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Bring back VRML! Seriously though, if I were forced to maintain every tiny legacy feature in a 20 year old app... I'd also become a "former" dev :) Even in it

Bring back VRML! Seriously though, if I were forced to maintain every tiny legacy feature in a 20 year old app... I'd also become a "former" dev :) Even in its heyday, XSLT seemed like an afterthought. Probably there are a handful of legacy corporate users hanging on to it for dear life. But if infinitely more popular techs (like Flash or FTP or non HTTPS sites) can be deprecated without much fuss... I don't think XSLT has much of a leg to stand on...

NoGravitas 1y ago
> Probably there are a handful of legacy corporate users hanging on to it for dear life. Like more or less everyone that hosts podcasts. But the current trend is for podcast feeds to go away, and be subsumed into Spotify and YouTube.
- solardev 1y ago
  Do people consume RSS feeds directly via XSLT? Not through apps and such that subscribe to the feed?
  - passivegains 1y ago
    This came up in some of the comments: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523#issuecomment-3154574260 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523#issuecomment-315... if you click the links instead of copy/pasting into your reader you get a page full of raw XML. It's not harmful or anything but it's not a great look. You can't really expect your users to just never click on your links, that's usually what links are for.
chrismorgan 1y ago
> But if infinitely more popular techs (like Flash or FTP or non HTTPS sites) can be deprecated without much fuss... I don't think XSLT has much of a leg to stand on... Flash was not part of the web platform. It was a plugin, a plugin that was, over time, abandoned by its maker. FTP was not part of the web platform. It was a separate protocol that some browsers just happened to include a handler for. If you have an FTP client, you can still open FTP links just fine. Non-HTTPS sites are being discouraged, but still work fine, and can reasonably be expected to continue to work indefinitely, though they are likely to be discouraged a bit harder over time. XSLT is part of the web platform. And removing it breaks various things.
- AlienRobot 1y ago
  Flash was the best part of the web, though.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
    Not if you were on a non-mainstream platform. Like some Linux, or oh my gawd NetBSD!1!! I couldn't be more happy about its demise.
- solardev 1y ago
  I don't think that distinction makes much of a difference for the users and devs affected...
SoftTalker 1y ago
XSLT was awesome back in the day. You could get a block of XML data from the server, and with a bit of very simple scripting, slice it, filter it, sort it, present summary or detail views, generate tables or forms, all without a server round trip. This was back in IE6 days, or even IE5 with an add-on. We built stuff with it that amazed users, because they were so used to the "full page reload" for every change.
Jubijub 1y ago
+1. I worked on an internal corporate eCommerce in 2005 built entirely on DOM + XSLT to create the final HTML. It was an atrocious pain in the neck to maintain (despite being server side so the browser never had to deal with the XSLT). Unless you still manipulate XML and need to transform it in various other formats through XSLT/XSL-FO, I don’t see why anyone would bother with it. It always cracks me up when people « demand » support for features hardly ever used for which they won’t spend a dime or a minute to help
account42 1y ago
> Seriously though, if I were forced to maintain every tiny legacy feature in a 20 year old app... I'd also become a "former" dev :) And those that would replace you might care more for the web rather than the next performance review.

NoGravitas 1y ago

> Probably there are a handful of legacy corporate users hanging on to it for dear life. Like more or less everyone that hosts podcasts. But the current trend is for podcast feeds to go away, and be subsumed into Spotify and YouTube.

solardev 1y ago
Do people consume RSS feeds directly via XSLT? Not through apps and such that subscribe to the feed?
- passivegains 1y ago
  This came up in some of the comments: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523#issuecomment-3154574260 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523#issuecomment-315... if you click the links instead of copy/pasting into your reader you get a page full of raw XML. It's not harmful or anything but it's not a great look. You can't really expect your users to just never click on your links, that's usually what links are for.

chrismorgan 1y ago

> But if infinitely more popular techs (like Flash or FTP or non HTTPS sites) can be deprecated without much fuss... I don't think XSLT has much of a leg to stand on... Flash was not part of the web platform. It was a plugin, a plugin that was, over time, abandoned by its maker. FTP was not part of the web platform. It was a separate protocol that some browsers just happened to include a handler for. If you have an FTP client, you can still open FTP links just fine. Non-HTTPS sites are being discouraged, but still work fine, and can reasonably be expected to continue to work indefinitely, though they are likely to be discouraged a bit harder over time. XSLT is part of the web platform. And removing it breaks various things.

AlienRobot 1y ago
Flash was the best part of the web, though.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
  Not if you were on a non-mainstream platform. Like some Linux, or oh my gawd NetBSD!1!! I couldn't be more happy about its demise.
solardev 1y ago
I don't think that distinction makes much of a difference for the users and devs affected...

SoftTalker 1y ago

XSLT was awesome back in the day. You could get a block of XML data from the server, and with a bit of very simple scripting, slice it, filter it, sort it, present summary or detail views, generate tables or forms, all without a server round trip. This was back in IE6 days, or even IE5 with an add-on. We built stuff with it that amazed users, because they were so used to the "full page reload" for every change.

Jubijub 1y ago

+1. I worked on an internal corporate eCommerce in 2005 built entirely on DOM + XSLT to create the final HTML. It was an atrocious pain in the neck to maintain (despite being server side so the browser never had to deal with the XSLT). Unless you still manipulate XML and need to transform it in various other formats through XSLT/XSL-FO, I don’t see why anyone would bother with it. It always cracks me up when people « demand » support for features hardly ever used for which they won’t spend a dime or a minute to help

account42 1y ago

> Seriously though, if I were forced to maintain every tiny legacy feature in a 20 year old app... I'd also become a "former" dev :) And those that would replace you might care more for the web rather than the next performance review.