koito17
ktpsns
This is actually a clever way to distinguish if the browser supports XSLT or not. Actual content is XHTML in https://xslt.rip/index.xsl
The author is frontend designer and has a nice website, too: https://dbushell.com/
I like the personal, individual style of both pages.
konimex
Heh, I honestly thought the domain name stood for "D-Bus Hell" and not their own name.
shiomiru
Ironically, that text is all you get if you load the site from a text browser (Lynx etc.) It doesn't feel too different from <noscript>This website requires JavaScript</noscript>...
I now wonder if XSLT is implemented by any browser that isn't controlled by Google (or derived from one that is).
auscompgeek
Firefox haven't removed XSLT support yet.
shiomiru
I should've worded differently. By the narrative of this website, Google is "paying" Mozilla & Apple to remove XSLT, thus they are "controlled" by Google.
I personally don't quite believe it's all that black and white, just wanted to point out that the "open web" argument is questionable even if you accept this premise.
gucci-on-fleek
I'm strongly against the removal of XSLT support from browsers—I use both the JavaScript "XSLTProcessor" functions [0] and "<?xml-stylesheet …?>" [1] on my personal website, I commented on the original GitHub thread [2], and I use XSLT for non-web purposes [3].
But I think that this website is being hyperbolic: I believe that Google's stated security/maintenance justifications are genuine (but wildly misguided), and I certainly don't believe that Google is paying Mozilla/Apple to drop XSLT support. I'm all in favour of trying to preserve XSLT support, but a page like this is more likely to annoy the decision-makers than to convince them to not remove XSLT support.
[0]: https://www.maxchernoff.ca/tools/Stardew-Valley-Item-Finder/
[1]: https://www.maxchernoff.ca/atom.xml
[2]: https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/11563#issuecomment-31909...
[3]: https://github.com/gucci-on-fleek/lua-widow-control/blob/852...
coldtea
>I use both the JavaScript "XSLTProcessor" functions [0] and "<?xml-stylesheet …?>" [1] on my personal website
You are on some very very small elite team of web standards users then
f33d5173
>But I think that this website is being hyperbolic
Intentionally in a humourous way, yes
littlestymaar
> but a page like this is more likely to annoy the decision-makers than to convince them to not remove XSLT support.
You cannot “convince decision-makers” with a webpage anyway. The goal of this one is to raise awareness on the topic, which is pretty much the only thing you can do with a mere webpage.
bawolff
For some reason people seem to think raising awareness is all you need to do. That only works if people already generally agree with you on the issue. Want to save endangered animals? raising awareness is great. However if you're on an issue where people are generally aware but unconvinced, raising more awareness does not help. Having better arguments might.
littlestymaar
> For some reason people seem to think raising awareness is all you need to do.
I don't think many do.
It's just that raising awareness is the first step (and likely the only one you'll ever see anyway, because for most topics you aren't in a position where convincing *you* in particular has any impact).
ludicrousdispla
>> You cannot “convince decision-makers” with a webpage anyway.
They should probably be called "decision-maders"
IshKebab
> but wildly misguided
Why? Last time this came up the consensus was that libxstl was barely maintained and never intended to be used in a secure context and full of bugs.
I'm full in favour of removing such insecure features that barely anyone uses.
I think if the XSLT people really wanted to save it the best thing to do would have been to write a replacement in Rust. But good luck with that.
Klonoar
The easier thing might have been if Chrome & co opted to include any number of polyfills in JS bundled with the browser instead of making an odd situation where things just break.
I think you can recognize that the burden of maintaining a proven security nightmare is annoying while simultaneously getting annoyed for them over-grabbing on this.
rhdunn
libxslt != XSLT.
It's like removing JPEG support because libjpg is insecure!
TingPing
If this were true you could fix this today with the other library. That library is the only implementation used and it’s features are relied upon.
jeltz
Which would be a totally sensible thing you do. Especially if jpeg was a rarely used image format with few libraries supporting it, the main one being unmaintained.
redbell
IMHO, Google had become the most powerful tech company out there! It has a strong monopoly in almost every aspect of our lives and it is becoming extremely difficult to completely decouple from it. My problem with this is that it now dictates and influences what can be done, what is allowed and what not, and, with its latest Android saga (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028), it's become worrying.
I strongly encourage building a website entitled, something like keepXSLTAlive.tld to advocate for XSLT as the other guys did https://keepandroidopen.org/ for Android (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742488), or keep this current site (https://xslt.rip/) but update the UI a little bit to better reflect the protest vibe.
yoz-y
With browser being as complicated as they are, I kind of support this decision.
That said, I never used XSLT for anything, and I don’t see how is its support in browsers tied to RSS. (Sure you could render your page from your rss feed but that seems like a marginal use case to me)
randunel
Would you be willing to entertain the idea that, perhaps, you haven't noticed you actually used XSLT during your mundane browsing? Sample page, how would you tell? https://www.europarl.europa.eu/politicalparties/index_en.xml
monerozcash
There exists a much better html version of that page, which also comes up as the first google result and is easier to discover on the website. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/organisat...
cedilla
Sure there are examples of websites using XSLT, but so far I've only seen the dozen or maybe two dozen, and it really looks like they are extremely rare. And I'm pretty sure the EU parliament et. al. will find someone to rework their page.
