1. What is E-commerce/E-business?

E-commerce, short for electronic commerce, is trading in products or services using

computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies
such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management,Internet
marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory
management systems, and automateddata collection systems. Modern electronic
commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's
life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.
eCommerce businesses may employ some or all of the following:

Online shopping web sites for retail sales direct to consumers

Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party

business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales

Business-to-business buying and selling

Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media

Business-to-business electronic data interchange

Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for

example, with newsletters)

Engaging in pretail for launching new products and services

Electronic commerce or ecommerce is a term for any type of business, or commercial

transaction, that involves the transfer of information across the Internet. It covers a
range of different types of businesses, from consumer based retail sites, through
auction or music sites, to business exchanges trading goods and services between
corporations. It is currently one of the most important aspects of the Internet to
emerge.
Ecommerce allows consumers to electronically exchange goods and services with no
barriers of time or distance. Electronic commerce has expanded rapidly over the past
five years and is predicted to continue at this rate, or even accelerate. In the near
future the boundaries between "conventional" and "electronic" commerce will become

increasingly blurred as more and more businesses move sections of their operations
onto the Internet.
Business to Business or B2B refers to electronic commerce between businesses rather
than between a business and a consumer. B2B businesses often deal with hundreds or
even thousands of other businesses, either as customers or suppliers. Carrying out
these transactions electronically provides vast competitive advantages over traditional
methods. When implemented properly, ecommerce is often faster, cheaper and more
convenient than the traditional methods of bartering goods and services.
Electronic transactions have been around for quite some time in the form of Electronic
Data Interchange or EDI. EDI requires each supplier and customer to set up a
dedicated data link (between them), where ecommerce provides a cost-effective
method for companies to set up multiple, ad-hoc links. Electronic commerce has also
led to the development of electronic marketplaces where suppliers and potential
customers are brought together to conduct mutually beneficial trade.
The road to creating a successful online store can be a difficult if unaware of
ecommerce principles and what ecommerce is supposed to do for your online
business. Researching and understanding the guidelines required to properly
implement an e-business plan is a crucial part to becoming successful with online
store building.

The social impact of e-commerce

Along with the e-commerce and its unique charm that has appeared gradually, virtual
enterprise, virtual bank, network marketing, online shopping, payment and advertising,
such this new vocabulary which is unheard-of and now has become as familiar to
people. This reflects that the e-commerce has huge impact on the economy and society
from the other side.[75] For instance, B2B is a rapidly growing business in the world that
leads to lower cost and then improves the economic efficiency and also bring along the
growth of employment.[76]
To understand how the e-commerce has affected the society and economy, this article
will mention three issues below:
1. The e-commerce has changed the relative importance of time, but as the pillars of
indicator of the countrys economic state that the importance of time should not be
ignored.
2. The e-commerce offers the consumer or enterprise various information they need,
making information into total transparency, will force enterprise no longer is able to use
the mode of space or advertisement to raise their competitive edge.[77] Moreover, in
theory, perfect competition between the consumer sovereignty and industry will
maximize social welfare.[78]

3. In fact, during the economic activity in the past, large enterprise frequently has
advantage of information resource, and thus at the expense of consumers. Nowadays,
the transparent and real-time information protects the rights of consumers, because the
consumers can use internet to pick out the portfolio to the benefit of themselves. The
competitiveness of enterprises will be much more obvious than before, consequently,
social welfare would be improved by the development of the e-commerce.
4. The new economy led by the e-commerce change humanistic spirit as well, but above
all, is the employee loyalty.[79] Due to the market with competition, the employees level
of professionalism becomes the crucial for enterprise in the niche market. The
enterprises must pay attention to how to build up the enterprises inner culture and a set
of interactive mechanisms and it is the prime problem for them. Furthermore, though
the mode of e-commerce decrease the information cost and transaction cost, however,
its development also makes human being are overly computer literate. In hence,
emphasized more humanistic attitude to work is another project for enterprise to
development. Life is the root of all and high technology are merely an assistive tool to
support our quality of life.
The e-commerce is not a kind of new industry, but it is creating a new economic model.
Most of people agree that the e-commerce indeed to be important and significant for
economic society in the future, but actually that is a bit of clueless feeling at the
beginning, this problem is exactly prove the e-commerce is a sort of incorporeal
revolution.[80]Generally speaking, as a type of business active procedure, the ecommerce is going to leading an unprecedented revolution in the world, the influence of
this model far exceeded the commercial affair itself.[81] Except the mentioned above, in
the area of law, education, culture and also policy, the e-commerce will continue that
rise in impact. The e-commerce is truly to take human beings into the information
society.

