a document entity, which is a starting point for an XML processor. A document entity, from one standpoint, may exist in a file with an associated name. However, from the standpoint of the XML spec, a document entity does not have a name and might be an input stream that has no means of identification at all.

Fortunately, each separate topic is given a difficult rating – beginners, intermediate, or expert – so you can pick your way through at whatever level suits you best.

He includes discussion of new features in the XML spec which were still being ratified by the W3C consortium whilst the book was being written. You couldn’t get much more up to date than this.

As the book progresses he gets into the more advanced features of XPointer and XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language). These made my brain hurt, but are obviously useful for transforming documents from one form into another.

The examples range from generating PDFs and spreadsheets from XML documents, to grabbing data out of your iTunes Library files, and even generating scalable vector graphics (SVGs).

After XML Schemas, Relax NG, DTDs, Trang.jar, and XForms, it was something of a relief to reach a practical application I could understand – syndicating the content of blogs and web sites using RSS (really Simple Syndication). This describes the available software for receiving news feeds and for creating documents which can be sent for syndication. There’s also a nifty freeware program for adding other people’s syndicated news to your own site.

He ends with some advanced hacks featuring programs such as Cocoon, Ant, Wikis, SAX, and Genx. The mind boggles. Well, mine does anyway.

As you can probably tell, there is something here for everybody – from beginners (where I felt reasonably comfortable) to intermediate (something of an aspiration) and advanced (which I imagine will remain terra incognita to me for some time to come).

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Michael Fitzgerald, XML Hacks, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2004, pp.460, ISBN: 0596007116

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XML, HTML, XHTML Magic

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practical web design tutorials using XHTML

Most books on web design cover coding and leave it to the reader to figure out how to use it in real-life projects. This book uses real practical projects as the context for understanding how to implement XML, HTML, and XHTML coding. It kicks off with a brief survey of where HTML and XML are up to at the moment. This includes the need for cascading style sheets. There then follows a series of applied case studies. Each chapter deals with a separate ‘project’ – a series of web sites with different purposes. These range from personal sites and blogs to weekly news sites, community sites with feedback, and even information sites driven from databases.

XML HTML XHTMLThis is what I would call an intermediate level book. It assumes you already know HTML, and is introducing you to the next stage of style sheets and XHTML. It certainly shows you the important coding details. That’s to the book’s credit. The opening example of setting up a daily news site is an excellent tutorial in creating a multi-column table.

The contributors also show how to design pages which combine XHTML and Javascripts, how to control text within table cells, and how to produce printer-friendly versions of pages. They also show how to combine static and dynamic elements within the same table – allowing it to flow and expand to fit the screen. Clever stuff.

This book might have been called ‘Designing with Style Sheets’ – because that’s where most of its emphasis lies. In fact there is very little on XML. But then XML is the easy part: it’s controlling the appearance of what appears on screen that’s difficult.

This book will appeal to people who are comfortable with HTML basics, but who want to go further and explore what XHTML has to offer. The structure of offering eleven tutorials gives you the opportunity to either select one similar to your own web project, or to work your way through from beginning to end.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Molly E. Holzschlag (ed), XML, HTML, XHTML Magic, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2001, pp.223,ISBN 0735711399

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