Convert XML to HTML
Turn your XML records into an HTML you can actually read and hand to someone. HTML is the usual choice for web pages and web application interfaces. Your file never leaves your computer.
How to convert XML to HTML
- 1 Drop your XML .xml file onto the page, or click to browse for it.
- 2 Check the options. Nothing is thrown away on the way to HTML, so there is no quality dial to set.
- 3 Convert. The work happens on your own machine, so how long it takes depends on your computer and the file.
- 4 Download the HTML, or add more files and do the whole set in one go.
Why convert XML to HTML
- Renders in every browser with no plugin, viewer or conversion.
- Reflows to any screen size, which fixed-layout formats cannot do.
- HTML email templates rendered inside mail clients.
- XML: entity expansion features have caused a long line of security problems.
XML compared with HTML
How the two formats differ on the things that decide whether a conversion is worth making.
| Property | XML | HTML |
|---|---|---|
| File extension | .xml | .html |
| Colour depth | Unicode element tree with namespaces, DTD or XSD validation | UTF-8 markup rendered through the CSS box model |
| Introduced | 1998 | 1993 |
| Developed by | W3C | Tim Berners-Lee, now WHATWG |
Quality and what changes
Both sides are lossless, so every pixel survives the trip intact and converting back returns the same image. What changes is the size and what the file can carry: HTML stores the data without compression, so expect a much larger file.
- One HTML limitation to keep in mind: printing and pagination are unreliable compared with PDF.
Questions about XML to HTML
Is my XML file uploaded anywhere?
No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your XML is read straight from your own disk, converted on your machine and handed back as an HTML. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored and there is no account.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no server-side limit because no server sees the file. The real ceiling is your device memory, since the input and the output both have to fit in the tab. A few hundred megabytes is usually fine on a desktop machine and considerably less on a phone.
Can I convert several XML files at once?
Yes. Add as many as you like and they are processed one after another, then offered as separate HTML downloads or as a single ZIP. Speed depends on your own processor rather than on a queue.
Does the converter work offline?
Yes, after the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can disconnect, reload and keep converting. That falls out of doing the work locally rather than being a separate mode you switch on.