need examples of sites using XML/XSLT

[Mike Judkins]

I'm looking for examples of websites (preferably large and well known
companies, not personal sites or developer-to-developer sites) that
use XML and XSLT as a technology platform from which to store and
render web content.

Reason being that we are considering migrating our website content to
XML and using XSLT to transform the content into html. Currently lack
of browser support for XSLT has held us back. For example a
significant percent of our browser audience is still on EI 5.0-5.01
which does not have full support for the W3C XSLT standard. But it
seems the time may soon be ripe for adoption of XSLT. Solid examples
are needed to sell the case (or not) for using XSLT in our next site
upgrade.

Thanks!

Mike Judkins
Web Developer
Plantronics, Inc.

 

[Joris Gillis]

Hi,

I'm looking for examples of websites (preferably large and well known
companies, not personal sites or developer-to-developer sites) that
use XML and XSLT as a technology platform from which to store and
render web content.

I've never encountered such a website that has any notion of XML, or any W3C standard. Either I don't look in the right places, or they don't exist. But that shouldn't withhold your company from making the leap; someone has to be the first...

Reason being that we are considering migrating our website content to
XML and using XSLT to transform the content into html.
Currently lack of browser support for XSLT has held us back.

You should consider server-side XSLT. That eleminates the browser problem and preserves indexing of search engines like Google.

regards,

 

[John Fereira]

(e-mail address removed) (Mike Judkins) wrote in

I'm looking for examples of websites (preferably large and well known
companies, not personal sites or developer-to-developer sites) that
use XML and XSLT as a technology platform from which to store and
render web content.

Reason being that we are considering migrating our website content to
XML and using XSLT to transform the content into html. Currently lack
of browser support for XSLT has held us back.

That's only a problem if you rely on the browser to perform the
transformation. Most sites that use XML and XSLT perform the transformation
to html at the server end just send html to the browser.

For example a
significant percent of our browser audience is still on EI 5.0-5.01
which does not have full support for the W3C XSLT standard. But it
seems the time may soon be ripe for adoption of XSLT. Solid examples
are needed to sell the case (or not) for using XSLT in our next site
upgrade.

You might want to take a look at uPortal. It's not a commercial web site
but it's been implemented at a large number of institutions, has source code
that you can freely look at, including numerous xsl files that may be used
as examples. Check it out at http://www.uportal.org

 

[rumionfire]

The Linux Documentation Project uses XML to produce all the HOWTOs and
Guides. They currently use OpenJade to to convert the document from
DocBook XML to HTML. But this is an off-line processs.

However I am pushing for on-the-fly transformation of DocBook XML to
HTML using Cocoon or similar . Here is a site that uses Cocoon to
perform on-the-fly transformation of XML content to HTML
http://tools.tldp.org/HOWTOS/

Due to the lack/inconsistency of XSLT support in browsers, your best
option to perform the XML -> HTML transformation on the server side
using Cocoon, AxKit, PHP or something similar.

In Peace,
Saqib Ali
http://tools.tldp.org/search.php <--- Search Linux Howtos

 

[Mike Judkins]

Just spent the afternoon researching and for sure, server side is
becoming the obvious choice if implementing XML/XSLT CMS strategy. I
only got 1 of 4 modern day browsers to work with a client side
example. Thanks!

 

[Andy Dingley]

I'm looking for examples of websites (preferably large and well known
companies, not personal sites or developer-to-developer sites)

Just from my own personal experience

http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/

http://goodwoodworking.co.uk/

These are two sites hosted on one large XSLT-based CMS for a magazine
company. They needed a single solution for a wide range of titles, and
also the ability to share content between places:
http://www.futurenet.com/crossstitc...agetypeid=2&subsectionid=1933&articleid=32991
(as a slightly contrived example)


As with anything, you need to work out what you want before you ask
for it. Every time I talk CMS to a client they have a different view
of what it's about. For some it's content management (i.e. just teh
raw body text). For others it's about flexible page design and
re-design. In a few it's about the site - simple pages, but a great
many of them needing a large network of navigation.

Currently lack of browser support for XSLT has held us back.

It shouldn't do - you can basically ignore client-side XSLT. The
transformation to HTML takes place on the server.

This is _not_ an easy thing to build. You should buy in some past
experience of XSLT content management (don't look at me, I'm in the
UK). If you do it wrong it will probably work - but the server load
will be high, site performance poor, and the maintainability of your
site will be minimal.