XML Easy Learning Handbook (1) XML QuickStart

xml| Quick Start Preface

XML is becoming more and more hot, and the basic tutorials on XML are also ubiquitous on the web. But a lot of concepts and terminology are often daunting, and many friends ask me: What is the use of XML, we need to learn it? I would like to write a more comprehensive introduction to my personal experiences and experience in the learning process. First, there are two points to be sure:

First: XML is certainly the future trend of development, whether it is a web designer or Web programmer, should learn and understand in time, waiting will only let you lose the opportunity;

Second: New knowledge will certainly have many new concepts, try to understand and accept, you can improve. Do not be afraid and escape, after all, we are young.

Outline

This paper is divided into five parts. These are XML QuickStart, XML concepts, XML terminology, XML implementation, and XML example analysis. The last appendix describes the resources associated with XML. The author stands in the ordinary web designer's angle, in the plain vivid language, tells you all aspects of the XML, helps you to push through the mysterious veil of XML, quickly enters the new domain of XML.

Chapter One: A quick introduction to XML

A. What is XML?

Two. is XML a new concept?

Three. What are the benefits of using XML?

Four. is XML difficult to learn?

Five. The difference between XML and HTML

Six. Strict format of XML

Seven. More about XML

A. What is XML?

This is often the first question, and often on the first question you will not understand, because most of the textbooks answer:

XML is a shorthand for extensible Markup language, an extensible identity language. This is the definition of the standard. So what is the symbol language, and why is it called extensibility? has been a bit confusing. I think it would be better for us to understand this way:

You are already very familiar with HTML, it is a markup language, remember its full name: "Hypertext Markup Language" Hypertext Markup Language. I see? At the same time, HTML has a lot of tags, like,

Here are a few confusing concepts to remind you:

1.XML is not a markup language. It is just a meta language used to create markup languages (such as HTML). God, it's confusing again! It doesn't matter, you just have to know this: XML and HTML are different, and it's much more useful than HTML, and we'll look at that later.

2.XML is not an alternative to HTML. XML is not an upgrade of HTML, it is just a supplement to HTML, which extends more functionality for HTML. We will continue to use HTML for a long time. (But it's worth noting that the upgraded version of HTML is actually moving toward adapting XML.) )

3. You cannot use XML to write pages directly. Even if you include XML data, you can still convert it to HTML format to be displayed on the browser.

The following is an XML sample document (example 1) that represents the information for this article:

And so on, are in HTML 4.0 specification and definition, and XML allows you to create such a label, so called Extensibility.