Re: SiteMaps XSL Training Exercise

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 02:39:05AM +0100, P. White wrote:
> Basically, I have taken an XML SiteMap, and written a simple stylesheet
> to render it in a browser window. My attempt is documented at:
> http://manx.biz/opensource/Grimoire/SiteMaps
> 
> It works. Very simplistic, but it does the job.
> However, I am wondering if there is anything more I can do to enhance the
> 'user experience', or to aid navigation. Any suggestions or ideas?

Making a Web-based view of sitemaps is something that probably needs
some notes about what sorts of person (or program) are expected to
use it, and why.

The most likely reasons I can think of for myself right now
are wanting to see if I made the sitemap correctly, if it
looks plausible... and perhaps as part of a process to
generate or review Web site navigation, most likely in
conjunction with http logs.  Which pages had zero hits in
the past month?  Which are the busiest areas?  Which busy
parts of my Web site are not in the sitemap?

I'd also note that sitemaps can get rather large.
The one I made for www.fromoldbooks.org is over 6 megabytes.

So, I'd rather have some XSLT done on the server to deliver just
a small chunk at a time and let me drill down, probably.

Hope that helps.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/