Dynamic HTML in Action

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is designed to complement, not replace, HTML. It, too, is a way to describe structured data. But unlike an HTML file, an XML file does not hold any information about how the data should be displayed; it simply contains the data in a highly organized and descriptive form. One reason XML is used by so many different applications is that it is only a data format. For example, stock information created in the XML format can be displayed by a browser on the Web, imported as a table into a database, and even read by a text editor. This flexibility is possible, in part, because there are no instructions in an XML file that specify the way the data is displayed; the file is simply structured data. This chapter begins with an overview of some of the concepts behind XML and then focuses on how to create XML files and how Microsoft Internet Explorer can be used to integrate XML into a Web page. Netscape Navigator does not provide the same type of XML support found in Internet Explorer.