XML - same as HTML, only different

I proceeded to familiarize myself with XML this week using the tools recommended in the assignment - namely, the Wikipedia articles, w3schools.com tutorials, and the Mark Long Introduction to XML videos. Last week's lesson on HTML certainly made XML easier because the languages are similar. Each of the tools mentioned above were helpful. In fact, at this early stage, I imagine any tool would be useful to a novice such as myself.

As mentioned before in this course, the Wikipedia articles, while generally current and thoughtful, often incorporate more detail than I'm prepared to appreciate at this point. Therefore, I often read the first third or half of each article to understand the basics, and usually find myself glazing over by the end. On the bright side, I do understand more of each article than I would have in early May, so I'm definitely learning (albeit slowly).

The w3schools and Mark Long videos were quite helpful. The w3 lessons work because you read them at your own pace, and are easy to go back to. Plus, they're typically concise and to-the-point. The w3 lessons provided a good foundation into the Long videos, which are a bit more detailed. I have not yet viewed the DTD and Schemas sections of the videos, however, but plan to return to these later. Part of my hesitation is simply that I don't understand the difference between these, although I'm sure the videos will help clarify my cloudiness.

The actual XML document was not hard to write. I did run into a minor problem trying to code a URL into an element, but that was resolved by using '& amp ;' in place of an &. I am curious how to code an actual URL link into XML, like "a href" for HTML. I haven't yet found how to do this, although once I delve deeper into the tutorials my question will likely be answered.