Introduction to XML in Flash
       by senocular

What about Attributes?
Attributes are not forgotten. They are just more "manual". The attributes object can be manually edited just as any other object in Flash and does not require methods to alter it. This makes them easy to work with as you don't necessarily have to deal with potentially confusing XML methods. Example:

var my_xml = new XML("<friends><friend /></friends>");

my_xml.firstChild.firstChild.attributes.girlfriend = "Julie"

trace(my_xml); // traces "<friends><friend girlfriend="Julie" /></friends>"

 

delete my_xml.firstChild.firstChild.attributes.girlfriend;

trace(my_xml); // traces "<friends><friend /></friends>"

Working with attributes is probably more easy than anything else. Because of this, people like to stick everything into attributes, but, as I said before, you should keep it simple.