Resources

Learn

• If you're unfamiliar with XML, start with the many helpful resources in the developerWorks "New to XML" page.
  
  
• Learn the basics of CSS and CSS with XML. See the earlier tutorial "Use Cascading Stylesheets to display XML" (developerWorks, November 2004). That tutorial's extensive resources panel is particularly useful.
  
  
• Browse through Simon St.Laurent's series exploring practical display of XML in major Web browsers. The articles are dated (some code details are obsolete), but still excellent:
  • "On Display: XML Web Pages with Mozilla"
  • "On Display: XML Web Pages with Opera 4.0"
  • "On Display: XML Web Pages with Internet Explorer 5.x"

  Simon also has a very nice Browser XML Display Support Chart, although it covers older browser versions.

  
  
• Also see "Adding a touch of style", a great introduction to CSS by Dave Raggett of the W3C. The W3C staff (Bert Bos to be specific) also wrote "How to add style to XML", a sketchy introduction, but with some useful examples.
  
  
• Read "Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL" by Hakon Wium Lie and Michael Day for a biased but informative look at how CSS can be used to style XML documents for print, by comparison with XSL-FO. XSL expert Norm Walsh wrote a rebuttal "Comparing CSS and XSL: A Reply..." See "CSS3 Paged Media Module" (W3C Candidate Recommendation, February 2004) for all the details on CSS for print media.
  
  
• Use the W3C CSS Validation Service, "a free service that checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations."
  
  
• Bookmark and refer to the formal CSS2 specification, "Cascading Style Sheets, level 2: CSS2 Specification." Many parts of the specification are clear and readable.
  
  
• Keep an eye on developments in CSS 3, the next version of CSS. Many browsers already experimentally implement features proposed on CSS3 working drafts. Read "CSS 3 Selectors" by Russell Dyer for a good overview of the selectors (though CSS3 is more than just new selectors). But before CSS3 is complete, you can expect to see CSS 2.1, a minor update.
  
  
• Review "Associating Style Sheets with XML documents Version 1.0" (W3C Recommendation, June 1999), which is the most authoritative document that describes how to specify style for XML documents.
  
  
• Browse the short and sweet xml:id working draft from the W3C.
  
  
• Read "Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL" by Hakon Wium Lie and Michael Day for a biased but informative look at how to use CSS to style XML documents for print. See "CSS3 Paged Media Module" (W3C Candidate Recommendation, February 2004) for all the details on CSS for print media.
  
  
• If you're already familiar with SVG, pore through the details of where CSS fits in with SVG in section "6 Styling" of the latest SVG recommendation.
  
  
• See "SVG and Typography" by Fabio Arciniegas for a very interesting discussion of how CSS in SVG can be used to create effects with text.
  
  
• See "CSS3 Basic User Interface Module" (W3C Candidate Recommendation, May 2004) for the details on special CSS features that you can use with XForms and related specifications. Also of interest is "Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Style Specification" (W3C Recommendation, November 2000), which details how to process CSS using DOM (for example, through JavaScript in a browser).
  
  
• If you want to learn more about XForms, check out XForms Essentials by Micah Dubinko (O'Reilly and Associates). It is available online, but is well worth the purchase.
  
  
• Learn more about XSL-FO with IBM's own Doug Tidwell.
  • His developerWorks tutorial "XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) basics" (February 2003) shows you the fundamentals of this powerful, flexible XML vocabulary for formatting data.
  • His follow-up tutorial, "XSL-FO advanced techniques" (February 2003), shows advanced techniques for working with XSL-FO for formatting data, such as handling lists and tables, and creating complex documents with multiple layouts.
  • Finally, his "HTML to Formatting Objects (FO) conversion guide" (February 2003) shows by example how to use XSLT templates to convert 45 commonly used HTML elements to formatting objects for easy transformation to PDF using XSLT.
  
  
• Take a closer look at Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) with the developerWorks tutorials "Introduction to Scalable Vector Graphics" (March 2004) and "Interactive, dynamic Scalable Vector Graphics" (June 2003), both by Nicholas Chase.
  
  
• If you're interested in learning more on XUL, Mozilla's rich user interface language (represented as an XML vocabulary), start with this introduction.
  
  
• Check out CSSToXSLFO, "a utility which can convert an XML document, together with a CSS2 stylesheet, into an XSLFO document, which can then be converted into PDF, PostScript, etc. with an XSLFO-processor."
  
  
• Use the W3C CSS Validation Service, "a free service that checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations."
  
  
• Browse for books on these and other technical topics.
  
  
• Find more XML resources on the developerWorks XML zone.
  
  
• Finally, find out how you can become an IBM Certified Developer in XML and related technologies.
  
  

Get products and technologies

• The author tested the CSS in this tutorial with Firefox, a popular and free Web browser available on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other platforms. Firefox is based on Mozilla's rendering engine, which historically is a very CSS-compliant browser. Also consider Opera, a commercial (though inexpensive) browser implementing even more of CSS2 than Firefox. If you are an Opera user, look over the product document "Web Specifications Supported in Opera 6," which includes a description of Opera's CSS extensions for linking and other uses.
  
  

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Intermediate CSS selectors and rules in action
• CSS and media types
• Manage behaviors with XML and CSS
• CSS in other XML vocabularies
• Wrap up
• Download
• Resources
• About the author

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