I have a pretty strong background in HTML (I wrote an HTML editor named Quadratura that was listed as one of the 1001 best downloads on the internet by PC Magazine back in 1995).
Besides having my own little one man shop on the side (GT Technologies - gttech.com and acqurl.com) I also work for a large technology company named Orcom that supplies and supports software and web design for utility companies.
About a month and a half ago my manager decided that it would be a good idea for all the people in his department to be certified in something. I chose XML because I thought the technology sounded interesting. Besides, how hard could learning the syntax to XML be? ;-)
I had to study on my own time, but Orcom paid for the test.
I bought a copy of "Beginning XML" from Wrox, and read it cover to cover. I also spend a great deal of time on-line researching the technology.
For the benifit of others I created a links page on my site that has about 200 XML directly related links. The URL of the links page is
http://www.acqurl.com/xmllinks.htm I studied about 2 hours a night for about 30 days. I also worked on incorporating XML export into my bookmark manager (still working on that) which helped me understand the development and need of an external DTD/schema. I also used XT as my parser.
I hope this helps.
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AcqURL : The next evolution in bookmark management.