6 ms·

When it talks about XSL stylesheets, which in theory you can use to have all your documents be XML and transformed into HTML, it’s worth noting that this is a p

When it talks about XSL stylesheets, which in theory you can use to have all your documents be XML and transformed into HTML, it’s worth noting that this is a part of browsers that’s been neglected for over a decade, with the minimum of maintenance to keep it still roughly working, and it shows. The failure modes are bad, and a lot of it is very difficult to debug. It’s like opening a portal to how you’d develop pages fifteen or more years ago. The worst problem I know of is that loading an XML file with an XSL stylesheet into a new tab in Firefox just hangs. Has done for years, and I still haven’t searched for a bug report about it (surely someone’s already reported it). Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever), and observe the correct document title, but how the actual document area remains blank and the status bar says it’s still “Transferring data from kmaasrud.com…”. A quick Ctrl+R and it loads just fine the second time.

jasonjayr 3y ago
That URL loaded for me fine in FF 122.0.1 ....
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Works for me in Safari too.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  Did you open it in a new tab? In an existing tab, it loads fine. On reflection, it’s also quite possible this is a platform-specific bug. I’m on Linux. I think I experienced it in Windows a few years back, but the memory is fuzzy. … hmm, apparently if I start a blank Firefox profile this doesn’t happen either. Though I know I’ve encountered this with at least two completely distinct Firefox profiles over the years. This bears closer investigation. Anyway, it’s still indicative of the disrepair of this feature set. It’s still used widely enough that I don’t think it’ll be torn out, but honestly on technical robustness grounds it could warrant being removed.
  - readams 3y ago
    Maybe try disabling your extensions?
  - perlgeek 3y ago
    It works fine for me, with a current FF on Linux (Ubuntu), opening in a new tab. I have lots of extensions enabled. But I do share your frustration: the modern web seems unusable, unless you have a collection of extensions that block ads, annoying consent forms and the likes. But once you have these extensions installed, you basically lose all support. Sometimes stuff breaks, and it works in a new profile even with the same extensions installed... and then what? You're supposed to throw away your profile with bookmarks, CAs, years of history etc.?
    - anjel 3y ago
      >But once you have these extensions installed, you basically lose all support. Its gotten to the point where I have multiple browsers as fallback. FF with lots of essential extensions > Brave with just a few > Unextended Chromium. A necessarily ridiculous state of affairs, but there you have it.
      - maxcoder4 3y ago
        Same for me, but without Brave as a middle ground. I think Firefox even without extensions is less and less supported, sadly.
  - billywhizz 3y ago
    works fine for me in a new tab also on chrome/ubuntu.
  - jnellis 3y ago
    It works for me if you open in a new tab, a new window, or a new private window. FF122.0 on windows.
  - donkeybeer 3y ago
    Firefox is sometimes weird that way. I too have seen issues (with other stuff, not this particular xslt page) that randomly seem in only some profile.
- mxmilkiib 3y ago
  Fwiw, article and feed render fine for me, FF 122, Arch, but my bookmarklets to popup a dialog and copy the url do not work.
sbruchmann 3y ago
> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever), and observe the correct document title, but how the actual document area remains blank and the status bar says it’s still “Transferring data from kmaasrud.com…”. It worked for me: https://imgur.com/a/Qccw9kT https://imgur.com/a/Qccw9kT
Ambroisie 3y ago
Opening it in a new tab on FF on Android works fine on the first try.
cristoperb 3y ago
> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever) I can't reproduce your issue (on Firefox 115.7.0esr (64-bit) from Debian). I open it in a new tab with middle click and it loads fine immediately.
billywhizz 3y ago
XSLT is also so much more than just a way to render html. especially version 2. the browsers afaik are still XSLT 1 which is kinda limited. back in the day i built so many nice solutions for both web and internal services using XSLT as a key component. i also found it interesting that it was pretty easy for less experienced devs and particularly non-devs to pick up and make changes to. declarative programming has been much neglected sadly.
- jkoudys 3y ago
