Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition

Summary

You now have an understanding of basic XML language. Perhaps more important than the language specifics is understanding why XML is so vital to the Web's future. The XML tags define data and don't just work to format a Web page as HTML does. Your Web page will still need HTML to format the look and behavior of the page, but the underlying XML code will make your page more easily accessed by sites that recognize the XML tags you use. In the future, search engines and other processes will be able to perform more accurate searching, sorting, and manipulation of Web data.

• The use of XML will grow as standards are agreed upon.

• Unlike HTML which comes with predefined command tags, the XML programmer creates new command tags that describe content ...