Simplify Your Apps with the XML Binding Language 2.0

s 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.