About XMLTemplates.com

XML Templates is a source for free XML Templates.
Download, use and customize our templates for your websites.

 

 

What is XML?

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a versatile language, yet it doesn't actually do anything on its own. It is a language that is used to store and structure data such as text, statistics and file names. While this may not seem useful on its own, when you link an XML file to your Flash or HTML website content can be pulled from the file and displayed dynamically on your site. XML does not replace any existing web based languages, but rather complements them.

 

 

Why use XML/What are the benefits of XML?

Updating the content of your site can be a time consuming process, especially if you have to open, modify and re-publish individual Flash or HTML documents for every update. Since XML allows the content of your webpage to be kept separate from the design, you can forego much of this time consuming work. It allows you to change and update the content of your website such as text, images and sound files simply by modifying the XML document.

 

 

How does XML work?

XML does not do anything on its own; it is used to structure data and content in a way that is easy for other languages (such as HTML or Flash) to understand. XML uses descriptive tags, such <heading> or <footnote>, to qualify your content. Used in conjunction with another with another language like HTML, the web designer can easily tell the browser how to display the content contained within each of these tags.

 

How do I edit XML?

XML is easy to create and edit. The code is written mostly in plain english, and can be edited in many basic text editors such as notepad. Simply open the XML file and edit the data contained between tags. The content of your site will be updated simultaneously.

 

 

Here's an example of what the contents of a news site might look, structured as an XML format.

 

<news_feed>
   <entry>
        <date>September 29, 2001</date>
        <heading>News Heading</heading>
        <author>Author Name</author>
        <text>here is the content of your news entry</text>
        <image>img_sept_29.jpg</image>
   </entry>
</news_feed>