Internet glossary

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X.500 - A directory access protocol to enable a common standard for directories of information over a network. It has never caught on as well as its designers intended.

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) - Basically HTML expressed as valid XML. XHTML is intended to be used in the same places you would use HTML (creating web pages) but is much more strictly defined, which makes it a lot easier to create sofware that can read it, edit it, check it for errors, etc. XHTML is expected to eventually replace HTML.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) - A widely used system for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system to define complex documents and data structures such as invoices, molecular data, news feeds, glossaries, inventory descriptions, real estate properties, etc. As long as a programmer has the XML definition for a collection of data (often called a "schema") then they can create a program to reliably process any data formatted according to those rules. XML is a subset of the older SGML specification - the definition of XML is SGML minus a couple of dozen items.

XMLRPC (XML Remote Procedure Call) - A protocol for client-server communication that sends and receives information "on top of" HTTP. The data sent and received is in a particular XML format specifically designed for use with XMLRPC. Internet glossary.

XPFE (Cross Platform Front End) - A suite of technologies used to create applications that will work and look the same on different computer operating systems. A widely used XPFE application is the Mozilla web browser and its derivities, such as the Netscape web browser in version 7 and later. The primary technologies used in creating XPFE applications are Javascript, Cascading Style Sheets, and XUL.

XSL - Acronym for eXtensible Stylesheet Language, a style sheet companion to XML.

XUL (eXtensible User-interface Language) - A markup language similar to HTML and based on XML. XUL used to define what the user interface will look like for a particular piece of software. XUL is used to define what buttons, scrollbars, text boxes, and other user-interface items will appear, but it is not used to define how those item will look (e.g. what color they are). The most widely used example of XUL use is probably in the Firefox web browser, where the entire user interface is defined using the XUL language.