This really is just a storm in a waterglass. Nothing like the hundreds or tens of thousands of flash and java applet based web pages that went defunct when we deprecated those technologies.
jeltz
Battle.net's forums used to use XSLT and be a buggy mess, but not sure if that was related to their use of XSLT.
yoz-y
Naturally I meant as a developer. I don’t doubt I came past xslt rendered pages.
Maxious
If you view an RSS or Atom feed in chrome today you just get a screen of xml eg. https://developer.wordpress.org/news/feed/
In the golden old days of 2018, browsers at least applied some styling https://evertpot.com/firefox-rss/
You can still manually apply styling using xslt https://www.cedricbonhomme.org/blog/index.xml
internetter
> You can still manually apply styling using xslt
Unless I'm using XSLT without knowing, you can do this with the xml-stylesheet processing instruction
yoz-y
In Safari at least clicking a rss link prompts you to open it in a rss reader, which I think is a superior experience. Reading a rss feed in browser is not without use, but I’d argue that that’s mostly the job of the site itself.
sltkr
For RSS feeds, XSLT stylesheets are used to display a human-readable version in the browser.
Random example: https://lepture.com/en/feed.xml
This is useful because feed URLs look the same as web page URLs, so users are inclined to click on them and open them in a web browser instead of an RSS reader. (Many users these days don't even know what an RSS reader is). The stylesheet allows them to view the feed in the browser, instead of just being shown the XML source code.
bawolff
Why is this so critical? We dont due this for any other format. If you put an ms office document on a page, we dont have the browser render it, we download it and pass it off to a dedicated program. Why is RSS so special here?
sltkr
I don't think it's a critical feature, but it is nice-to-have.
Imagine if you opened a direct link to a JPEG image and instead of the browser rendering it, you'd have to save it and open it in Photoshop locally. Wouldn't that be inconvenient?
Many browsers do support opening web-adjacent documents directly because it's convenient for users. Maybe not Microsoft Word documents, but PDF files are commonly supported.
miki123211
You can do the same by checking Accept headers, User-Agent if you truly must.
nomercy400
Aren't there other ways to load and parse a technical format like RSS to a human-readable format? Like you would do with JSON.
Or can't you polyfill this / use a library to parse this?
sltkr
You can do the transformation server-side, but it's not trivial to set it up. It would involve detecting the web browser using the "Accept" header (hopefully RSS readers don't accept text/html), then using XSLT to transform the XML to XHTML that is sent to the client instead, and you probably need to cache that for performance reasons. And that's assuming the feed is just a static file, and not dynamically generated.
In theory you could do the transformation client side, but then you'd still need the server to return a different document in the browser, even if it's just a stub for the client-side code, because XML files cannot execute Javascript on their own.
Another option is to install a browser extension but of course the majority of users will never do that, which minimizes the incentive for feed authors to include a stylesheet in the first place.
pseudosavant
This site is a bit of a Rorschach test as it plays both sides of this argument: bad Google for killing XSLT, and the silliness of pushing for XSLT adoption in 2025.
"Tell your friends and family about XSLT. Keep XSLT alive! Add XSLT to your website and weblog today before it is too late!"
karel-3d
It's clearly making fun of the hyperbole.
SvenL
Boy is this an awesome web page. Suddenly I have the urge to create an html page with ifames, blink, marquee and table tags (for layout of course)
altfredd
You can always render blink and marquee with Canvas.
Just kidding, Canvas is obsolete technology, this should obviously be done with WebGPU
paavohtl
I know you're being sarcastic, but to be pedantic WebGPU (usually) uses canvas. Canvas is the element, WebGPU is one of the ways of rendering to a canvas, in addition to WebGL and CanvasRenderingContext2D.
lukan
And also don't expect smooth sailing with WebGPU yet, unless all your users have modern mainstream browsers with up to date hardware.
blitzar
Needs an "under construction" banner
ctm92
Recently had to grab content from a page that was layouted with tables. Just nested tables over tables, not even ids for the elements.
sethaurus
I invite you to view the source of the very page we're on right now.
VerifiedReports
laid out
GaryBluto
While I agree with the sentiment, I loathe these "retro" websites that don't actually look like how most websites looked back then. It's like how people remember the 80s as neon blue and pink when it was more of a brownish beige.
coldtea
>While I agree with the sentiment, I loathe these "retro" websites that don't actually look like how most websites looked back then.
Countless websites on Geocities and elsewhere looked just like that. MY page looked like that (but more edgy, with rotating neon skull gifs). All those silly GIFs were popular and there were sites you could find and download some for personal use.
>It's like how people remember the 80s as neon blue and pink when it was more of a brownish beige.
In North Platte or Yorkshire maybe. Otherwise plenty of neon blue and pink in the 80s. Starting from video game covers, arcades, neon being popular with bars and clubs, far more colorful clothing being popular, "Memphis" style graphic design, etc.
cpach
This look with animations and bright text on dark repeated backgrounds was definitely popular for a while in the late 90s. You wouldn’t see it on larger sites like Yahoo or CNN, but it was definitely not unheard of for personal sites.
