Summary

Although it doesn't solve all of the world's problems, XML has a lot to offer the web community and the computing world as a whole. Not only does XML represent a path toward a cleaner and more structured HTML, it also serves as an excellent means of transporting data in a consistent format that is readily accessible across networks and different computing platforms. A variety of different XML-based languages are available for storing different kinds of information, ranging from financial transactions to mathematical equations to multimedia presentations.

This hour introduced you to XML and helped to explain how it came to be as well as how it fits into the future of the Web. You also learned that XML has considerable value beyond its impact on HTML. This hour, although admittedly not very hands on, has given you enough knowledge of XML to allow you to hit the ground running and begin creating your own XML documents in the next hour.