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]

(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.