The uses of XML
Extensible Markup Language, or XML, is a universally-compatible language for encoding documents. Many machine readable languages today are based off XML, such as XHTML. Markup languages that sprung from XML are named after the markup elements of content, which in turn specifically describes the content type. This differentiates them from other markup languages whose names denote only the contents’ appearances.
XML is commonly used in structuring information in the internet, particularly documents that are found in complex sets. Nowadays, browsers do not read XML code in the same way, although it was primarily intended for the opposite.
For almost twenty years, Standard General Markup Language has enjoyed widespread use, only surpassed recently by XML as a sort of improved version of the former. XML encodes content in a more compact yet highly faithful format to the originals than what SGML used to do. It also features a more simplified operation unlike that of SGML, making content in XML format easier to handle online. This simplicity lends itself usefully to web design, and adds flexibility in scripting as well. The more straightforward and flexible the programming is, the more feasible it is to finely detail a website’s design, and the more room for creativity there is in the overall project.
