For a recent project, I found myself having to convert 60+ product detail pages from the old table-based format to the new XML-based format. I was doing this on my own, and I didn’t relish the thought of manually editing hundreds of tables of product details. For example, here’s an excerpt from one of the old table-based detail lists:

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="268">
  <tr>
    <td class="specheading" colspan="2">Performance</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td width="122">Efficiency</td>
    <td width="144">MERV 15</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td width="122">Warranty</td>
    <td width="144">5-year limited</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Note that it consists of a list of specifications grouped under a title. Now, here’s what the new, XML-based code looked like:

Continue reading →