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Re: XSLT vs. CSS (Re: Indexing)

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: XSLT vs. CSS (Re: Indexing)
• From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
• Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 18:18:53 -0400
• References: <1E0CC447E59C974CA5C7160D2A2854EC097CD9@S...>

[Hunsberger, Peter]

Thomas B. Passin <tpassin@c...> writes:

<snip/>

> On the other hand, you cannot re-arrange the order of things
> using CSS, and here xslt is your friend.

If you're sending the output to a CSS capable browser you can use CSS to
change the display order of things on the screen???

It can be a bit of a pain, but basically as long as you use absolute
positioning and relative units (eg. % for width and em for height)
things work pretty well.  We have an entire system that uses XSLT to
generate lists of XHTML elements that are latter positioned on the
screen by dynamically generated CSS. As others have noted, the two
technologies do play well together in spite of the fact that they appear
to be designed to be antagonistic to each other.

[Tom P]

Yes, I do absolute positioning too - but you cannot scramble and regroup
things as you can with xslt, and you cannot do much in the way of computed
output (which you can with xslt).  Right now at work, BTW, I have a page
that I generate using xslt that uses absolute positioning and javascript to
pop up an editing box at the element the user clicks on.  So I am very
familiar with using CSS to move blocks around.  But  notice that I use xslt
to generate the basic page, then CSS to style it.  If the page came to me
already in the right form, I would only have to use the CSS part. And one
day it will, because this is just a prototyping tool for me to develop the
design.  Later in production it will be created by someone else using a JSP
approach.

Right now, I write the CSS into the file from my xslt stylesheet.  As I
said, create a good page design, using xslt as needed, then use CSS to
create the display format from that.  This seems to be a good way to go.



Cheers,

Tom P

• References:
  • RE: XSLT vs. CSS (Re: Indexing)
    • From: "Hunsberger, Peter" <Peter.Hunsberger@s...>

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