  XSLT was one of the things that brought me to React indirectly over a decade ago. I wanted to runs something like apply-templates (components) and that got me looking at XHP. That was the inspiration for JSX which became popular via react. Ironically I don't even use jsx anymore now that javascript has caught up, and a lot of what react does was really appealing from the declarative side. Weirdly so many of the "experts" are pushing very non-declarative approaches to it now. I'd love if xslt could achieve its stated goals, but like the rest of xml it's too academic and ignores obvious practical requirements.
  - zcw100 3y ago
    What I like best about XSLT is that it reminds me that someone thought this was a great idea. They went so far as to declare it as “the way” and everyone should use it everywhere. There were conferences, books, blogs, everything. Anyone who criticized it was harshly rebuked and criticized. It isn’t just XSLT. The highway of IT progress is littered with these. XML, XSLT, CORBA, JEE… It’s helpful to keep in mind that nothing has changed, the current ones just haven’t blown up yet.
    - billywhizz 3y ago
      well yes. i agree re corba, j2ee etc. but i think there were a lot of very nice technologies around xml that enabled automatic discovery, interop, validation etc. and we have ditched them all because there was also a lot of unnecessarily complex baggage and tooling that came with the ecosystem around them. i even thought SOAP was quite nice if you used the message oriented flavour instead of RPC flavour. REST was imo better and won out, but then nobody really does REST today and we seem to keep on re-inventing the wheel. am watching the htmx discourse with interest.
donatj 3y ago
Blizzard of all peoples site in the late aughts was all XML with XSLT. It was kind of beautiful.
whartung 3y ago
I opened that URL. It opened fine in Safari (macOS), and it opened fine in Chrome. Firefox did not apply the XSL file. I tried to "view source" on both Safari and Chrome, and neither gave me the option. I could Inspect Element, and I got the HTML DOM, but not the original XML source. On Firefox, it showed me the XML file. This surprised me. I was under the understanding that the browsers had effectively abandoned the XML/XSL concept any more. Apparently Firefox does. It's also a shame the browsers stopped at XSL v1 as well, v2 is much better. But, the browsers basically said "we're not in the XML ecosystem, we're in the HTML ecosystem". The idea of downloading XSL, and then having a blog post that was little more than just content, with a wee bit of meta data, with all the chrome rendered locally via the template, I find that idea compelling. One less thing to download. More stuff to cache on the local system. I had grand visions of an XProc pipeline terminated in the browser itself, but when I found out the browsers weren't really playing along anymore, kind of took the wind out of its sails.
- abrahms 3y ago
  The "here's the content, you do the rendering" is very close to what gemini does. https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
- cryptonector 3y ago
  > Firefox did not apply the XSL file. It did for me. The "This is a list of blogs and news sources I follow." part of the page as rendered comes from the XSL file (opml.xsl). The actual list is rendered. I'm did not check whether the XSL was applied correctly, but applied it was. > On Firefox, ["view source"] showed be the XML file. Can confirm. > The idea of downloading XSL, [...], I find that idea compelling. > [...] but when I found out the browsers weren't really playing along anymore, kind of took the wind out of its sails. Sad, yes, but for me Firefox did download the XML, the XSL, applied the XSL, and rendered the resulting page. I dunno why it didn't for you or GP, but maybe it's an add-on interfering? Do check, and please report, because I'm curious if the issue is add-ons.
  - donkeybeer 3y ago
    Works for me too. I see a list with bolded links and descriptions and when I view source I see xml starting with an opml tag, instead of html. edit: and yes opened the link on a new tab
cryptonector 3y ago
It loads for me, and it applies the XSL. Do you have NoScript or some add-on like it interfering with the loading?
llimos 3y ago
This discussion awoke an ancient memory in me - this DailyWTF article about skechers.com https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Sketchy-Skecherscom https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Sketchy-Skecherscom The article is (as to be expected) very disparaging, but the author responded with valid points. Either way, a fun read and a blast from the past.
heavyset_go 3y ago
> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever), and observe the correct document title Loads absolutely fine for me on Firefox Nightly and on Firefox 122.0.1 stable on Linux.
- Macha 3y ago
  Adding firefox for windows (tablet) and firefox for android to the list
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    Add safari for macOS to the list

jasonjayr 3y ago

That URL loaded for me fine in FF 122.0.1 ....