2. Give examples on application of E-commerce/E-business?

Ecommerce is buying and selling that is conducted in an online environment, through an
ecommerce website. An application is a software program designed to accomplish one
or more tasks in a particular software environment. An ecommerce application is a
software application that is specifically designed to support the creation of an
ecommerce website or add functionality to it. Plug-ins and add-ons to ecommerce
website software are included, but applications that dont have specific ecommerce
utility wouldnt be considered. What is integral to one ecommerce site may not be
needed at all for another.

Typically, ecommerce applications refers to the wide variety of shopping cart

programs that are available, as well as other software that incorporates payment
options as plug-ins or as part of an entire site application. Shopping carts may
add only the shopping cart itself to a website that is built with a software that
was not designed especially for ecommerce and has no particular ecommerce
features in its basic setup. Alternatively, it may actually be built onto an online
store that includes a product catalog, search function, checkout, stock control,
shipping, and the means to accept payment in a variety of ways.

An ecommerce shopping cart application may be open source or proprietary. If it

is an open source product, it will likely be offered under a GNU GPL (Gnus Not
Unix! General Public License). It may also be written in several different computer
languages. There are several examples of open source ecommerce applications
written in Linux. There are also shopping carts for ASP.NET (Active Server Page
for dot-net, also known as ASP+), PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) and MySQL
(Structured Query Language), HTML (HyperText Markup Language), JavaScript,
and Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language).
Other ecommerce applications cover a wide range. For example, theres an
ecommerce application that allows business owners to send and receive faxes
through their email accounts. Another ecommerce application can enable a
business owner to create a business dashboardbased on website data. Another
function is to provide a shipping module or foreign exchange currency tables.
Useful to ecommerce sites, but not typically referred to as an ecommerce
application is the plug-in that carries functionality widely used on personal as
well as business sites, like calendars, statistics packages, and surveys.

Business applications

An example of an automated online assistant on a merchandising website.

Some common applications related to electronic commerce are:
Document automation in supply chain and logistics
Domestic and international payment systems
Enterprise content management
Group buying
Print on demand
Automated online assistant
Newsgroups
Online shopping and order tracking
Online banking
Online office suites
Shopping cart software
Teleconferencing
Electronic tickets
Social networking

Instant messaging
Pretail

3. What is Internet?

In the early days, most people just used the Internet to search for
information. Today's Internet is a constantly evolving tool that not only
contains an amazing variety of information but that also provides new
ways of accessing, interacting, and connecting with people and
content. As a result, new terms are constantly appearing.

The Internet is the largest computer network in the world,

connecting millions of computers. A network is a group of two or
more computer systems linked together.

There are two main types of computer networks:

Local Area Network (LAN): A LAN is two or more connected computers
sharing certain resources in a relatively small geographic location, often in
the same building. Examples include home networks and office networks.

Wide Area Network (WAN): A WAN typically consists of two or more

LANs. The computers are farther apart and are linked by telephone lines,
dedicated telephone lines, or radio waves. The Internet is the largest Wide
Area Network (WAN) in existence.

The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system

of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one
computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other
computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). It
was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of
the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known as the ARPANet. The
original aim was to create a network that would allow users of a
research computer at one university to "talk to" research computers at

other universities. A side benefit of ARPANet's design was that, because

messages could be routed or rerouted in more than one direction, the
network could continue to function even if parts of it were destroyed in
the event of a military attack or other disaster.

