The relevant characters that need to be escaped are ', ", &, < and >. (I had to escape them while writing this article to avoid xml errors on the page. Webmasters have several options to escape these characters. They can escape them manually, use an online tool to convert them (see How To Display Valid Markup Code In Websites) or a software program like the XML Escape Tool.

Source code has to be pasted into the first form field in the application window. The tool can then escape the source code if the user clicks on the Escape button or unescape the source if the Unescape button is pressed.

The resulting code can be copied automatically to the Windows clipboard. The benefit of using a desktop software program to escape the characters is that it works if no Internet connection is available. Users who want to try the software can download it from the developer’s website.

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Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formulae utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

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The document viewer only supports the new docx file format at this point but as this is the most commonly encountered format it should suffice for the moment. The web browser add-on is available for both the Windows and Linux operating system and supplied as a xpi file which can be loaded and installed easily. Another version for the command line of both operating systems is provided as well.

The web browser plugin works by simply dragging and dropping docx documents into a Firefox tab or window. The add-on will automatically process the document and display it in the web browser. There is currently no direct way to open docx files that are linked from websites but it is possible to associate the Firefox web browser with the docx format in the operating system to either open the documents automatically or on right-click and selection with it.

The next installment of the Open XML Document Viewer is slated for a April 2009 release which will add support for the Opera and Internet Explorer web browser, server side support, document themes and drawing shapes.

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