XML

In the future, our website will be upgraded to fit in with extensible markup language (XML) standards, by the implementation of XHTML. Use of XML 1.0 is recommended by W3C (W3C, n.d.-a), and should make this website compatible with other websites and browsers as they are upgraded.

Reasons for upgrade

XHTML has a number of advantages over HTML. Firstly, the requirement for code to be 'well-formed' makes it more efficient for browsers to display, and therefore more functional on mobile devices (Felke-Morris, 2011, p. 25). As more and more of our users are using mobile devices to access our site, it is a priority for us to cater to their needs.

XML was designed to be flexible, as users can create and define their own tags (W3C, n.d.-b). These data tags are designed to help "transport and store data", by defining and structuring it (W3C, n.d.-b). The result is that information stored on the web is able to be more easily processed by machines in search engines, information brokers and so on (Decker et al., 2000, p. 63).

Impact on users

Since XML is not designed to format and display information, like HTML, but to transport it (W3C, n.d.-b), this upgrade should not have a significant impact on how the website appears to users. XML should, however, improve the speed at which pages load on mobile devices, and make it easier to upgrade the new site if we change software platforms in future (W3C, n.d.-c). XML also makes it easier to share data, by making it more accessible through different applications, as well as making it easier to include in a website in the first place (W3C, n.d.-c). As a result, we will look at including more of our own data, and the results of members' research, on the website using XML, for all our members to use and benefit from.

References

• Decker, S., Melnik, S., van Harmelen, F., Fensel, D., Klein, M., Broekstra, J., Erdmann, M., et al. (2000). The Semantic Web: the roles of XML and RDF. IEEE Internet Computing, 4(5), 63–73. doi:10.1109/4236.877487
• Felke-Morris, T. (2011). Web development and design foundations with XHTML (5th ed.). Boston: Addison-Wesley.
• W3C. (n.d.-a). W3C XML Activities. w3schools.com. Retrieved May 28, 2012, from http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_xml.asp
• W3C. (n.d.-b). XML Introduction - What is XML? w3schools.com. Retrieved May 28, 2012, from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_whatis.asp
• W3C. (n.d.-c). XML Usage. w3schools.com. Retrieved May 28, 2012, from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_usedfor.asp