Should I?

[shadowayex]

Hello everyone.I'm sure some of you have seen me around in the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP forums. Well, lately, upon reading articles on XHTML (my markup of choice), I've been pondering: should I learn to use XML? What are the advantages? Will I use XML a lot?Since I know nothing about it, I thought I should ask you guys.As a web programmer (I like writing web programs more than designing sites myself, I'm not an artsy person ), an aspiring computer programmer, and one who's prone to perfectionism in coding: is XML something I should invest time in learning?Normally I would jump on the chance of learning, but I feel I should try to specialize more in things that are practical and that I can use in my programming (whether web or otherwise).Things I have heard of about XML is that it can be used to store information very nicely. The tags are not preset, but are made up by the person (?). And it may become practical in computer programming as well as web programming. Are these points true?And lastly, can I depend on support from fellow developers in this section as strongly as I depend on them in other sections? (I believe this question is a no brainer, but I just want to be sure).Thanks for any response in advance.

[Ingolme]

Learning XML is really simple. It just has a couple of rules, and from there on, you do what you like.Once you've learnt XML, you'll find that it does absolutely nothing.So why learn XML if it does nothing?To answer that question, you will have to look at the more complex but useful XML DOM tutorial.The most practical uses of XML are not done on the client-side (though XML DOM is the base for the HTML DOM you use to make dynamic websites), with XML DOM you can update RSS feeds dynamically, or generate SVG graphs from database information. (Which means reading yet more W3Schools tutorials)From here on, I leave the rest to you.You can always ask questions here, there are many web developers who know a lot about XML, including myself. Though if you decide to learn XSL or XML Schema (more XML related features), the only user who I know knows those deeply is boen_robot, but he's around often so you can count on getting an answer as well.

[shadowayex]

I figured something along those lines would be the case. The only time I've ever seen XML is the chat logs that Windows Messenger makes.Although, I do use HTML DOM a lot. Dynamic pages are what I'm all about. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to take a look at XML, although I'm skeptical as to how useful it or other XML-related things will be to me.Thanks for the response.