In this article we will discuss some important differences between HTML (hyper text markup language) and XML (extensible mark up language).
HTML is a mark up language which is mainly used to display the data. HTML is concerned about how data looks on the client side or web page. But XML is responsible for storing the data, manuplating the data and transportation of data to various electronic devices.
HTML is used to describe web page’s structure and displays information.
What is HTML ?
Hypertext Markup language (HTML) is a programming language that displays the data and also describes the structure of the web page. Hypertext is mainly used for browsing the internet by referring the hyperlinks.
Markup language defines the way tags are used for defining the page layout and elements within the page. In HTML creation of links of documents is static and can ignore small errors. Due to this reason itself in HTML closing tags are not mandatory.
HTML is used to create websites that can be viewed by anyone with internet access.here tags are the words mentioned between angle brackets <>.
Example : <h1> This is heading tag </h1>
In the above example <h1>= It’s the opening of tag
</h1>= It’s the closing of tag
This is heading tag = This is the content of the tag
Basically tags will not be displayed on the web pages but will affect how data looks on the web page. Different tags will perform the different functions .The most straight forward tags will apply the formatting to some text.
Examples like
To make text bold tag used is <b>
To make text italic tag used is <i>
So in these cases tags will be wrapped around around some text content, it will apply that tag effect on the text content.
What is XML ?
Extensible markup Language (XML) is a programming language created by the worldwide web consortium (W3C). XML faciliates encoding of documents with the help of some pre-defined set of rules in a format which can be read by humans and computers.
XML will define the document structure how it shoukld be stored and transported. It enables the creation of web applications and dynamic web pages. Due to this reason it is very often used as the basic for lotof other mark up languages.
- We know that to describe web feed ATOM and RSS are popularly used, behind the scenes these are also using the XML itself.
- Microsoft.NET is also using the XML to create configuration files.
In microsoft Office 2007 and the other later versions, file extension will be .DOCX. Here X stands for extensible XML language. - Also powerpoint presentation file ends with .PPTX, where X stands for XML underlaying language.
XML is in a textualdata format and focuses on generality, simplicity and usability across the internet.
Advantages of HTML
- HTML is supported by all browsers
- It’s a plain text so simple to edit.
- It’s very easy to integrate with other languages.
- Very lightweight
- HTML is the basic of all programming languages
- As most of the text is compressible, it’s fast to download.
HTML Disadvantages
- With HTML we can create only plain and static pages
- To create a simple web page lot of programming is required
- When it comes to security HTML is not very much font.
Due to long coding takes lot of time for creating webpage also all webpages need to edited separately there is no centrilized system for it.
XML Advantages
- XML is extensible in nature that means we can create custom tags
- Easy to read for humans and computers
- It’s completely portable and compitable with java coding language
- As it’s a platform independent language can be used on any system.
- Unicode is supported by XML
- With the help of XML data can be stored and transported at any point in timewithout affecting data.
- XML has made data sharing very easy in between systems.
XML Disadvantages
- When compared to other text-based languages, XML is redundent.
- When dealing with large volumes of data as it loads whole document, storage and transportation costs are high.
- XML is less readable compared with other text based formats.
- Generally XML codes will be lengthy and file sizes will be higher.
- Last but not least XML does not support an array
HTML vs XML Key differences List
Here is a list of most important key differences between HTML and XML
| HTML | XML |
| It’s a markup language | standard markup language used for defining other languages |
| Not case sensitive | It’s case sensitive |
| It’s presentation language as well | It’s not a presentation language |
| Has got it’s own pre-defined tags | Tags are not pre-defined here programmer can create own tags. |
| Closing tags are not mandatory | Every opening tag must have closing tag here. |
| While spaces are not preserved. | Here white spaces are preserved. |
| Mainly used for displaying the data | Used for transporting the data |
| Static in nature | Dynamic in nature |
| Extra application code is not needed for parsing the text. | XML DOM application and implementation code is needed to map text back into java script |