Who Is This Book For?

This book is designed for just about anyone who wants to learn XML and how it's used today in the real world. The only assumption that I make is that you have some knowledge of how to create documents using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). You don't have to be any great HTML expert, but a little knowledge of HTML will be helpful. That's really all you need.

However, it's a fact of life that most XML software these days is targeted at Windows. Among other things, this means you should have access to Windows for many of the topics covered in this book, and in Chapters 7 and 8, we'll be taking a look at the XML support in Microsoft Internet Explorer. I wish there was more support for the other operating systems I like, such as Unix, but right now a lot of it is Windows-only. I'll explore alternatives when I can. One hopeful note for the future is that there are more and more Java-based XML tools appearing daily, and those tools are platform-independent.