RE: XSLT Dead?

Hi.

I'm worried we're talking about solutions with such a patchy description
of the problem.

I'm also worried that we've completely misused this thread title.

But to address build vs buy for DHTML user interface widgets:

There's been a proliferation of excellent client side user interface
libraries in the past year.  For anyone who has not had their hands
dirty with user interface code that runs in the browser in the past year
I'd advise: the landscape has totally changed.  I'm about to say things
I never would have said a year ago, and this is the first time since
1997 I've ever been tempted to look at an advancement in web
technologies as anything but an incremental change.

There used to be a layer of templates on the server side that often did
some pretty grungy dirty work.  Server side objects often have a
maturity of design that couldn't be reflected in front end code so
server side templates had to create tables, spit out spacer gifs, insert
event handlers on HTML elements, etc.

That layer still exists but it's now possible to spit out clean,
semantic HTML in a format that a client side widget building library can
use.  That library does the grunt work of enhancing the markup into a
fully functioning DHTML widget.  Put another way, the server side code
is no longer spitting out widget code, but instead it's spitting out API
calls that make client side code create widgets.

This environment is if anything more favorable to XSLT development on
the server side, and with a simplification in this layer, built
solutions are going to have an advantage over bought.  Bought (or open
source or whatever) solutions are burgeoning in client side libraries.
Maybe this trend will reverse if people run into performance and
security problems they have trouble solving.  It is the early days but
things are looking very good.

My 2c

---->Nathan




> I've always found drag and drop solutions to be more of a
> burden than a luxury, and just the sheer fact that the
> rendered output is usually not semantically sane is reason in
> itself to avoid the quick and dirty purchase.
>
> Karl..
>
>
>
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