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What it is:
Stands for eXtensible Markup Language.
Like HTML, it is another specialized version (subset) of SGML, but more far powerful than HTML
Lets the designer/author create a new markup language, extending HTML itself.
Has built-in *data handling* functions. Data is downloaded with the page.
New possibilities for linking (links can be multidimensional)
Won't appear for quite some time, and perhaps then only in specialized industries or communities.
Example:
Say you wanted to publish a catalog of garden furniture.
The HTML way: create a different page for each of your dozens of products... or create a database on the server, so that each time a user chose to get a new product, there was another request and a new page downloaded.
The XML way: A single page contains all the data about all the products, but hidden from the user. As the user chose different products to view, different "data" would come into view, others would be hidden. Pages would be created on-the-fly, on the client side.
Resources:
XML: A Second Chance for Web Markup (PC Magazine)
Microsoft XML
World-Wide Web Consortium XML page
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