Today, the Internet is a public, cooperative and self-sustaining facility

accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet
uses a portion of the total resources of the currently existing public
telecommunication networks. Technically, what distinguishes the Internet is its
use of a set of protocols called TCP/IP (for Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol). Two recent adaptations of Internet technology,
the intranet and the extranet, also make use of the TCP/IP protocol.
For most Internet users, electronic mail (email) practically replaced the postal
service for short written transactions. People communicate over the Internet in
a number of other ways including Internet Relay Chat (IRC),Internet
telephony, instant messaging, video chat or social media.
The most widely used part of the Internet is the World Wide Web (often
abbreviated "WWW" or called "the Web"). Its outstanding feature ishypertext,
a method of instant cross-referencing. In most Web sites, certain words or
phrases appear in text of a different color than the rest; often this text is also
underlined. When you select one of these words or phrases, you will be
transferred to the site or page that is relevant to this word or phrase.
Sometimes there are buttons, images, or portions of images that are
"clickable." If you move the pointer over a spot on a Web site and the pointer
changes into a hand, this indicates that you can click and be transferred to
another site.
Using the Web, you have access to billions of pages of information. Web
browsing is done with a Web browser, the most popular of which
areChrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. The appearance of a particular Web

site may vary slightly depending on the browser you use. Also, later versions
of a particular browser are able to render more "bells and whistles" such as
animation, virtual reality, sound, and music files, than earlier versions.
The Internet has continued to grow and evolve over the years of its
existence. IPv6, for example, was designed to anticipate enormous future
expansion in the number of available IP addresses. In a related development,
the Internet of Things (IoT) is the burgeoning environment in which almost any
entity or object can be provided with a unique identifier and the ability to
transfer data automatically over the Internet.

4. What is HTML and its application?

HyperText Markup Language, commonly referred to as HTML, is the standard markup

language used to create web pages.[1] It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting
of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like <html> ). HTML tags most commonly come in pairs
like <h1> and </h1> , although some represent empty elements and so are unpaired, for
example <img> . The first tag in such a pair is the start tag, and the second is the end
tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags).
Web browsers can read HTML files and render them into visible or audible web pages.
Browsers do not display the HTML tags and scripts, but use them to interpret the content of
the page. HTML describes the structure of a website semantically along with cues for
presentation, making it a markup language, rather than a programming language.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to
be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to
create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings,
paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts written in languages
such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML web pages.
Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the look and layout
of text and other material. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), maintainer of both the

HTML and the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational
HTML since 1999.
HTML markup consists of several key components, including tags (and their attributes), characterbased data types, character references and entity references. Another important component is
the document type declaration, which triggers standards mode rendering.
The following is an example of the classic Hello world program, a common test employed for
comparing programming languages, scripting languages and markup languages. This example is
made using 9 lines of code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>This is a title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello world!</p>
</body>
</html>
(The text between <html> and </html> describes the web page, and the text between <body> and
</body> is the visible page content. The markup text "<title>This is a title</title>" defines the browser
page title.)
The Document Type Declaration <!DOCTYPE html> is for HTML5. If a declaration is not included,
various browsers will revert to "quirks mode" for rendering.[47]

Elements[edit]
Main article: HTML element
HTML documents imply a structure of nested HTML elements. These are indicated in the document
by HTML tags, enclosed in angle brackets thus: <p> [48]
In the simple, general case, the extent of an element is indicated by a pair of tags: a "start
tag" <p> and "end tag" </p> . The text content of the element, if any, is placed between these tags.
Tags may also enclose further tag markup between the start and end, including a mixture of tags and
text. This indicates further (nested) elements, as children of the parent element.

