Simplify Your Apps with the XML Binding Language 2.0

“As web applications replace web pages on the Internet, there
are a number of approaches that are being taken to add new
functionality to these sites. One approach, the one perhaps most
heavily used by applications, is programmatically controlling
different parts of a web page via scripts and user events. In most
cases, this process creates some form of binding on elements after
the fact, which can often lead to fairly messy java-script code
both in terms of long blocks of scripts and inline event handlers
calling those java-script functions.

“However, there’s another approach that may have the potential
to both simplify your applications and contribute significantly to
reuse. The idea behind it is deceptively simple: in a web page’s
CSS page, you define what’s called a behavior, a script that binds
to a given behavior language document written in mixed XML and
java-script called the XML Binding Language (XBL). Once the page
loads, any element that’s associated with that particular rule will
gain the behavior, essentially acting as a new “element” with its
own presentation, its own responses to user input, and its own
underlying data.

“XBL has been floating around in various incarnations since the
early 2000s. Microsoft created a type of binding called behaviors
in the late 1990s, but the technology never really caught on with
other browsers. In early 2003, XBL was introduced in Firefox as one
way of building extensions using the XML User-interface Language
(XUL), though XBL wasn’t formally specified as a standard outside
of Firefox. XBL bindings have worked in Firefox web pages almost
from the inception of the browser, but again, other vendors didn’t
follow suit.”

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