Xeon is based on the Pentium II microprocessor's P6 architecture. It's designed to work with a new and faster PCI bus and graphics accelerator. Xeon features:

• A faster 512 Kbytes or 1 Mbyte, that runs at the same 400 Mhz speed of the processor.
• A faster bus to carry data between the processor, RAM, and I/O devices. The 450NX PCIset is a chip set that works at a 100 Mhz clock speed and supports up to 8 GB of EDO memory.
• A larger Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) chip set called the 440GX AGPset that also runs at 100 Mhz. It supports 2 GB of 100 Mhz SDRAM.
• An extended server memory architecture that provide for 36-bit addresses, allowing up to 64 GB of physical memory to be addressed.
• Everything premounted in a motherboard package for faster manufacturing

   Typically, a computer with a Xeon microprocessor would use a Windows NT, NetWare, or UNIX operating system. Xeon-based systems are expected to offer competition to Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and others in the workstation market, but its primary market is expected to be the mid-range server.

   XHTML is, in fact, the follow-on version of HTML 4. You could think of it as HTML 5, except that it is called XHTML 1.0. In XHTML, all HTML 4 markup tags and attributes (the language of HTML) will continue to be supported. Unlike HTML, however, XHTML can be extended by anyone that uses it. New tags and attributes can be defined and added to those that already exist, making possible new ways to embed content and programming in a Web page. In appearance, an XHTML file looks like a somewhat more elaborate HTML file.

Advantages

   To quote the W3C again, the advantages are "extensibility and portability."

   Extensibility means that as new ideas for Web communication and presentation emerge, they can be implemented without having to wait for the next major version of HTML and browser support. New tags or attributes can be defined to express the new possibilities and, assuming some program at the receiving end can understand and act on them, new things may happen on your Web page that never happened before. Specific sets of extensions for XHTML are planned for mathematical expressions, vector graphics, and multimedia applications.

   If extensibility is likely to lead to more complicated pages and larger programs, the portability advantage means that Web pages can now be made simpler than they were before so that small devices can handle them. This is important for mobile devices and possibly household devices that contain microprocessors with embedded programming and smaller memories. XHTML defines several levels of possible markup complexity and each document states its level of complexity at the beginning. Programs in microdevices might expect XHTML-coded files that state the simplest level of complexity so that they could be handled by a small program and memory.

Differences and Distinctive Features

   You can find out more by reading the specification and tutorials, but here are some distinctive features of XHTML and differences between HTML 4:

• XHTML requires strict adherence to coding rules. Notably, it requires that you use closing as well as opening tags (this is known as well-formed syntax) and that all tags be in lower case. HTML was much less rigorous about notation and browsers tended to be even more forgiving.
• This means that XHTML files will tend to be "busier" than HTML. However, they won't necessarily be harder to read because rigor may force more order in coding. In addition, the major editing and file creation tools will probably lay out pages for easier readability.
• XHTML would seem to encourage a more structured and conceptual way of thinking about content and, combined with style sheets, a more creative way of displaying it.
• XHTML will make it easier for people to dream up and add new tags (and develop browsers or other applications that support them).

The first XHTML specification is currently in the W3C Working Draft stage.

   Currently a formal recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML is similar to the language of today's Web pages, HTML. Both XML and HTML contain markup symbols to describe the contents of a page or file. HTML, however, describes the content of a Web page (mainly text and graphic images) only in terms of how it is to be displayed and interacted with. For example, a <P> starts a new paragraph. XML describes the content in terms of what data is being described. For example, a <PHONENUM> could indicate that the data that followed it was a phone number. This means that an XML file can be processed purely as data by a program or it can be stored with similar data on another computer or, like an HTML file, that it can be displayed. For example, depending on how the application in the receiving computer wanted to handle the phone number, it could be stored, displayed, or dialed.

   XML is "extensible" because, unlike HTML, the markup symbols are unlimited and self-defining. XML is actually a simpler and easier-to-use subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), the standard for how to create a document structure. It is expected that HTML and XML will be used together in many Web applications.

   Early applications of XML include Microsoft's Channel Definition Format (CDF), which describes a channel, a portion of a Web site that has been downloaded to your hard disk and is then is updated periodically as information changes. A specific CDF file contains data that specifies an initial Web page and how frequently it is updated. Another early application is ChartWare, which uses XML as a way to describe medical charts so that they can be shared by doctors. Applications related to banking, e-commerce ordering, personal preference profiles, purchase orders, litigation documents, part lists, and many others are anticipated.

   XML has been developed by a working group under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium, which offers you the most knowledgeable place to learn more. Their introduction is called Extensible Markup Language (XML).

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