Story: (adds extra flavor)

   I'm not much of a pro at web design, but I made a site for myself
and som
eone noticed and asked me to make a site for their organization.
Usually I
use just html and JavaScript, but they want to be able to edit their
site wi
thout having to wade through 3 feet of my enigmatic code.  I'm
guessing PHP
is the ideal solution, but I managed to turn 2 weeks into 3 days.  A
friend
I work with recommended I implement XML DOM.
   I've been researching, copy/pasting code, and exhausting all sorts
of opt
ions and ultimately my ignorance prevails and I am unable to get the
results
 I crave.

The Setup: (think mood lighting)

   So far I've used PowerPoint, Paint, and Notepad...  Yes, I know the
tools o
f a true master (except not) ...to create a website without any
information on
 it.  Sort of a skeleton if you will.  I've been searching for a way
to read
 in data from an xml file and so far the best I can get, calling a
JavaScrip
t function: loadXMLDoc(), is a read-in of a block of text with no
preservati
on of extra spaces or returns.

Questions: (No it's not just you, these are stupid)

What function or code should I use to retrieve data from a .txt
or .xml file
?
Is it easy preserve html code applied to the text if it has been read
this w
ay (such as a link)?
Lastly are any sites you could point me at that have a few examples of
what
I'm trying to do?

Thanks for reading,
-Andrew