Gray backgrounds where also popular, with bright blue for unvisited links and purple for visited links. IIRC this was inspired by the default colors of Netscape Navigator 2.
arcanemachiner
Now that you mention it, something did seem a little off about the thinking-butt emoji...
Moosturm
My old website from the 90s looks disturbingly similar to this one.
jameslk
You’re right, there isn’t even any marquee or blinking text
null
themafia
> don't actually look like how most websites looked back then
https://geocities.restorativland.org/Area51/
> was more of a brownish beige.
Did you never watch MTV?
galkk
Exactly.
If there is no white 1x1 pixel that is stretched in an attempt to make something that resembles actual layout, or multiple weird tables, I always ask: are they even trying.
In all seriousness- they got quite a good run with xslt. Time to let it rest.
mickeyp
1x1 pixels for padding and aligning? That came later. Your memory is off.
In the 90s, sites did kinda look like that.
coldtea
1x1 pixels for padding and aligning were absolutely a thing in the late 90s (1997+). Don't know what alternative history you have in mind, but it was used at the "table layout" era.
What came later was the float layout hell- sorry, "solution".
tomaytotomato
My first graduate job at a large British telco involved a lot of XML...
- WSDL files that were used to describe Enterprise services on a bus. These were then stored and shared in the most convoluted way in a Sharepoint page <shudders>
- XSD definitions of our custom XML responses to be validated <grimace>
- XSLTs to allow us to manipulate and display XML from other services, just so it would display properly on Oracle Siebel CRM <heavy sweats>
sdovan1
I've worked with a hospital, their electric medical records are written in XML, and use XSLT to render HTML.
coldtea
They will be able to do that in perpetuity.
It's just direct browsing support for rendering using XSLT that's removed.
atemerev
Which is one excellent use of XSLT. It is not that useful for general web.
CaliforniaKarl
From https://chromeenterprise.google:
> For over a decade, Chrome has supported millions of organizations with more secure browsing – while pioneering a safer, more productive open web for all.
… and …
> Our commitment to Chromium and open philosophy to integration means Chrome works well with other parts of your tech stack, so you can continue building the enterprise ecosystem that works for you.
Per the current version of https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/deprecating-x..., by August 17, 2027, XSLT support is removed from Chrome Enterprise. That means even Chrome's enterprise-targeted, non-general-web browser is going to lose support for XSLT.
bawolff
Most people who use xslt like the grandparent described were never using it on the client side but on the server side. Nothing google chrone does will effect the server side.
atemerev
To clarify: initially, the first web browser evolved from a SGML-based documentation browser at CERN. This was the first vision of the web: well-structured content pages, connected via hyperlinks (the "hyper" part meaning that links could point beyond the current set of pages). So, something like a global library. Many people are still nostalgic to this past.
Surprisingly, the "hyperlinked documents" structure was universal enough to allow rudimentary interactive web applications like shops or reservation forms. The web became useful to commerce. At first, interactive functionality was achieved by what amounted to hacks: nav blocks repeated at every page, frames and iframes, synchronous form submissions. Of course, web participants pushed for more direct support for application building blocks, which included Javascript, client-side templates, and ultimately Shadow DOM and React.
XSLT is ultimately a client-side template language too (can be used at the server side just as well, of course). However, this is a template language for a previous era: non-interactive web of documents (and it excels at that). It has little use for the current era: web of interactive applications.
the_other
My only use of XSLT (2000-2003) was to make interactive e-learning applications. I'd have used it in 2014 too, for an interactive "e-brochure", if I could have worked out a cross-browser solution for runtime transformation of XML fragments. (I suspect it was possible then but I couldn't work it out in the time I had for the job...)
If you can use it to generate HTML, you can use it to generate an interactive experience.
cluckindan
What if you used JS to make XSLT interactive? :-)
zkmon
Looks like more of a retro-fun site, than a protest. Most serious websites of 90's had more like light brownish background with black text with occasional small image on the side, double borders for table cells, Times font, horizontal rules, links with bold font in blue color, side-bar with navigation links, bread-crumbs at the top telling where you are now, may be also next-prev links at the bottom, and a title banner at the top.
Game sites and other "desperate-for-attention" sites have the animated gifs all over, scrolling or blinking text, dark background with bright multi-colored text with different font sizes and types and sound as well, looking pretty chaotic.
jeroenhd
Professional and serious websites, yes, but there were plenty of websites on Geocities that looked very much like this. These websites may not have been the majority of the internet, but they weren't rare either.
Just browsing around on a geocities website you can find pages like https://geocities.restorativland.org/CollegePark/Lounge/3449... and https://geocities.restorativland.org/Eureka/1415/ (audio warning on both)
If anything, this retro site is a bit too modern for having translucent panels, the background not being badly tiled, and text effects being too stylish.
beardyw
XSLT has a life outside the browser and remains valuable where XML is the way data is exchanged. And RSS does not demand XSLT in the browser so far as I know. I think RIP is a bit excessive.
null
I was hoping the site itself would be an XML document. Thankfully, it is an XML document.