August 10, 2005

While late in approving the comment, Lloyd O. is absolutely spot on... Opera, whats up with Client-side XSLT?

General Posts: Google Maps pushes the envelope

My apologies to Lloyd for not seeing and approving this comment before now...

I was just browsing google, looking for Opera XSLT when I came across this blog and felt compelled to agree.

Client side XSLT is the coolest thing I've seen in web design in ages. Makes all-XML web design a reality among other things.

Personally I am using XSLmaker to create stylesheets - and guess what - they work everywhere except Opera. First I thought it was some obvious problem I'll fix in no time, until I found articles where Opera people *explicitly* state 'XSLT on client is bad'. Bad preaching is what it is.

I think Opera will die if they don't enable client-side XSLT. I tried to do some hacks with XSLmaker (redirect to all-HTML and such) for web sites I maintain (I am webmaster/designer contractor part-time), until web site owners told me they don't care about the small percentage of Opera users who will only see stripped down text.

Just my 2/100 - I simply couldn't understand hard-headedness of Opera people.

Absolutely spot on Lloyd. While I have taken Opera, and specifically Håkon Wium Lie to task before, I have since come to appreciate Håkon as an individual. But to this very day I do not understand why XSLT is seen as "competition" to CSS. And I can speak with some authority on this (I'm about to let the cat out of the bag) as I am writing a book for O'Reilly right at this very moment on Client-side XML Processing and Presentation with CSS and XSLT.

Ok, so I will admit that four or five months ago I felt differently on this matter, but after spending quite a bit of time in study of the power that CSS brings to XML processing and presentation table I am of no longer of the "CSS is dead" mentality. But CSS alone is not the answer!

Fortunately for us (and for Opera for that matter) Google has come to the rescue and has developed AJAXSLT. So we no longer have to deal with the "no Client-side XSLT!" attitude that Opera has taken. It also give's us script-based transformation capabilities in Safari that we don't have right at this moment. But I have no doubt it will be there eventually which leaves Opera as the single and solitary stand-out. And lets face it, as grateful as I am to Google for the development of AJAXSLT, using client-side Javascript for processing XML is not exactly the speediest solution on the planet. Still, its A LOT better than nothing and so no complaints are going to be coming from this loudmouth of mine.

I would be EXTREMELY interested to hear from Mr. Lie, or anybody from the Opera world for that matter, as to why on earth XSL-T and XSL (ala XSL-FO) can't be separated and the XSL-T side of things be seen as a FANTASTIC tool for client-side XML development that, when coupled with CSS, creates an unbelievably powerful combination that is pretty tough to reckon with.

Anybody?