Take your web design skills to the next level with XML, and learn how to use the content behind the site to drive the information, navigation, and design of a full-featured website. In this 10-session video course, you’ll build a professional website from the ground up by focusing on back-end structure and information to create brilliant front-end design and functionality. You’ll learn how to architect your content once for use in multiple formats and venues: the Web, desktop, mobile devices, and PDF.

Presented by creativeLIVE in partnership with O’Reilly, each session offers easy-to-follow, hands-on lessons. Learn how to build structured content bases that control HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Discover how to update your information easily, and then create your site and other publications with the push of a button. This video package is ideal for web professionals of all stripes who want to create their own ideas, rather than just implement the ideas of others.

You’ll learn:

• Competitive analysis techniques to slice up the competition and create a content architecture and site design that puts you on top
• Concepts and skills that are critical to designing for Drupal, Wordpress, SharePoint, or any other content management system
• Information structure to define and master the content and navigation on your site
• XML Schema design to create binding rules that control your content
• XML Instance coding to transcend pages and create a true content base
• XML Transform coding to access your content base and automatically create any site design you can imagine
• A new way to look at websites, mobile delivery, PDF and any other output that will put you ahead of other designers
• How to create your own ideas, rather than just implementing the ideas of others

You’ll get access to all ten sessions, including slide presentations and examples. Each session was presented live during ten consecutive weeks in October, November, and December 2010, and you can now download all the videos and example files, which include presentation slides, tip sheets, code and sample eBook chapters.

1. Get Started in XML (Overview) Explore the uses of XML, and how it can drive websites. You'll learn about the Oxygen development environment and how use it.
   
   1. Example files for Week 1 (Free Preview) 0 minutes  
   2. Week 1: Introduction (Free Preview) 23 minutes  
   3. Getting Started in XML (Free Preview) 26 minutes  
   4. What is an Instance? (Free Preview) 40 minutes  
   5. Final Q&A (Free Preview) 9 minutes  
   6. Course Overview and Homework (Free Preview) 5 minutes  
2. Begin a Competitive Analysis and Schema for the Course Project In this session, you'll be introduced to the course project: using XML to build a professional photography site. You'll explore a complete competitive analysis that reveals what kinds of content and design work best. You'll also learn about XML schemas, which can encode the decisions you make about content and design, and discover how to validate an XML file to ensure it conforms to a schema.
   1. Example files for Week 2 0 minutes  
   2. Week 2: Introduction 17 minutes  
   3. Schemas 49 minutes  
   4. What is well formed? 13 minutes  
   5. Our course project 19 minutes  
   6. The competitive analysis 21 minutes  
   7. Q&A and XML Comparison (Free Preview) 31 minutes  
3. Create the Photo Information Type Learn about information types—the key kinds of information you want to deliver. In this session, you'll study and implement your first info type: photographs. Understand how photos are handled by the competition and then implement a best-practice photo info type in an XML schema and instance. You'll learn the difference between information types and information items, and how to extract information types from any web page.
   1. Example files for Week 3 0 minutes  
   2. Week 3: Introduction 41 minutes  
   3. Figure out the Photo Info Type 17 minutes  
   4. The Photo Info Type in our Schema 34 minutes  
   5. The Photo Info Type in our Instance 17 minutes  
   6. Homework 2 minutes  
   7. Elements & Attributes, Q&A 20 minutes  
4. Transform the Photo Information Type Learn the process of site creation with XML, using XML transforms with XPath and XSL commands to build web pages automatically. In this session, you'll find and retrieve raw photo information and turn it into fully formed web pages.
   1. Example files for Week 4 0 minutes  
   2. Week 4: Introduction 25 minutes  
   3. The XML Big Picture 8 minutes  
   4. Transform Basics 1 hour 3 minutes  
   5. Build Photos from the Photo Info Type 19 minutes  
5. Transform the Narrative Information Type Continue your study of XML transforms by applying them to our second information type: the Narrative. Learn how to use template libraries and the powerful apply templates command to transform complex text and image-rich content into sophisticated layouts.
   1. Example files for Week 5 0 minutes  
   2. Week 5: Introduction 33 minutes  
   3. The Narrative Info Type 31 minutes  
   4. Working with Narratives 34 minutes  
   5. The Narrative in our Transforms 23 minutes  
   6. Final Q&A 12 minutes  
6. Create Site Navigation Learn the core concepts of information organization that drive all site navigation. You'll add indexes, cross-references, and sequences to your XML schema, and instance to organize your photos and narratives. Then you'll learn how to create site navigation from the organized information.
   1. Example files for Week 6 0 minutes  
   2. Introduction 32 minutes  
   3. Create Site Navigation 23 minutes  
   4. Indexes, Cross-references and Sequences 38 minutes  
   5. Rendering Indexes, Cross-references and Sequences in our Transforms 24 minutes  
   6. Homework Review 9 minutes  
7. Build a Complete, Integrated Site Learn how to use one XML transform to put navigation and content on the same page, and how build a complete site with hundreds or even thousands of pages in a few seconds. This technique lets you easily separate your content and site structure, so you can recreate your site when either one of them changes.
   1. Example files for Week 7 0 minutes  
   2. Introduction 1 hour 12 minutes  
   3. Homework 6 Answers 6 minutes  
   4. Build a Complete, Integrated Site 24 minutes  
   5. One Transform, Multiple Pages 17 minutes  
8. Create and Implement Site Hierarchies Learn how to implement a site outline and an outline of photos by location. These hierarchies are sophisticated structures that you can effectively create and use in XML. You'll discover how hierarchies are modeled in schemas, implemented in instances, and transformed into cascading menus and expanding outlines for site navigation.
   1. Example files for Week 8 0 minutes  
   2. Introduction 1 hour 3 minutes  
   3. Answers to Last Week's Homework 3 minutes  
   4. Hierarchies 14 minutes  
   5. Modeling Hierarchies 32 minutes  
   6. Final Q&A 6 minutes  
9. Put a Professional Polish on the Project Site Learn advanced modeling and transform techniques that allow you to optimize and reuse transforms. These techniques let you build a sophisticated and robust XML site system that's flexible and maintainable. You'll learn how to drive CSS and Javascript from your XML system so that advanced features can be added to the site with no manual effort.
   1. Example files for Week 9 0 minutes  
   2. Introduction 27 minutes  
   3. Transforming Hierarchies 24 minutes  
   4. Answers to last week's homework 15 minutes  
   5. The Structure of our Info and our Public Site 38 minutes  
   6. How are our XSL Templates Put Together? 27 minutes  
   7. Output Statements and Homework 8 minutes  
10. Create Other Outputs Learn how to use the XML system we created to drive outputs other than a user-facing website. You'll construct a simple transform that creates an RSS feed, and create other transforms to render a private site. Also, you'll study other techniques for rendering mobile sites, PDFs, and any other output you need.
    1. Example files for Week 10 0 minutes  
    2. Introduction 10 minutes  
    3. Week 9 Homework Answers 11 minutes  
    4. Site and Systems 34 minutes  
    5. Other Outputs: The RSS Feed 37 minutes  
    6. Wrap Up 5 minutes