The start tag may also include attributes within the tag. These indicate other information, such as
identifiers for sections within the document, identifiers used to bind style information to the
presentation of the document, and for some tags such as the <img> used to embed images, the
reference to the image resource.
Some elements, such as the line break <br> , do not permit any embedded content, either text or
further tags. These require only a single empty tag (akin to a start tag) and do not use an end tag.
Many tags, particularly the closing end tag for the very commonly-used paragraph element <p> , are
optional. An HTML browser or other agent can infer the closure for the end of an element from the
context and the structural rules defined by the HTML standard. These rules are complex and not
widely understood by most HTML coders.
The general form of an HTML element is therefore: <tag attribute1="value1"
attribute2="value2">content</tag> . Some HTML elements are defined as empty

elements and take the form <tag attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2"> . Empty

elements may enclose no content, for instance, the <br> tag or the inline <img> tag. The name of
an HTML element is the name used in the tags. Note that the end tag's name is preceded by a slash
character, "/", and that in empty elements the end tag is neither required nor allowed. If attributes are
not mentioned, default values are used in each case.
Element examples[edit]
Header of the HTML document:<head>...</head>. The title is included in the head, for example:
<head>
<title>The Title</title>
</head>
Headings: HTML headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags:
<h1>Heading
<h2>Heading
<h3>Heading
<h4>Heading
<h5>Heading
<h6>Heading

level
level
level
level
level
level

1</h1>
2</h2>
3</h3>
4</h4>
5</h5>
6</h6>

Paragraphs:
<p>Paragraph 1</p>

<p>Paragraph 2</p>

Line breaks: <br> . The difference between <br> and <p> is that "br" breaks a line without altering
the semantic structure of the page, whereas "p" sections the page intoparagraphs. Note also that
"br" is an empty element in that, although it may have attributes, it can take no content and it may
not have an end tag.
<p>This <br> is a paragraph <br> with <br> line breaks</p>
This is a link in HTML. To create a link the <a> tag is used. The href= attribute holds the URL
address of the link.
<a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">A link to Wikipedia!</a>
Comments:
<!-- This is a comment -->
Comments can help in the understanding of the markup and do not display in the webpage.
There are several types of markup elements used in HTML:
Structural markup indicates the purpose of text
For example, <h2>Golf</h2> establishes "Golf" as a second-level heading. Structural
markup does not denote any specific rendering, but most web browsers have default styles
for element formatting. Content may be further styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).[49]
Presentational markup indicates the appearance of the text, regardless of its purpose
For example <b>boldface</b> indicates that visual output devices should render
"boldface" in bold text, but gives little indication what devices that are unable to do this (such
as aural devices that read the text aloud) should do. In the case of
both <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> , there are other elements that may have
equivalent visual renderings but that are more semantic in nature, such
as <strong>strong text</strong> and <em>emphasised text</em> respectively. It
is easier to see how an aural user agent should interpret the latter two elements. However,
they are not equivalent to their presentational counterparts: it would be undesirable for a
screen-reader to emphasize the name of a book, for instance, but on a screen such a name
would be italicized. Most presentational markup elements have become deprecated under
the HTML 4.0 specification in favor of using CSS for styling.
Hypertext markup makes parts of a document into links to other documents
An anchor element creates a hyperlink in the document and its href attribute sets the link's
target URL. For example the HTML markup, <a

href="http://www.google.com/">Wikipedia</a> , will render the word "Wikipedia" as

a hyperlink. To render an image as a hyperlink, an "img" element is inserted as content into

the "a" element. Like "br", "img" is an empty element with attributes but no content or closing
tag. <a href="http://example.org"><img src="image.gif" alt="descriptive
text" width="50" height="50" border="0"></a> .

Attributes[edit]
Main article: HTML attribute
Most of the attributes of an element are name-value pairs, separated by "=" and written
within the start tag of an element after the element's name. The value may be enclosed
in single or double quotes, although values consisting of certain characters can be left
unquoted in HTML (but not XHTML) .[50][51] Leaving attribute values unquoted is
considered unsafe.[52] In contrast with name-value pair attributes, there are some
attributes that affect the element simply by their presence in the start tag of the element,
[6]
like the ismap attribute for the img element.[53]
There are several common attributes that may appear in many elements :

