If you’ve not been following the whole Atom thing, then you should really read Mark’s excellent introduction to Atom. He does an excellent job of putting you in the picture without getting bogged down with any particular aspect.

On a similar XML note (la!) our old pals the W3C have gone and made XForms an official Recommendation. Hurrah! I know you’re thinking what the hell use is that when no browsers support XForms. The important factor when a technology becomes an official recommendation is that the W3C are now saying you should do forms like this which gives browser manufacturers the authority and confidence to actually start implementing that technology. In days of yore it would be about three years (literally) before such a technology would become useable. That may still be so, but I rather get the impression that with the development models surrounding modern browsers that we might see new technologies like XForms becoming viable for use more and more quickly after recommendation. Sure, it’s still going to take a whole chunk of time to code support for brand new technologies, but detachment from corporate bureaucracy and schedules could well mean new technologies have a much quicker route to market.

I’m still having problems with XML in PHP. I can find lots of libraries that help me read XML files, but none that help me write them. With PHP, what’s the easiest way to add a node into the middle of a document without a DOM? Any ideas?