Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage
    • Hyperlinking to Other Web Pages
    • To Do: Use a FrontPage Wizard to Create a Web Page
    • Publishing Your Web Page
    • Introduction to XML
    • XML and Its Impact
    • Office and XML
    • Summary
    • Q&A

XML and Its Impact

How important is XML? Almost four years ago, the Gartner Group, an Internet research company, said that 80% of business-to-business (also known as B2B) traffic used XML. XML is much like HTML and in some ways is identical.

The author of XML code can define and use, on-the-fly, brand new command tags that are also available to other Web pages. In defining new XML command tags, you use the extensible portion of XML.

Whereas HTML describes the format of a Web page, XML describes the content of a Web page. XML does more than just tell the Web browser where and how to place Web page elements.

Consider the following possible XML section from a Web page:

<CARMAKE>Swifty</CARMAKE>
<CARMODEL>Dove</CARMODEL>
<ENGINEPARTNO>546-32Xs</ENGINEPARTNO>
<WHOLESALE>$21,039</WHOLESALE>
<SUGGESTEDRETAIL>$32,483</SUGGESTEDRETAIL>

Over time, industries will begin to standardize their XML tags. Therefore, <ENGINEPARTNO> might be standardized by automobile Web-site designers to designate any automobile manufacturer's engine part number. As other automobile Web developers standardize and use <ENGINEPARTNO> (and its corresponding ending tag of </ENGINEPARTNO>), Web pages can be combined, borrowed, and used as the basis of other Web pages that also contain such parts.

When learning XML, you would not learn a <CARMAKE> tag because no such tag exists. As soon as a Web site uses <CARMAKE>, however, the tag is defined and should be used in that context. As a Web designer, you will learn the standard XML tags being used for the type of Web site you are developing. Your XML tags then define data categories, not actual data specifics.

One problem at this time is that XML is too new for globally agreed upon definitions to exist. Even within industries, one company might create XML tags that differ greatly from another's. The move toward organization will come only as companies that support XML begin to agree on a standard and that standard grows. For example, if your company's Web site is to interact with a vendor's XML-based Web site, one of you must adopt the other's XML tags or you must put into place a combined system. This agreement process will continue and grow as more companies move to XML.

HTML has a defined set of formatting and hyperlink tags, and you could very easily learn all of them. XML is defined as Web designers use it. You'll never learn all the XML tags, because new tags will continue to be developed as long as the language is in use.

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