E-Book Overview
You spend hours designing and formatting your Web pages to look just right, but when users log on to your site -- wham! -- all your carefully formatted data is scattered helter-skelter across the page! Now theres no need to curse the quirks of HMTL. Instead, skip over all those cumbersome and redundant HTML tags and jump to the head of the class with XML (eXtensible Markup Language), the new technology being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. XML offers all the power of HTML and SGML scripting without all the headaches, giving developers a robust new tool in managing information and page formatting with increasing flexibility and usability that's just not possible with today's HMTL. XML: A Primer takes Web developers through the ins and outs of XML, including tips on integrating XML with Dynamic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets; creating custom search tools, Document Type Definitions (DTDs), customized tips, and commercial Web solutions; managing documents with XML; and using XML for data-driven applications. XML offers developers the opportunity to create documents with built-in frameworks that make getting consistent results much easier, time after time. Best of all, XML is backward-compatible to help ease your transition from HTML into the next phase of Web-based formatting and architecture. XML combines the strength of SGML with simplicity, versatility, and readability by people and machines. Now designers and developers can create and manage their own formatting tags, content, and hyperlinks, instead of relying on the idiosyncrasies of HTML. "XML," says author Simon St. Laurent, "is HTML done right."
E-Book Content
To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles. XML: A Primer (Imprint: M & T Books) (Publisher: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.) Author: Simon St. Laurent ISBN: 155828592x Introduction Acknowledgments CHAPTER 1—Let Data Be Data The WYSIWYG Disaster The HTML Explosion Back to the Origins: Structure and SGML HTML: Decaf SGML? Using SGML to Leapfrog HTML CHAPTER 2—HTML and CSS: WYSIWYG Pages HTML Roots: Old, Original Specifications Structured Formatting: Cascading Style Sheets CHAPTER 3—XML: Building Structures Browsers and Parsers Building Blocks Elements and Tags Elements and Attributes XML and HTML Creating your own Markup: A Well-Formed Document A Nonvalidating Parser—Lark CHAPTER 4—Plan in the Present, Save in the Future Who’s Involved in XML? Focus on Structure Document Structure Data Structure Elements and Attributes: Which to Use When Planning for Processing CHAPTER 5—Mortar and Bricks: Document Type Definitions Parsing: An Introduction Starting Simple How Documents Find Their DTDs: The Prolog : A Very Special Processing Instruction Document Type Declarations Comments Data Structures Data Types Entities Notation Declarations Marked Sections in DTDs: IGNORE and INCLUDE Logical Structures Elements Attributes CHAPTER 6—Re-creating Web and Paper Documents with XML To XML from HTML Building This Book Pass 1: A DTD That Looks Like the Old Styles A Style Sheet for the Chapter DTD Pass 2: Toward a Cleaner DTD CHAPTER 7—XML for Commerce Who (and What) Will Be Reading My XML? A Better Electronic Catalog Direct Connections: Business-to-Business Transactions Direct Connections: Information Interchange CHAPTER 8—XML for Document Management Small Steps Toward the Paperless Office Building Histories: A DTD for Corporate Memory CHAPTER 9—XML for Data-Driven Applications Data Documents Object Documents Metastructures—Emerging Standards Using XML Channel Definition Format Meta Content Framework Open Software Description Format Web Interface Definition Language Futures CHAPTER 10—The XML Linking Specification Simple Links Links in HTML Simple Links in XML Reconstructing HTML with XML Locators and Chunks XP