The id attribute provides a document-wide unique identifier for an element. This is

used to identify the element so that stylesheets can alter its presentational
properties, and scripts may alter, animate or delete its contents or presentation.
Appended to the URL of the page, it provides a globally unique identifier for the
element, typically a sub-section of the page. For example, the ID "Attributes"
in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Attributes

The class attribute provides a way of classifying similar elements. This can be
used for semantic or presentation purposes. For example, an HTML document
might semantically use the designation class="notation" to indicate that all
elements with this class value are subordinate to the main text of the document. In
presentation, such elements might be gathered together and presented as footnotes
on a page instead of appearing in the place where they occur in the HTML source.
Class attributes are used semantically in microformats. Multiple class values may be
specified; for example class="notation important" puts the element into both
the "notation" and the "important" classes.

An author may use the style attribute to assign presentational properties to a

particular element. It is considered better practice to use an
element's id or class attributes to select the element from within a stylesheet,

though sometimes this can be too cumbersome for a simple, specific, or ad hoc
styling.

The title attribute is used to attach subtextual explanation to an element. In most

browsers this attribute is displayed as a tooltip.

The lang attribute identifies the natural language of the element's contents, which
may be different from that of the rest of the document. For example, in an English-

language document:
<p>Oh well, <span lang="fr">c'est la vie</span>, as they say
in France.</p>

The abbreviation element, abbr , can be used to demonstrate some of these attributes :
<abbr id="anId" class="jargon" style="color:purple;"
title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</abbr>
This example displays as HTML; in most browsers, pointing the cursor at the
abbreviation should display the title text "Hypertext Markup Language."
Most elements take the language-related attribute dir to specify text direction, such as
with "rtl" for right-to-left text in, for example, Arabic, Persian or Hebrew.

An HTML Application (HTA) is a Microsoft Windows program whose source code consists
of HTML, Dynamic HTML, and one or more scripting languages supported by Internet Explorer, such
as VBScript or JScript. The HTML is used to generate the user interface, and the scripting language
is used for the program logic. An HTA executes without the constraints of the internet browser
security model; in fact, it executes as a "fully trusted" application.
The usual file extension of an HTA is .hta .
The ability to execute HTAs was introduced to Microsoft Windows in 1999, along with the release
of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.[1] On December 9, 2003 this technology was patented.[2]

HTA stands for "HTML Application". It's a concept from the research kitchens of Microsoft and works with all computer
running Explorer browsers 5.0 and above. Notice I said "running" MSIE 5.0. This HTA does not work within the
browser, rather, HTA allows you to create a downloadable file that takes with it all the information regarding how it will
display and be rendered.
HTA understands everything the browser understands including HTML and CSS code. Microsoft described an HTA as
running much like an .exe file. The browser will ask you if you'd like to download an HTA just any other .exe file. HTAs
will run from your system so they are not bound by security or privacy concerns that are found on the Internet. Of
course one can see multiple benefits and concerns in such a file since once the file is downloaded and run, it is seen
as a trusted program and has access to the system it is sitting on.

HTML Application[edit]
Main article: HTML Application
An HTML Application (HTA; file extension ".hta") is a Microsoft Windows application that uses HTML
and Dynamic HTML in a browser to provide the application's graphical interface. A regular HTML file
is confined to the security model of the web browser's security, communicating only to web servers
and manipulating only webpage objects and site cookies. An HTA runs as a fully trusted application
and therefore has more privileges, like creation/editing/removal of files and Windows
Registry entries. Because they operate outside the browser's security model, HTAs cannot be
executed via HTTP, but must be downloaded (just like an EXE file) and executed from local file
system.

HTML4 variations[edit]
HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't
follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.
Ted Nelson[68]

Since its inception, HTML and its associated protocols gained acceptance relatively quickly.
However, no clear standards existed in the early years of the language. Though its creators originally
conceived of HTML as a semantic language devoid of presentation details, [69]practical uses pushed
many presentational elements and attributes into the language, driven largely by the various browser
vendors. The latest standards surrounding HTML reflect efforts to overcome the sometimes chaotic
development of the language[70] and to create a rational foundation for building both meaningful and
well-presented documents. To return HTML to its role as a semantic language, theW3C has
developed style languages such as CSS and XSL to shoulder the burden of presentation. In
conjunction, the HTML specification has slowly reined in the presentational elements.

