Preserved Topic: XML vs DHTML

My uncle is all excited about XML. As far as I know it is much the same as Dhtml.
But where are the diffrences?
k10

They're extremely different. XML is a markup language that identifies everything, like an alphabet with letters, and makes it accessible to different platforms. DHTML is a combination of markup (HTML), style sheets and javascript that 'make your markup move' so to speak.

XML is exciting indeed (if not scary) but it's not interchangeable with DHTML.

your right xml and html are two different technologies. what you could do is use dynamic xml, which pretty much replicates the functionality of dhtml. the difference here is in one you are working with dynamically doing stuff to html tags and the other you are dynimically doing stuff with XML tags.


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Eddie Traversa
DHTML NIRVANA
Multiple Award Winning Sites
Macromedia Resources & Various Other Goodies.
http://www.dhtmlnirvana.com/
--------------------------
Dynamic XHTML Developers Guide
Currently being written by Jeff Rouyer and little ol me
Let you know about a firm release date as soon as I know.
-----------------------------

so it is a diffrent language then? right? can I use both on one site? and what does the x in XML mean? And, of course, which on eis the programmer's personel choice?
k10

XML is a different markup lanaguage that is more descriptive in nature eg., <book sales> these are book sales <book sales /> the X stands for extensible and you can mix xml and html in the same page but you need to use namespace declarations to achieve this.


----------------------
Eddie Traversa
DHTML NIRVANA
Multiple Award Winning Sites
Macromedia Resources & Various Other Goodies.
http://www.dhtmlnirvana.com/
--------------------------
Dynamic XHTML Developers Guide
Currently being written by Jeff Rouyer and little ol me
Let you know about a firm release date as soon as I know.
-----------------------------

XML is the basis of HTML you just were not told.

XML is a way to take full control over the way you code(i.e. you create the code). It is still a long ways from being perfect, and is not even close to being used for content display purposes (IMO).

For example:

You are creating a web page for a tractor company and you want to display different models, in html you might write.

<h2>Big Bertha</h2>
<b>Model:</b> 0019297487-01
<b>Cost:</b> $19.99

Where-as with XML you might write something similar to:

<tractor id="Big Bertha">
<model>0019297487-01</name>
<cost>$19.99</name>
</tractor>

Now this is an over simplification, much more has to go into it that just this.

Now for the beauty of it.

Imagine you have all of your pages designed in this XML format. Someone goes to view the page via a browser, and the browser has no idea what to do with the page and spits out everything, so you do a little transformation, you pass your XML documents through a parser you created which will spit out HTML to the browser instead of useless XML. So now the easy to understand XML you wrote is being parsed and sent to the browser as HTML. Simply amazing, yet all togeather too much work, why spend time writing a parser as well as pages, wouldn't that make a simple project too huge to be useful. Well yes it would be, but that is why it is not used as such, well it is and it isn't.

So here is the real beauty, the tractor company forms a partner ship with a dump truck company, and they both agree to list each others products on their web pages, but why be redundant with readily accessible data, just parse and replace. In this situation HTML is far to generic to effectively achomplish the job.

try to get the model number out of the html.

<b>Model:</b> 0019297487-01

or what if model number all changed:

<b>Model:</b> 123-126
<b>Model:</b> 0004546-45627

all in the same page, this would be a near impossible task using HTML, but using XML you simple parse what is between the <model> and </model> which makes parsing very, very easy.

So now you have an XML file that is both read as an HTML file on demand, as well as can easily be parsed by friendly parsing clients looking to get information from your site. Wouldn't this also make seaches easier via search engines, or on site searches, couldn't you also set up a seperate parse engine to easily transplate into a plain text format, or even .pdf format, or, or...

The list goes on and on. The parsing is what makes XML great, but it is still not usable enough for us small timers to get into bed with. A project of this magnitude is something that not many clients are screaming to get into bed with, they like to take small steps. But many places to use this, a link of the top of my head is something I do not have sorry.

But it is useful, is coming down the line faster and faster.

And is overall, completely different from DHTML, XML is currently more a back-end tool, when DHTML is a front end tool.

-mage-

but in your example the tractor tag can be treated just as a <div> tag could and thus be made dynamic so conceptualising xml as a back end tool is limiting, although I can see how people can gain this impression as most xml based sites are static in nature and have been formed as you describe them, so dynamic xml is kind of new to the net and many xml developers havent really investigated this fully as yet. On the parsing issue, In IE5 and NS6 if you save the file with a htm or html extension (provided you have an xml dtd) you dont need a xml dom switch, IE will parse the file via W3C recommendations as does NS6. If you save the file with an xml extension eg., eddie.xml then you need a xml dom switch (one for IE propietry and one for NS) becuase IE will not parse the document correctly


----------------------
Eddie Traversa
DHTML NIRVANA
Multiple Award Winning Sites
Macromedia Resources & Various Other Goodies.
http://www.dhtmlnirvana.com/
--------------------------
Dynamic XHTML Developers Guide
Currently being written by Jeff Rouyer and little ol me
Let you know about a firm release date as soon as I know.
-----------------------------

I'm not sure why we are thinking there has to be a comparison between DHTML and XML, they are completely different, and do basically different things.

XML stores data, like a text version of a database. It doesn't do much more then that (in essence). But when you call the data out of that XML document into a web page, you then need to present it somehow. Of course, DHTML is a microsoft design language, so you need an IE browser to even see it. So I am not sure why we are comparing the two, there is nothing really to choose between!

-=

"Of course, DHTML is a microsoft design language, so you need an IE browser to even see it."

*Boggle* No.