XML transformations with CSS and DOM

While a little bit out dated for its testing realm, this article holds some still useful information for the modern developer. “XML in the browser has been the subject of many spirited discussions about bleeding-edge web development. Some feel that XML in place of HTML isn’t ready for prime time due to the lack of user agents that can properly parse and render it. Others feel that XML really belongs on the server or used solely as a descriptive framework for data and has no place in the visual world of the Web which is already adequately served by HTML.

Despite this, the newest generation of browsers possess powerful XML capabilities. The recent releases of Mozilla offer a parser and rendering engine that support XML technologies such as XML stylesheets, XML namespaces, XLink, SVG, and MathML. Along with its native support for SOAP and forthcoming implementations of WSDL and XSLT, Mozilla is poised to become a power player among XML client software.

Mozilla also permits XML to be rendered in the browser with CSS, and manipulated with the DOM. This is a real boon to those of us eager to experiment with XML transformations (both visual and structural) without having to delve into unfamiliar technologies such as XPath, the verbose traversal language of XSLT. If you’re already familiar with CSS and DOM, you’re more than halfway to achieving XML transformations in Mozilla.

This article demonstrates how to render XML in the browser with a minimum of CSS and JavaScript. The examples that follow were written for and tested with Mozilla 1.0 for Mac OS X and Windows 2000. This article is not a comprehensive tutorial on DOM, CSS, or XML, and a basic understanding of each of these technologies is required.”

Read the full article hosted by Apple’s own Developer Connection.