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Possible Duplicate:
What does X denotes in ASPX, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX etc?

It's one of those things you just take for granted until one day someone asks you and you realize you can't answer it. Much like for years I never questioned the use of 1033 directories in Microsoft products for years until one day, someone asked me about it.

Around the release of .NET and Office 2007, Microsoft added an x to basically all of their extensions and I frankly took it as representing XML, but that simply doesn't make sense with .aspx.

So, I realize this is a very non technical question, but now that the question has been asked of me and my googling hasn't given me an answer, can anyone tell me with authority what the X represents? Is it extended? Xml? Or is there no meaning behind it?

Glorfindel
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Serapth
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5 Answers5

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Here you go.

Community
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Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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It is because of XML format used inside those files.

some explanation: http://www.word-tips.com/docx.html

dzida
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IIRC the successor of (classic) ASP was first called ASP+, before it was released as ASP.NET. So maybe this is where the X in ASPX comes from (a + rotated by 45 degrees).

For the office documents, it's probably because the files are XML based.

M4N
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I guess it's named .aspx (maybe extended) to be able to differentiate ASP pages (.asp) from ASP.NET pages.

Marius Schulz
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microsoft converted there original .doc which is a document and .xls (I belive it stands or extendable ledger sheet) to docx which is document + xml (which stands for extendable markup language) and .xlsx which again is a xml based spread sheet

mjrider
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