XML and XSL in the Browser
XML and XSL in the Browser
There is an interest short article I just discovered entitled “So do people use XSL in the Browser Yet?“.
The articles talks about the fact that it is possible to apply and
XSL/XSLT to an XML document in most modern web browser. It discusses
the fact that you could off load some of the rendering to the client
browser by sending XML with associated XSL and CSS to the user. This
thought is great in theory and it DOES work, but as a developer you
have to ask yourself the question do I want to rely on the browsers XML
parser to do the work?
Having had recent difficulties with the XML
parser built into Internet Explorer (issues with diacritics and other foreign characters), I am not too sure all browser XML
parsers are created equal. As a result, if I was delivering something
to my users I would do the transform on the server to make sure that
things looked the same. I use server-side scripting whenever possible
for the same reason. Still there are some instances where this would
work. Most noteably in the organizational intranet environment where
you can more likely guarantee the user's browser. If you want to see
this practice in action check out the Atom newsfeed at Beyond the Job.
This Atom news feed is an XML document that is being transformed on the
fly with a linked CSS file (no XSL I think from looking at the code).
We probably all should be doing this for our little RSS buttons to
make them more usable.