XSL

Webopedia Staff
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:59 am

Short for Extensible Style Language, a specification for separating style from content when creating HTML or XML pages. The specifications work much like templates, allowing designers to apply single style documents to multiple pages. XSL is the second style specification to be offered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C )(www.w3c.org). The first, called Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), is similar to XSL but does not include two major XSL’s innovations — allowing developers to dictate the way Web pages are printed, and specifications allowing one to transfer XML documents across different applications. W3C released the first draft of XSL in August 1998, and promotes the specifications as helpful to the Web’s speed, accessibility, and maintenance.