The authors compare two Extensible Markup Language (XML)-aware editors, Oxygen and UltraEdit. The comparison comprises three parts: an unstructured interview and observation, and two hands-on tests. One hands-on test requires reconfiguring the interface, and the second requires entering a snippet of XML and then editing it. The subjects include people aged 18 to 24 with less than a year of experience in XML.

The authors conclude, based on the hands-on portions, that reconfiguring in UltraEdit was consistently faster than in Oxygen--in one case extremely so--whereas Oxygen was faster for the editing task in all but two cases (although often not by much in either direction). It was not clear whether the order of the tasks alternated between subjects. One hopes this was done, as there would have been some crossover learning.

Thus, even though there were only ten participants, the results can be taken seriously. The interviews reveal a general preference for UltraEdit in the case of XML editing, and a more marked preference for UltraEdit when it comes to user configurability. It would be interesting to learn how practice may improve performance and possibly change the evaluations, as both applications are large and have many features. The paper presents a good start on a worthwhile project.