XML in Google’s Chrome

The support for viewing XML returned from a server from within Chrome leaves a little to be desired.  Both Firefox and Internet Explorer (and I hate to admit it, but my memory tells me that IE was the first to market with this feature) show XML in an easy-to-deal-with way.  They format it with indenting, allow you to expand and contract sections, and syntax color the tags.  Chrome, on the other hand, tends to treat XML as HTML.  That means that tags that look like HTML are rendered as such.  Tags that are not recognized as HTML are not displayed (which is exactly the way all browsers are supposed to work if you have a big HTML document with a few XML tags within).  With XML in Chrome, you can use the view-source command to see everything, but it’s a little difficult to navigate due to the raw formatting and lack of coloring.

A couple of months ago, I ran across a plugin for Chrome that really should be a standard feature.  The XML Tree extension brings to the table everything that Firefox and IE do as well as adding XPath support.  These days, it is one of the first extensions I install on a new copy of Chrome.

Posted in: Code Dear Diary

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Brian Enigma

Brian Enigma is a Portlander, manipulator of atoms & bits, minor-league blogger, and all-around great guy. He typically writes about the interesting “maker” projects he's working on, but sometimes veers off into puzzles, software, games, local news, and current events.

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