If you work with Flash for anything other than creating animations, sooner or later you are going to run smack into XML. But the fact that you have this book in your hands right now means you already know this. XML has been touted as the great equalizer, allowing seamless data transfer across platforms and programs. According to some, XML was going to save the world. While the world still needs some work, XML has gone a long way to improve communications between all kinds of systems. Recognizing this some years ago, Macromedia put XML support into Flash 5, and with each version, this feature has seen remarkable improvements. If you are doing any kind of Flash application development, or even just building a dynamic website in Flash, you need to know about XML. Why? Because if you are moving data around and you don’t know about XML, I can guarantee that you are wasting a lot of time and energy dealing with that data. Another reason is that, if it hasn’t already happened, someday you’re going to be asked to do a project that uses XML, or apply for a job where they ask you about it.