Why should I know XHTML/XML

[SDP2006]

Why should I learn XHTML/XML (im not being sarcastic)?

I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP & SQL.

Thanks

[wox3-iO]

I'm a bad explainer, so I'll just say that XHTML and XML are the future. :)
And I myself like XML (don't really know why) alot and it's interesting.

[cg9com]

That and; We are all lemmings, follow the leader!
Stop thinking for yourself and do what we say! MWUAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, woops sorry, check this out:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML™) is a family of current and future document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML, reformulated in XML (http://www.w3.org/XML/). XHTML Family document types are all XML-based, and ultimately are designed to work in conjunction with XML-based user agents. XHTML is the successor of HTML, and a series of specifications (http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#recommendations) has been developed for XHTML.

This explains a little, and continue reading that page. :D

[Alex Vincent]

XHTML is just more rigourously-formatted HTML. But it's also a foundation for mixing HTML with other XML markup languages.

You should know XHTML if you plan on developing applications that use HTML markup, or if you plan on writing documents that aren't purely HTML. For instance, MathML 2.0 and XHTML make for a good starting point in writing mathematics for the World Wide Web.

[allison]

I don't know much about XML (just started looking into it)

I hear it's a great technology to use when you want to transfer your data to a different platform or application.

If your data is in XML format
you can then take that data and tweak it to what you want it to contain and generate a new document.

For example (I saw this in an article a few weeks ago)

say you have a 100 000 line html document with all kinds of recipes .
(each recipe has a name, a unique code, ingredients, directions etc..)

and say your boss asks you to generate a report that only shows the name of the recipe and its ingredients

if your page is in html
you will need to cut and paste all the req. information to a new page (on 100 000 lines it will take some time to do)

but if your recipe page was in XML
your task would be much easier and it would take a fraction of the time that it would take to do on the plain old html page

you could use a technology called XSL
which lets you do all kind of manipulations to your XML files
you could use XSL/XSLT technologies to transform your recipe page into a new document that only contained what you boss wanted to see.

check out
Beginning XML, 2nd Edition
http://www.wrox.com/books/toc/0764543946_toc.shtml


or www.w3schools.com

allison