Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Viewing XML in Web Browsers

When an XML-compliant browser encounters an XML document that doesn’t have a style sheet, it typically displays the contents of the file, including the markup. All of the browsers in Table 7-2 also use some sort of color-coding to improve readability, either to make markup stand out from the content or to indicate parent/child relationships (Netscape 6 color-codes only when you select View Page Source). All of them except Opera also display plus (+) and minus (-) signs next to parent elements that allow the user to expand or collapse the element’s contents. Figure 7-1 shows an unstyled XML document in Firefox 1.0.

If the XML document has a CSS style sheet, browsers that support XML+CSS use the style sheet to display the document’s contents according to the presentation instructions. When a style sheet is in use, the markup is hidden. Figure 7-2 shows the same XML document, this time referencing a CSS style sheet. XML documents with XSLT style sheets may be converted to XHTML before being displayed in the browser.