Part 3: XML: Doing It in Style

Content is King, says the mantra of Web-site developers: Beauty is only skin deep, and substance will always triumph over style.

The HTML-based Web has rather spoiled both designers and Web surfers, however much they profess to believe the preceding sentence. People want their sites' content to look good. And for good reason: Given two sites clamoring for the attention of the same audience with the same content, the better-looking one will always thrive.

You've already learned, in Part 1 of Just XML, how to build XML documents; and, in Part 2, how to link them to one another. Part 3 covers two approaches to making your documents look the way you want them to look—using (by now it should be needless to say) the FlixML B movie markup language as a "demonstrator."

The next part, Rolling Your Own Application, explains how to build your own DTDs. Part 5, XML Software, covers the current state of XML authoring and viewing tools.