Viewing It With IE5, Take 1
April 12, 1999
If you haven't installed the official public release of IE 5.0,
now is the time to do so. This may take awhile, especially if
the Microsoft site is busy. An alternative is the
TUCOWS.com site.
| Internet Explorer 5 |
Public (non-beta) release March 18, 1999.
Supports XML, XSL (with exceptions and extensions), CSS1,
HTML4, VML, DHTML, MathML, and a variation of DOM. |
|
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ (Windows) |
Windows and Unix only. Accepts local XML document
or URLs as input. If the XML document references a local or
public DTD, IE5 will parse the DTD first. |
|
http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ie/default.asp (Unix) |
There is also a
Mac version of IE 4.5,
but it is unlikely that it supports XML and XSL. |
As mentioned earlier, XML expert Tim Bray has started a
multi-part review of IE 5,
XML Support in IE 5.
After you have downloaded and installed IE5, try pasting an URL
of an XML document in IE5's Address field, or just click on a
link:
For those using IE5, you'll notice how the XML source is rendered
in several colors, depending on whether it is a processing
instruction, an element or attribute, the value of an attribute,
a comment, etc. Minus signs to the left of elements indicate
that they are collapsible. Plus signs denote expandable nodes.
This is most likely implemented by a combination of CSS
and DHTML.
For readers that don't have IE5,
have a look at this
IE5 screen shot.
Note that this XML rendering is the default behavior of
IE5. As we will see next month, you can use
CSS
and/or XSL
to completely control the appearance and processing of an XML
document.
You may have read that, unlike with HTML browsers, XML parsers
will not try to recover from incorrect markup. An XML
document is either well-formed (and possibly valid), or it is
toast. The parser should terminate when the first error is
encountered; errors should prevent the document from being
displayed.
Let's see what happens with IE5. We'll give it an XML document
that contains errors and we'll see if the parser gives us
reasonable error messages.
Use the file
Examples/collection1bugs.xml
which contains four errors. Note that only one error is reported
since IE5 correctly terminates the parse as soon as the first
problem is encountered. You should see the following message
for the first error.
The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using style sheet.
Please correct the error and then click the
Refresh button, or try again later.
-------------------------------------------
The standalone attribute must have the value
'yes' or 'no'. Line 1, Position 33
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="YES" ?>
--------------------------------^
Fix the errors one by one until the document is well-formed.
(You might want to save a copy of the original bug-ridden
document.)
The list of bugs and their solutions
appears at the end of this article.
To E or Not To E: Elements vs. Attributes
Doing It With XML, Part 1
Generating a DTD the Easy Way
|
