Subject: Re: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI From: "Terris" <terris@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 06:55:37 -0700 |
If your objective is to support multiple browsers, then you have to generate HTML on the server. There is no other way. Mozilla does not support data islands, DSOs, XML, or XSL, and might not ever. Or, it might soon but nobody is upgrading their Mozilla browsers because Netscape no longer exists and it remains to be seen whether AOL wants to compete in the browser space (not likely). If you are bullish about Microsoft and Win32, then go for it. You will still have a wide audience. Since XSLT authoring tools are lacking you will have a hard time getting "content people" to switch to this new world view. The HTML they produce will for most purposes just be an "example". You'll have to reverse-engineer the examples into stylesheets. Not a lot of fun. For the last few years web engineers have been forcing content people to put mysterious tags into their HTML. Now we're asking them to switch to XML and create stylesheets that produce HTML. It's going to take time and tools, as all paradigm shifts do. ----- Original Message ----- From: <oberthier@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <XSL-List@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 4:05 AM Subject: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI Apart from the capability of applying XSL style sheets on the server to provide the client with HTML pages dynamically created from an XML source, I'm currently trying to explore the capability of a more integrated XML/XSL couple on the client itself to provide the user with a powerful user interface. The goal is quite simple, actually heritated from the experience of traditional client-server applications for which the link between data (in an RDBMS for instance) and presentation (the UI front-end) has always been quite messy to maintain (well, on the projects have been involved in, at least) especially for data intensive application (the user is having a lot to input) : This goal would be to maintain on the client the XML data and always automatically bind it with the forms used for the data input. No need for an extra layer of binding, the data in XML leaving the client browser is ready to be inserted in the backend database for instance. For this, I've been exploring two things so far: - XML on the client with an HTML page containing DSO data bindings of the HTML tags to the related XML elements. It works fine for prototyping but I'm having a concerned for the maintainability and the fact that the DSO is a Microsoft thing maybe not to be expected as a standard (anything like this in Mozilla too?) - A generic HTML page, and two data islands, one pointing to the XML data, one to an XSL sheet in charge of building the HTML forms dynamically on the client. Every time a field is modified, an onblur event is triggered, the XML is updated and the XSL stylesheet is applied again, regenerating the updated HTML front-end. It is interesting except for such basic UI things such as the focus on the next UI element which is lost, etc... XSL was sounding promising but maybe not now for such a purpose... It is very difficult to find pointers on information going into this direction so far. Has anybody the same kind of interest, and would be interested in starting a discussion group on this matter? Any feedback on the idea above? Anybody working on such a way of building data intensive client UI and applications exchanging data between a client user and a server? Thanks, Olivier. XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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