There is going to be a point in the future when not knowing how to create web sites using XSL is going to be like not knowing how to create web sites using CSS. Don’t let it happen to you. Here are some resources to get the beginner started.

HTML Form Builder
Kevin Hale

XSLT Roundup by Kevin Hale

This entry was posted 5 years ago and was filed under Notebooks.
Comments are currently closed.

· 11 Comments! ·

  1. Andrew · 5 years ago

    Let’s not forget the ever-so-useful “TestXSLT”:http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/#testxslt. As always, thanks for the writeup!

  2. ToddG · 5 years ago

    Has anyone written a sane shortcut language yet for XSLT? As in textile/markup sorta thing. It almost seems like this is an attempt to raise the bar so web developers can keep their jobs ;-)

    Seriously though, I see the point, but they surely created something only standards writers and fellow-travelers (and eventually, tools/IDE developers) could love. If HTML had started out like this there’d probably still be no WWW as we now know it.

  3. Manuzhai · 5 years ago

    Great! I think XSLT is a very powerful language, I don’t really understand why so few people are using it. It’s a little verbose, but there’s a LOT you can do with it, and performance is pretty good.

    I wrote a little bit of evangelism once:

    http://www.manuzhai.nl/weblog/comments/the-power-of-xslt/

  4. Nathan Smith · 5 years ago

    Just when I start to get comfortably complacent in my obsolescence, you have to go and say something like this…

    “There is going to be a point in the future when not knowing how to create web sites using XSL is going to be like not knowing how to create web sites using CSS. Don’t let it happen to you.”

    Fine then, I’ll read your links, and learn XSLT so I won’t go the way of the tag. :)

  5. Nathan Smith · 5 years ago

    Oops, that was meant to read “So I won’t go the way of the font tag.” Indeed, it is dead.

  6. Scott Johnson · 5 years ago

    I downloaded oXygen for my iBook last week. It’s a really slick tool. I’m looking at XML totally differently now. It certainly beats a plain old text editor.

  7. Bryan · 5 years ago

    You guys are the best! These lists you make are extremely helpful keep on making them :)

  8. Kevin · 5 years ago

    I don’t know that it’ll ever be as universal as CSS, because most people are going to want to stick to their favorite scripting languages to create UI’s. BUT, XSLT is a good choice when you have data to be displayed that fits well within a dom, and is well-formed and described. It’s also a good choice when your development resources are limited. It makes dividing the labor up between backend and frontend folks easier. All you have to do to get started is agree on the structure of the XML to be transformed and they can both go off and build to that structure.

    It’s also a handy thing to have in your RSS feeds to help folks who may not know what they are (see any Feedburner feed or http://lawver.net/kevin.xml for an example).

  9. Mike Rundle · 5 years ago

    Honestly, learning XSLT was the most eye-opening and useful thing I learned in 4 years of college. I can’t wait to use it again on a project since it’s been awhile.

    A few years back I put together a sample website done all in XML/XSLT for a grad class I took, check it out: bmwXML

    The background is a little goofed in Safari, but it works great in the other browsers.

  10. Kevin Hale · 5 years ago

    Mike, that’s nice. I went through the same thing when I sat down and actually started building designs with XSLT. If you’re a designer and you’re paired with a decent developer that’s also aware of XSL, you’ll see development speeds increase dramatically. It’s nice to be able to separate completely what I do in a CSS wireframe from what a the programmer does with the client and server side scripting.

  11. d4rr3ll · 5 years ago

    Useful set of links, thanks.

    Another interesting article here that demonstrates a ways of seperating presentaion from data.

    http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/07/26/xslt/xsltstyle.html

    notice that it’s over 5 years old!