Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
I've got to say I completely agree with Kornel here - XSLT is very useful, but keep it on the server side. Its all about what you send over the wire. By all means create XML (schemas) for your own use in your own applications - these may have very precise semantic meaning in your environment, but they are truly meaningless in the wild. Perform your transformations at your end and send your content over the wire in some widely understood vocabulary such as HTML/XHTML. Arguments about bandwidth are really not relevant in this context. I could, for example, send all my content through to the browser in a special XYZ format that I have devised and that happens to work in a couple of browsers. This format may have huge advantages in terms of bandwidth and rendering time, but it is still a Very Bad Idea (TM) because it breaks the whole concept of web standards. Optimise your bandwidth by all means, but draw the line at sending non-standard formats (like proprietary XML vocabularies) over the wire. On another note, personally I'm a little tired of people thinking of HTML/CSS as the *only* web standards - it is so much broader than that. HTTP, ECMA Script, P3P, SVG (and to a lesser extent XSL) are all true web standards and are completely relevant on this list, IMHO. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
Won't attempt at going any further as I don't think I'm talking about web standards at any length. XML and XSLT are W3C standards :) If you don't have server-side technologies available, then you may transform your XML using (offline) shell script and upload XHTML to server. -- regards, Kornel Lesiński ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
RE: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
Hi Kornel, Thanks for the clarification. While I'm going to have to study more to verify what you said, all you said does make sense so far. That said, I figure that maintaining website constants (e.g. main menu information, site headers and footers etc) using XML when you do not want/have access to server-side technologies such as ASP. At worst, XML files can be an inefficient "database" replacement of sorts. Won't attempt at going any further as I don't think I'm talking about web standards at any length. Wong -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kornel Lesinski Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 1:09 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards) On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:48:05 +0800, Wong Chin Shin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sorry, don't really understand what you mean by your statement below. The > XSL document may not be readable but the XML can be set to be as readable > and descriptive as we want it to? XML has no semantics. Your custom markup won't be compatible with anything. Without XSLT transformation to [X]HTML it is meaningless to any software. XSLT is not supported by web spiders and by many browsers. AFAIK using XSLT on client-side limits you to IE6 and Gecko browsers *only*. Everyone else gets unusable page. XSLT is a great technology, and there is one simple step to make it absolutelty compatible - transform on the server-side. If you output [X]HTML you're going to be compatible with almost every single web client out there. I think that XSLT + XML won't save much (if anything) compared to resulting XHTML. In terms of bandwidth: XML already adds markup to your data. XSLT is very verbose, and stylesheet will probably take as much as extra data it could generate. Without HTTP pipelining (in IE6) 2 small files usually load slower than one larger. XSLT gives savings when it generates lots of repetitive data, but then HTTP compression is so much better in eliminating repetition. I don't think that XSLT saves server cpu either. If you have static data you can transform it once and serve XHTML. If you have dynamic data you have to build DOM tree anyway. If you absolutely don't want to waste any cpu cycle on transformation, you can generate XML data using XHTML tags. -- regards, Kornel Lesiński ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
RE: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
Hi, I think what was meant actually is that without a Schema document, there's no semantic meaning to it. The semantic meaning is brought about by a Schema, in this case an XSD. Wong -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rimantas Liubertas Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 1:16 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards) On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 17:09:05 -, Kornel Lesinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <...> XML has no semantics. That's quite bold statement. No markup languages has any semantics then. Did you mean "default styling for certain elements"? Your custom markup won't be compatible with anything. > Without XSLT transformation to [X]HTML it is meaningless to any software.<...> Do you say XML is unusable without XSLT? And - XHML IS XML. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 17:09:05 -, Kornel Lesinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <...> XML has no semantics. That's quite bold statement. No markup languages has any semantics then. Did you mean "default styling for certain elements"? Your custom markup won't be compatible with anything. > Without XSLT transformation to [X]HTML it is meaningless to any software.<...> Do you say XML is unusable without XSLT? And - XHML IS XML. Regards, Rimantas ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:48:05 +0800, Wong Chin Shin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sorry, don't really understand what you mean by your statement below. The XSL document may not be readable but the XML can be set to be as readable and descriptive as we want it to? XML has no semantics. Your custom markup won't be compatible with anything. Without XSLT transformation to [X]HTML it is meaningless to any software. XSLT is not supported by web spiders and by many browsers. AFAIK using XSLT on client-side limits you to IE6 and Gecko browsers *only*. Everyone else gets unusable page. XSLT is a great technology, and there is one simple step to make it absolutelty compatible - transform on the server-side. If you output [X]HTML you're going to be compatible with almost every single web client out there. I think that XSLT + XML won't save much (if anything) compared to resulting XHTML. In terms of bandwidth: XML already adds markup to your data. XSLT is very verbose, and stylesheet will probably take as much as extra data it could generate. Without HTTP pipelining (in IE6) 2 small files usually load slower than one larger. XSLT gives savings when it generates lots of repetitive data, but then HTTP compression is so much better in eliminating repetition. I don't think that XSLT saves server cpu either. If you have static data you can transform it once and serve XHTML. If you have dynamic data you have to build DOM tree anyway. If you absolutely don't want to waste any cpu cycle on transformation, you can generate XML data using XHTML tags. -- regards, Kornel Lesiński ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help **
