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IE7, Any news? (XML / XHTML discussion)
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HTML will stay around for a very long time considering many apps can produce HTML output...it's like VHS tapes: we all know they suck and DVDs are better, but DVDs are more expensive to record to and less ubiquitous than VHS.
Nice metaphor, eh?
BTW, no news about IE7, it's a bit early for that, even for MS--filburt1, vBulletin.org/vBulletinTemplates.com moderator
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DVD's aren't more expensive to output, in fact they are cheaper. The media is more expensive though.
Normally it takes 10-12 years for a technology to fade to memory after a suitable replacement has been found. That could be accelerated since we're talking the Internet here and everything is accelerated...
That said though there isn't really a suitable replacement.Comment
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Originally posted by Jeremy W.
DVD's aren't more expensive to output, in fact they are cheaper. The media is more expensive though.--filburt1, vBulletin.org/vBulletinTemplates.com moderator
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Even that is just for now, the technology to record DVD's isn't that much more expensive then CD's we are just being charged more
Back to IE7 though, I personally can't wait. A proper XML-driven browsing experience will make writing Web Services a dreamComment
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Can you explain to me why XML is supposed to be so much better than HTML? Everything I've read praising XML cites its abilities to attach "meaning" to the tags. Such as <author>bigmattyh</author>.
But how is this any better than using a relational database? I really haven't found a good answer to this question, maybe someone here can explain.Comment
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XML is the latest fad. Remember CRM, ERP, etc.? Millions spent on technologies which were supposed to revolutionize the world. Turned out to be just a hole in corporate wallets.
XML is neat, but its chief goal is to structure data, not format it prettily. Once it hits your browser there isn't much you necessarily need to do with it.
You can do interesting client-side stuffs with IE and VB script (dump data to the browser in XML then page through it on the client end) but I am almost 100% convinced that is inappropriate use.Matt
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To understand the demise of HTML you have to understand what HTML is and what its made for.
As any programmer who has created an application for a computer (i.e., not a web application) they can probably tell you one of the hardest part of the application is getting it to be cross platform.
For example, take any game that iD software has put out. They have all been ported over to Linux. This is an example of incredible software design. The engine was abstracted from the UI which allowed for easy porting. The UI and OS API for Linux is different than that for Windows. Simple fact, getting something to work on Windows (using the Win32 API) is almost impossible (or at least it was) using the same code to get it to work on Linux. The two operating systems are independent of each other.
In about 1989 or thereabouts, Tim Berners-Lee had a solution to the problem: create a standardized markup language that when interpreted correctly, will look the same on different operating systems, thus HTML was born.
His idea worked. The HTML standard was developed in order to allow for programs on different operating systems to interpret HTML and display the results the same on different OS's.
Think about it. Provided a page is coded correctly, and does conform to some sort of standards, it will render the same on Windows, Mac, Linux, so on and so forth. (Read: this is the main reason HTML standards exist).
Therefore, the programming for the UI developer became much easier with the implementation of HTML.
XML is neat, but its chief goal is to structure data, not format it prettily. Once it hits your browser there isn't much you necessarily need to do with it.
From this, one might conclude that the demise of HTML is not close. I agree, I think HTML is here to stay as well.
As for IE7, I am not sure. I'm most excited about Netscape 7, which is just about the equivalent of Mozilla 1.0 (when it finally comes out).
-VicComment
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HTML will die because it isn't where the future of the Internet is. Developers are consistently needing to create "ways around" it's shortcomings, specifically real-time interaction which is what the average user wants.
As far as XML being unable to do what HTML does I would have to flatly disagree. Many sites, large and small, function exclusively on an XML base and only give HTML outputs for browsers that don't support XML.
Why is XML so great? Good question, until I had worked with it I couldn't really figure that bit out either after all, who needs more tags, right?
Well, how would you like EBay on your site? I mean really, the actual EBay including everything but the EBay design on your site. It would be your colours, your fonts, layed out how you wanted but it would be EBay. You could instantly have millions of auctions on your site, but you wouldn't be doing anything but pulling some XML (Web Services...) and using your XSLT (stylesheet, presentation info) to tell the page how to look.
This is being done right now. EBay is in fact a Web Service of itself.
The same can be done with anything. Ever had an ECommerce store which you've designed from teh ground up and needed live conversion rates so your users could pay in their local currency and yet still be accurately charged? Web Services, driven by XML, allows this.
In the same vein, have you ever wanted a true list of US ZIP and State codes? This costs five hundred bloody dollars a year for the US Postal Service to ship you a CD with ... a silly comma delimmeted (sp?) text file in it.
Is XML THE way of the future? No, but it is definitely a better alternative then HTML as HTML has become way too muddled. I mean if XML were allowed to drive the web (not that it necessarily should), we could write true web applications using the exact same logic we use for our application development (though we do this already in VS.NET).
HTML will die because it, quite simply, doesn't provide for the needs of the future.Comment
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Originally posted by Jeremy W.
In the same vein, have you ever wanted a true list of US ZIP and State codes? This costs five hundred bloody dollars a year for the US Postal Service to ship you a CD with ... a silly comma delimmeted (sp?) text file in it.
UPS is doing the same thing with international shipping to allow accurate shipping rates.Translations provided by Google.
Wayne Luke
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying XML isn't really cool for a lot of applications. But I don't see run-of-the-mill web pages instead of sending HTML throwing XML (or XHTML) to browsers.
What's the point? Take vBulletin -- why would you want to send two documents to view the page (XSD and XML pages)?
I can think that something like user selectable styles could be turned into XSL docs but there wouldn't be much advantage since you'd have to store them in a RDBMS and then output them as XSL, so you wouldn't really have any less server strain (one of the advantages of moving it to the client).
But again, I agree XML is really cool. A project I'm working on now uses it extensively, and I think appropriately. I'm afraid, though, the world will jump on the XML bandwagon and use it inappropriately (HTML is smaller, better, etc. for run-of-the-mill web pages).Matt
Sybase DBA / PHP fanatic
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I personally believe it won't be too long until HTML is deprecated in favour of XHTML which introduces a more strict way of coding, but the differences between that and HTML are minimal.
I don't think XML will ever replace XHTML mainly because XML isn't designed to format the output of a webpage, XHTML, and XSL (which is the main one for formatting XML output) are.
It is possible to format a page using XSL, but it's failry complex & not everybody wants to learn XML + XSL, so in the future i think it will be XHTML + CSS!
But that's just my opinionComment
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