Microsoft Supports XML in IE 5.0

Microsoft today committed to including a slew of XML-based technologies in Internet Explorer 5.0.

The technologies-including the completed eXtensible Markup Language 1.0 specification, XML Style Sheets (XSL), XML Document Object Model (DOM), XML Namespaces and more-will first appear in IE 5.0 beta 2, slated for release by year's end. A developer release of IE 5.0 beta 1 is available now, but beta 2 will be the first public release, and close to feature complete, said Dave Wascha, product manager, Microsoft's platform marketing group.

Where possible, Microsoft will support the final specifications of these technologies. But in some cases, such as XSL and XML Namespaces, W3C working groups haven't produced final recommendations. In another case, XML Schemas, several proposals have been delivered to the W3C but a working group has yet to form.

The bottom line: developers will have a lot of XML technology to work with in the ultimate release of IE 5 next year, but they must be careful not to rely too heavily on technologies whose ultimate syntax could change when final versions of the standards are released, Wascha said.

"People are desperate to use this stuff. They are tired of waiting. No one's provided any support up to now, and now you have everything you need to get started," said Wascha.

In some cases, the syntax of some of the not-yet-completed specifications might change, but not major features, Wascha said. So developers can start using next-generation XML technologies like Schemas today and participate in the standards process via feedback, he said.

Given the relative simplicity of text-based XML, the early lack of tools shouldn't be a problem either, Wascha said. "People used HTML for years before there were good WYSIWYG tools. Same way with XML."

In addition to improved XML parsing engines, IE 5.0 will support direct viewing of XML documents, using either XSL or Cascading Style Sheets. XSL will not only support document display, but querying capabilities for extracting data from XML data sets.

The IE 5.0 XML engine will also support XML Namespaces, which lets developers qualify element names uniquely and thus avoid conflicts between elements with the same name.

Also provided is early support for XML Schemas, which define the rules of an XML document including element names and the attributes for each element. Several proposals for Schemas have been placed with the W3C, including Microsoft's early XML-Data proposal, as well as a later proposal from Microsoft and IBM dubbed Document Content Definition (DCD).

IE 5.0 will provide full support for the XML DOM, per the recently-released DOM Level 1 recommendation. Support for the core DOM and HTML DOM will be strong, but not compliant to the spec in all respects. Full compatibility with the entire DOM spec will come in later versions of IE, said Wascha said.