Client-side XML processing. Today's browsers do cover the
basics and some of them go even further, offering support for
XHTML, SVG, XSLT, XPath , XLink, validation using W3C XML Schema,
and more. This article will introduce you to basic cross-browser
XML development with the aid of
Sarissa, an ECMAScript library
designed to stop those nasty incompatibilities
before they get too
close.
Getting Started
Using XML on the client enables you to do things you've never
done before, especially when it comes to control of structured
information and delivering an enhanced user experience. Let's
go over some typical examples.
Your favorite designer could very well be hiding this from
you: it is possible to update only parts of a web page
with data coming from a request to your server without
refreshing the page and without scripting between those
troublesome iframe elements. The request can
be the result of user interaction handled by your
script. Using the
XMLHttpRequest object, you can perform
requests over HTTP and obtain the XML response as a
DOM-compatible object. You can then process that object
further, if you want, before finally injecting it into the
document using plain DOM methods, adding to your usability
and saving bandwidth.
