Topic: designer lost in XML world - anyone got a map?

Here's the deal. I've got my webmaster degree, but my specialty in school was really design. However, I wouldn't mind a job on the developer end of the scale, either, and I have an opportunity for a job, but they're going to want me to learn XML. I've been reading about XML at www.w3cschools.com , but it's not so helpful from a practical point of view. XML is being described to great detail, but I'm not learning anything useful. And here's what I'm worried about; I had no problem with programming in school, took Java and Javascript classes, but never did anything that I found overwhelmingly useful. In Javascript, I felt like making "Hello World!" alerts and little clocks that tell you the time and say "good morning!" or "good evening!" depending on the time of day weren't exactly the meat of Javascript. Meanwhile, I learned basic sytax (you know, to close all of my open brackets), but felt more like I was copying code as instructed instead of really "learning" this language. Part of the problem was the way my classes were taught, but another part of the problem was the way the books are written; they don't teach you much. I did okay, but mostly because my background in grammar made me thorough enough to find my syntax errors quickly and correct them in that code I copied straight from the book.

I'm afraid of the same thing happening with XML. I want a good working knowledge, so that I can actually do something useful with it, and thereby understand better why XML is useful. And if I'm missing the boat, if I'm not really meant to "get it" but just copy code, then I want to copy code that actually does useful stuff, and just get past the Hello World B.S.

My problem is that it's really hard to find a good instructional book. Local bookstores only touch the surface of programming books that are available, so skimming at the bookstore does me little good (I've tried, believe me). Web sites either give you detailed tutorials that show no examples of application, or scripts so that you don't learn any details.

So I'd like some recommendations and advice. Am I missing the boat: is this foot-dragging method the only way to learn a language? If so, how do you ever actually start understanding it? Are there any good XML books out there you can recommend for a beginner with a designer's brain?

Thanks, and sorry this post is so long.

Check if O'Reilly has an XML book (I'm sure they must). Their books are always good, in my experience.

XML is somewhat difficult to learn in that it's useless by itself; it needs to be applied to something to be useful. (With JavaScript, you can write a Hello World program. With XML, there's not really anything of that sort you can do.)

XML is easy enough though, especially if you know HTML. XML is nothing more than a language which you can use to hold tree-structured data. By tree-structured, I mean something like this: http://www.slimeland.com/content/articles/jsenhance/xhtmltree.gif (from http://www.slimeland.com/content/articles/jsenhance/ ). Since XML is simple (it's just plain text), it can be read by lots of different programs, and makes a great way of communicating between them. A common usage is to have a server-side application generate XML data about what a web page should have, and then an XSLT style sheet (which is sort of an XML programming language in XML, kinda) written by a web developer takes that data and creates an XHTML page, which is sent to the user.

The solution to the learning problem you mentioned is to not copy examples from the book, but write your own examples in light of what you're learning in the book. You'll end up copying the bits and pieces, but in the end you'll be making your *own* code, which helps you learn a lot better.

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XML is somewhat difficult to learn in that it's useless by itself; it needs to be applied to something to be useful.

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Is it somewhat like CSS in that way? Because CSS, I get.

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The solution to the learning problem you mentioned is to not copy examples from the book, but write your own examples in light of what you're learning in the book. You'll end up copying the bits and pieces, but in the end you'll be making your *own* code, which helps you learn a lot better.

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In school, I buddied up with a girl who already had a programming degree. We had Java together, and helped each other out, because I could de-bug like a demon (um, however it is that demons de-bug). Anyway, she kept trying to show me that it didn't have to be done just one way, so I can see what you mean.

Is O'Reilly the publishing company?

I agree with Slime wholeheartedly on this.
XML is not like normal programming, not at all.
To begin to understand XML and how to use it I had to look at it in a completley different way, this is roughly how I approached it.

XML alone can't really do anything but store data in a very structured way and an XML-file alone can only be read and shown by a few newer browsers.

To be able to show the data from the XML-files in different media (browsers, PDA's, Cellphones and more) you need to transform it to the correct format for the chosen media.
You need logic, processing and transformation.
And here comes the next step:

XSL and XSLT
These are files that holds all the instructions on how to process and transform the XML data to a format for presentation, ex HTML and CSS
In here you can use XSL/XSLT to loop through XML elements and apply styles/html to them (transforming), there are a lot of methods to traverse through the XML-tree up and down and sideways to find the elements you need to transform.

And finally the presentation part, this is for the web some version of HTML and CSS.

As you see it's not that different in structure from a three tiered application.

Presentationlayer = HTML/CSS
Logic = XSL/XSLT
Storage = XML

Then what I did was to start writing down small assignments of my own, like a miniature two page website with a menu and content.
Content in XML, processing in XSLT, and presentation in HTML.
This forced me to get into a whole lot of things...

1. You need a developing enviroment (webserver) that supports XML/XSLT, like Cocoon or Forrest from http://xml.apache.org/

2. You need to find out how you should structure your data storage.

3. You need to get your head around XSL/XSLT in order to transform your XML to HTML

4. To do this you need to really understand how the DOM works in XML

5. You need a good reference book more than anything else.
I bought Osbournes "The Complete Reference XML" This book takes you through how XML shemas and DTD's work, info on XSL/XSLT, XLinks, XPointers, XTHML and bits on how to use CGI together with this.

Reserve time for this and don't apply normal programming thoughts to it, that'll only make it harder (at least for me).
And, hey, have fun
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

When I was first getting started using XML, I found a lot of good information at the IBM Developer Works site. They have good tutorials that are well-written and pretty easy to understand. Doug Tidwell (one of their authors) has written a very good book about transformations using XSLT that is published by O'Reilly.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/

The whole site has lots of good information about Java, open source stuff and others as well as XML.

Also, look thorugh the O'Reilly Network
http://www.oreillynet.com

HTH


Few problems in life can't be solved by chocolate

DmS, is "The Complete Reference XML" a good beginners book, or should I start somewhere less advanced than that?

I'd say it's a pretty advanced book, I tend to buy books that will last me a while, at least when they cost as much as they do here in sweden ($50-$80...)

On the other hand I guess I'm a bit unusual since I tend to read them cover to cover before I even touch the computer to test it...

I'd say it's useful to anyone with a serious will to learn XML though, newbie or not.
All the info is there and it has a logical step by step coverage of the stuff you need.
Get through it and you will understand how this works.
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-