There are two axes differentiating various variations of HTML as currently specified: SGML-based
HTML versus XML-based HTML (referred to as XHTML) on one axis, and strict versus transitional
(loose) versus frameset on the other axis.

SGML-based versus XML-based HTML[edit]

One difference in the latest HTML specifications lies in the distinction between the SGML-based
specification and the XML-based specification. The XML-based specification is usually
called XHTML to distinguish it clearly from the more traditional definition. However, the root element
name continues to be "html" even in the XHTML-specified HTML. The W3C intended XHTML 1.0 to
be identical to HTML 4.01 except where limitations of XML over the more complex SGML require
workarounds. Because XHTML and HTML are closely related, they are sometimes documented in
parallel. In such circumstances, some authors conflate the two names as (X)HTML or X(HTML).
Like HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 has three sub-specifications: strict, transitional and frameset.
Aside from the different opening declarations for a document, the differences between an HTML 4.01
and XHTML 1.0 documentin each of the corresponding DTDsare largely syntactic. The
underlying syntax of HTML allows many shortcuts that XHTML does not, such as elements with
optional opening or closing tags, and even empty elements which must not have an end tag. By
contrast, XHTML requires all elements to have an opening tag and a closing tag. XHTML, however,
also introduces a new shortcut: an XHTML tag may be opened and closed within the same tag, by
including a slash before the end of the tag like this: <br/> . The introduction of this shorthand, which
is not used in the SGML declaration for HTML 4.01, may confuse earlier software unfamiliar with this
new convention. A fix for this is to include a space before closing the tag, as such: <br /> .[71]
To understand the subtle differences between HTML and XHTML, consider the transformation of a
valid and well-formed XHTML 1.0 document that adheres to Appendix C (see below) into a valid
HTML 4.01 document. To make this translation requires the following steps:
1. The language for an element should be specified with a lang attribute rather than the
XHTML xml:lang attribute. XHTML uses XML's built in language-defining functionality
attribute.
2. Remove the XML namespace ( xmlns=URI ). HTML has no facilities for namespaces.
3. Change the document type declaration from XHTML 1.0 to HTML 4.01. (see DTD
section for further explanation).

4. If present, remove the XML declaration. (Typically this is: <?xml version="1.0"
encoding="utf-8"?> ).

5. Ensure that the document's MIME type is set to text/html . For both HTML and
XHTML, this comes from the HTTP Content-Type header sent by the server.
6. Change the XML empty-element syntax to an HTML style empty
element ( <br/> to <br> ).
Those are the main changes necessary to translate a document from XHTML 1.0 to HTML 4.01. To
translate from HTML to XHTML would also require the addition of any omitted opening or closing
tags. Whether coding in HTML or XHTML it may just be best to always include the optional tags
within an HTML document rather than remembering which tags can be omitted.
A well-formed XHTML document adheres to all the syntax requirements of XML. A valid document
adheres to the content specification for XHTML, which describes the document structure.
The W3C recommends several conventions to ensure an easy migration between HTML and
XHTML (see HTML Compatibility Guidelines). The following steps can be applied to XHTML 1.0
documents only:

Include both xml:lang and lang attributes on any elements assigning language.

Use the empty-element syntax only for elements specified as empty in HTML.

Include an extra space in empty-element tags: for example <br /> instead of <br/> .

Include explicit close tags for elements that permit content but are left empty (for
example, <div></div> , not <div /> ).
Omit the XML declaration.

By carefully following the W3C's compatibility guidelines, a user agent should be able to interpret the
document equally as HTML or XHTML. For documents that are XHTML 1.0 and have been made
compatible in this way, the W3C permits them to be served either as HTML (with
a text/html MIME type), or as XHTML (with
an application/xhtml+xml or application/xml MIME type). When delivered as XHTML,
browsers should use an XML parser, which adheres strictly to the XML specifications for parsing the
document's contents.