RE: Client-side XSLT. Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[Max Dunn <maxdunn@siliconpublishing.com>]

> Pushing code on clients is attractive
> ("it's their fault, not mine"), but in reality it's 
> a nightmare. Java on the browser failed because not 
> even Netscape could keep up with whatever it was Sun 
> was up to in any given month.

The fact that Java on the browser failed is no argument against using
client-side code in a general sense, as there are plenty of other
examples where client-side code has become completely commonplace.
JavaScript in the browser, for example.

If, as you suggest, the failure of Java on the browser was due to the
ever-changing standard, then XSLT doesn't suffer that sort of
turbulence; XSLT 1.0 will likely be with us for some time.

If Microsoft has done one thing right it is the compliant implementation
of MXSML 3, and they seem to be willing to provide such functionality to
IE 6, finally.

The reason Java failed on the browser was that people got tired of
staring at grey boxes waiting for applets to load.  There is no
comparable performance failure with XSLT, as long as one works with
efficient code sensitive to the capabilities of existing browsers with
compliant implementations (i.e. IE 6).  XSLT provides a comparable user
experience to HTML, "DHTML" or XML/CSS but with some added advantages in
some situations.

Max
http://www.siliconpublishing.com