XML Don't

Here are some technologies you should try to avoid when using XML

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Internet Explorer XML Data Islands

What is it? An XML data island is XML data embedded into an HTML page.

Why avoid it? XML Data Island only works with Internet Explorer browsers.

What to use instead? You should use JavaScript and XML DOM to parse and use XML data in HTML.

For more information about using JavaScript and the XML DOM to get and use information from XML in HTML pages, visit our XML DOM tutorial.

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Example - Embed XML Data in a HTML Table

Here is how it works; assume we have the following XML document ("cd_catalog.xml"):

View "cd_catalog.xml"

Then, in an HTML document, you can embed the XML file above with the tag. The id attribute of the tag defines an ID for the data island, and the src attribute points to the XML file to embed:

The next step is to format and display the data in the data island by binding it to HTML elements.

The HTML file looks like this:

Example explained:

The datasrc attribute of the

tag binds the HTML table element to the XML data island. The datasrc attribute refers to the id attribute of the data island.

tags cannot be bound to data, so we are using tags. The tag allows the datafld attribute to refer to the XML element to be displayed. In this case, it is datafld="ARTIST" for the element and datafld="TITLE" for the