saagarjha 3y ago
Works for me in Safari too.
chrismorgan 3y ago
Did you open it in a new tab? In an existing tab, it loads fine. On reflection, it’s also quite possible this is a platform-specific bug. I’m on Linux. I think I experienced it in Windows a few years back, but the memory is fuzzy. … hmm, apparently if I start a blank Firefox profile this doesn’t happen either. Though I know I’ve encountered this with at least two completely distinct Firefox profiles over the years. This bears closer investigation. Anyway, it’s still indicative of the disrepair of this feature set. It’s still used widely enough that I don’t think it’ll be torn out, but honestly on technical robustness grounds it could warrant being removed.
- readams 3y ago
  Maybe try disabling your extensions?
- perlgeek 3y ago
  It works fine for me, with a current FF on Linux (Ubuntu), opening in a new tab. I have lots of extensions enabled. But I do share your frustration: the modern web seems unusable, unless you have a collection of extensions that block ads, annoying consent forms and the likes. But once you have these extensions installed, you basically lose all support. Sometimes stuff breaks, and it works in a new profile even with the same extensions installed... and then what? You're supposed to throw away your profile with bookmarks, CAs, years of history etc.?
  - anjel 3y ago
    >But once you have these extensions installed, you basically lose all support. Its gotten to the point where I have multiple browsers as fallback. FF with lots of essential extensions > Brave with just a few > Unextended Chromium. A necessarily ridiculous state of affairs, but there you have it.
    - maxcoder4 3y ago
      Same for me, but without Brave as a middle ground. I think Firefox even without extensions is less and less supported, sadly.
- billywhizz 3y ago
  works fine for me in a new tab also on chrome/ubuntu.
- jnellis 3y ago
  It works for me if you open in a new tab, a new window, or a new private window. FF122.0 on windows.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  Firefox is sometimes weird that way. I too have seen issues (with other stuff, not this particular xslt page) that randomly seem in only some profile.
mxmilkiib 3y ago
Fwiw, article and feed render fine for me, FF 122, Arch, but my bookmarklets to popup a dialog and copy the url do not work.

sbruchmann 3y ago

> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever), and observe the correct document title, but how the actual document area remains blank and the status bar says it’s still “Transferring data from kmaasrud.com…”. It worked for me: https://imgur.com/a/Qccw9kT https://imgur.com/a/Qccw9kT

Ambroisie 3y ago

Opening it in a new tab on FF on Android works fine on the first try.

cristoperb 3y ago

> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever) I can't reproduce your issue (on Firefox 115.7.0esr (64-bit) from Debian). I open it in a new tab with middle click and it loads fine immediately.

billywhizz 3y ago

XSLT is also so much more than just a way to render html. especially version 2. the browsers afaik are still XSLT 1 which is kinda limited. back in the day i built so many nice solutions for both web and internal services using XSLT as a key component. i also found it interesting that it was pretty easy for less experienced devs and particularly non-devs to pick up and make changes to. declarative programming has been much neglected sadly.

