Poll: HTML vs. XML
Thursday May 18, 2006
In a comment, theMan wrote
"HTML is dead! This topic is moot. If you don't XML you'll be out of a job in two years."I wonder if that's really true. How important do you think learning XML is to the average Web designer? What about Web programmers? Web developers? Is XML a crucial part of the lexicon of Web pages or just something that a few propeller-heads in the back rooms should worry about?
Do you use XML?
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Comments
Although I’ve used XML, I don’t use it every day. I do like the functionallity of XML, and will in the future use it more.
I am retired, do my own basic HTML web pages. Don’t know XML at all, and doubt I will lose my job. Even my former (mid/upper level management) positions would not have required me to use XML. Only if I were a programmer would it have been a factor. Lots of people develop web pages that are not professional at it and they and their readers still enjoy the web sites.
Began self-teaching in XML a few weeks ago and am loving it. Got quite a kick out of that, of all the millions of books on my public library system’s shelves, there was one, *ONE* book available on XML. Hints towards what kind of a demand there is in my area at this time. Hoping to change that VERY soon.
I ‘ve never used XML but i am thinking to learn it very soon. Some of my fren knows about it but seems not intrested on it.
The fact is that XML was not intended to replace HTML,and will never, so the poll to me is a little out of place since both were designed for different purposes. For the purpose of elucidiation and also to reposition our thinking about the two languages, HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks while XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is, which means even after one has finished coding in XML and if ever he/she wants that data to be displayed must have to wrap the xml data in HTML since the internet protocol for now is http an not xml, that goes to tell that HTML is not dead, if at all it is going to die that is not because of XML, agree XML is good when it comes to data description, so my opinion is I use both on equal strenth.
It is important to keep everything in perspective. First HTML is a form of XML as is XHTML. Second XML is a paradigm, not a language as such. And third XML documents are meant to help applications, not become them. I use XML all the time, I even use XML together with a scripting language to create web pages on the fly, but the finished product is still HTML/ASP[.NET]
XML is not only useful in its own right, but for storing information (even XHTML) for use in AJAX web apps; it’s easier than SQL, and you don’t have to be a pro.