This course provides the students a background in XML and really seems to take HTML into a different slant.

My understanding of XML is that it's purely used to store data records, and we covered that in the course. What's more intersting is the way we used XML in the assignments:

1. Assignment 1 - Create a file called index.xml which contains the various fields of an invoice.
2. Assigment 2 - You are provided an XML file with 37 Shakespeare plays and are expected to create an index.html which will list those play and link to each one.
3. Assignment 3 - Take those same plays and format them using XSL stylesheets.
4. Assignment 4 - Using the MS-XML DOM, we were to render a page using Javascript, which linked an XML and XSL file.
5. Assignment 5 - Starting with XML and XSL files, we were to create an HTML file using a parser.

As you can see, we went well beyond the basics of XML data structure definitions. Did I like the class? Many folks I talked to had a tough time with this course, however I thought it was interesting and gave me a better appreciation for XHTML and web standards. One big thing I got out of the course was a better understanding of the use of 'CDATA' within XML files.

I was quite happy with my final mark of 96%.