Yeah, I know XML, and am looking at XSL and XSLT as I type this. Good stuff. 😎
What kills me is all this XML stuff is so simple (at least in its philosophy), yet so powerful in what it can do. 😱😎
Don't underestimate the power of javascript. There is a lot of good stuff out there but there's also a lot of "hello world" type dross. If you're serious about it, an excellent resource is JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. Online there's The Strange Zen of JavaScript and the legendary and incredibly useful QuirksMode.
http://www.javascript.com/ is a collection of copy and paste scripts, but it is interesting how some "problems" were approached by other people. You can learn a lot from analyzing javascripts coded by other people...
I can second that... Most people underestimnate the potential of JavaScript. The software company I have a contract with at the moment writes their whole player software in JavaScript. It is jaw dropping what the guys do with "just" JavaScript!