Displaying XML

Internet Explorer 5+ supports XML (and XSL) files, but remember an xml file is not a web page.

Exercise
Lets use IE to examine a basic xml file, note.xml.

Basic xml Example

Note the minus sign to the left of the <note> tag
Click on the minus to hide the child tags

Note XML by itself is not formatted. The xml tags do not control how the browser displays the text.

Why does XML display like this?

Since XML tags can be "made up" or "invented" by the author of the XML document, the browser cannot know if a tag like <table> describes a HTML type of table, or a wooden table.
Without any more information about how to display the data the browser will just display the XML document as it is.

There are several different solutions to the display problem, using