Unit 7: XML is so fancy!

I have to admit to learning a little XML about fifteen years ago. Back when I just graduated with my undergrad, my dad wanted to take a JavaScript course at the community college and asked if I wanted to take it with him. During the class my dad created a slide show webpage with JavaScript that let the user flip through pictures, using html buttons links to the script. The JavaScript used an XML page for the picture information. Back then I was working on getting rid of a bunch of my stuff to move out of living with my parents so I transferred his idea to a website I called Bargain Monkey’s Garage. This was a time period where eBay wasn't that big yet, so just think if I had made the site learn to take money from people and actually took time to finish it I might be a millionaire.

So this week I instantly went to the w3schools website to refresh my memory on XML. I watched part of Professors Fulton’s YouTube video and realized it was a great class for XML information made as a PowerPoint presentation (Beyond MARC: Metadata Standards for Digital Resources). I also watched the suggested video called, “Just Enough XML to Survive”, it was a very brief overview of XML, but the video quality was lacking. I could hard read the screen and when I made it larger I felt like I was just looking at fuzz.

I then moved to making my XML file and we were instructed to make a XML files with a root element with three data elements with sub-elements within. It was supposed to be about images so I figured I would make one for real. I used free picture from Deviant Art with random searches. 

I picked a picture of a turtle, a banana and a double rainbow and saved off the files for potential use in the future. I also got their creation date and artist data and added it to the sub-elements. I really enjoyed making the XML file and hope we use it in the upcoming weeks in class.