Should I be using XML + Stylesheets vs. XHTML and CSS?

Question

I have been developing web apps for a while now and for the past year I have been really exploring as many technologies as possible. I know some people are creating pages using XML and XSLT or maybe css style sheets; however, it seems to me that the trends are still not moving in direction. Plus it seems less functional/easy than XHTML/CSS based pages.

What are the benefits of using XML/XSLT, and is it ideal to start developing in that manor? Is there anything else new that is pulling ahead of the pack in regards of front end web development?

The reason I am bringing this stuff up is because it seems that many people are switching from XML as a datasource to JSON, which makes more sense as a datasource; however, XML is still functional as a markup language...

And on that note, why would I even want to use XSLT vs CSS for the XML pages if i were to start develop that way. It seems to me that they serve the same purpose except that XSLT looks like tag soup.

I hope this question makes sense....

Answer 1

Right now, there is no reason to use XSLT at all. It's virtually incomprehensible compared to XML/XHTML, and offers no real advantage for you or your users.

As for using XML in lieu of (X)HTML, with the growing acceptance of the emerging HTML5 standard, I can't see why you'd give up canvas and the (eventually, they'll be good!) audio capabilities for XML. Even now, XML is nice for marking up documents, but for marking up a webpage, HTML is king – it's essentially XML tailor-made for the web.

Answer 2

XSLT can be useful if you have an XML data source that needs transforming into HTML. Otherwise you should be using HTML, CSS and jQuery for front-end development.

Answer 3

There is no antagonism between XML/XSLT and XHTML/CSS, these are complementary technologies. Thus, in my web apps, XHTML pages are produced by mean of XML/XSLT (transformation occurs in client side).

Answer 4

You'd use XSLT to transform some XML document into XHTML. Then you'd use CSS to style the XHTML.

XSLT is for transformation of one XML format into another. The data stays the same, but the representation changes. There is even XSLT-FO, which transforms XML into other objects, like pdf.

Also note, XSLT can be used client-, or serverside. You can do XSLT transformation in the browser or with a simple handler on the server. Java-based nonsql data stores like existdb use XQUERY to transform database entries with XSLT to any other XML format, including XHTML.

Using XSLT to generate XHTML from simple XML documents basically gives you a templating engine.

Since browsers still lack XFORMS support, you can use javascript+XSLT to transform XFORMS into valid HTML.

JSON is used to serialize and deserialize objects and transport them, thus replacing XML as a transport format, more specifically as a AJAX query response, in rich internet applications.