jkoudys 3y ago
XSLT was one of the things that brought me to React indirectly over a decade ago. I wanted to runs something like apply-templates (components) and that got me looking at XHP. That was the inspiration for JSX which became popular via react. Ironically I don't even use jsx anymore now that javascript has caught up, and a lot of what react does was really appealing from the declarative side. Weirdly so many of the "experts" are pushing very non-declarative approaches to it now. I'd love if xslt could achieve its stated goals, but like the rest of xml it's too academic and ignores obvious practical requirements.
- zcw100 3y ago
  What I like best about XSLT is that it reminds me that someone thought this was a great idea. They went so far as to declare it as “the way” and everyone should use it everywhere. There were conferences, books, blogs, everything. Anyone who criticized it was harshly rebuked and criticized. It isn’t just XSLT. The highway of IT progress is littered with these. XML, XSLT, CORBA, JEE… It’s helpful to keep in mind that nothing has changed, the current ones just haven’t blown up yet.
  - billywhizz 3y ago
    well yes. i agree re corba, j2ee etc. but i think there were a lot of very nice technologies around xml that enabled automatic discovery, interop, validation etc. and we have ditched them all because there was also a lot of unnecessarily complex baggage and tooling that came with the ecosystem around them. i even thought SOAP was quite nice if you used the message oriented flavour instead of RPC flavour. REST was imo better and won out, but then nobody really does REST today and we seem to keep on re-inventing the wheel. am watching the htmx discourse with interest.

donatj 3y ago

Blizzard of all peoples site in the late aughts was all XML with XSLT. It was kind of beautiful.

whartung 3y ago

I opened that URL. It opened fine in Safari (macOS), and it opened fine in Chrome. Firefox did not apply the XSL file. I tried to "view source" on both Safari and Chrome, and neither gave me the option. I could Inspect Element, and I got the HTML DOM, but not the original XML source. On Firefox, it showed me the XML file. This surprised me. I was under the understanding that the browsers had effectively abandoned the XML/XSL concept any more. Apparently Firefox does. It's also a shame the browsers stopped at XSL v1 as well, v2 is much better. But, the browsers basically said "we're not in the XML ecosystem, we're in the HTML ecosystem". The idea of downloading XSL, and then having a blog post that was little more than just content, with a wee bit of meta data, with all the chrome rendered locally via the template, I find that idea compelling. One less thing to download. More stuff to cache on the local system. I had grand visions of an XProc pipeline terminated in the browser itself, but when I found out the browsers weren't really playing along anymore, kind of took the wind out of its sails.

abrahms 3y ago
The "here's the content, you do the rendering" is very close to what gemini does. https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
cryptonector 3y ago
> Firefox did not apply the XSL file. It did for me. The "This is a list of blogs and news sources I follow." part of the page as rendered comes from the XSL file (opml.xsl). The actual list is rendered. I'm did not check whether the XSL was applied correctly, but applied it was. > On Firefox, ["view source"] showed be the XML file. Can confirm. > The idea of downloading XSL, [...], I find that idea compelling. > [...] but when I found out the browsers weren't really playing along anymore, kind of took the wind out of its sails. Sad, yes, but for me Firefox did download the XML, the XSL, applied the XSL, and rendered the resulting page. I dunno why it didn't for you or GP, but maybe it's an add-on interfering? Do check, and please report, because I'm curious if the issue is add-ons.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  Works for me too. I see a list with bolded links and descriptions and when I view source I see xml starting with an opml tag, instead of html. edit: and yes opened the link on a new tab

cryptonector 3y ago

It loads for me, and it applies the XSL. Do you have NoScript or some add-on like it interfering with the loading?

llimos 3y ago

This discussion awoke an ancient memory in me - this DailyWTF article about skechers.com https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Sketchy-Skecherscom https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Sketchy-Skecherscom The article is (as to be expected) very disparaging, but the author responded with valid points. Either way, a fun read and a blast from the past.

heavyset_go 3y ago

> Try opening https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml https://kmaasrud.com/blogroll.xml in a new tab (Ctrl+click or whatever), and observe the correct document title Loads absolutely fine for me on Firefox Nightly and on Firefox 122.0.1 stable on Linux.

Macha 3y ago
Adding firefox for windows (tablet) and firefox for android to the list
- pasc1878 3y ago
  Add safari for macOS to the list