Dylan Greene dot com

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XSL... what a bitch...

December 2, 2003 7:47 PM

I give up. What's the best tool for creating XSL web site templates? I don't want no silly XML editor that happens to support XSL, I want something of Frontpage or Dreamweaver caliber for the web design part and Visual Studio in the XSL coding debugging part. I'm sick of trying to memorize my XML schema just to build a web page around it.

Comments

And nobody can figure out why folks didn't flock to the Holy Grail of Content: All Content in bathed in Pure XML and then custom rendered for your browser (desktop, PDA, or phone) based on XSL stylesheets.

I wonder if XAML will solve this problem better. I'm already thinking about writting something like a XAML translator. Once in XAML, could it scale anywhere?

Dylan, have you tried Stylus Studio (http://www.sonicsoftware.com/products/sonic_stylus_studio/index.ssp )? It is not cheap at about $400 US. It was orginally developed by Excelon, which has been bought by Sonic Software. I've used it since version 2.0, and love it. And now with WYSIWYG, it can compete with Dreamweaver. Plus it now works with XQuery, and can run your XSLT thru various XSLT engines (including .Net), and a native debugger.

DonXML Demsak

Hey DonXML - thanks for the suggestion.

I'm trying the trial version of Sonci Stylus Studio now and I'm not happy with it:

1) Several crashes. Had to do with hitting cancel when it asked about generating a schema for me. Actually there was no cancel, just a Yes and No dialog.

2) The UI is pretty good for such a complex subject, but the non-standard menus and File-Open dialog look like Windows 95 on my XP machine. My job is usability and design, so these little things bother me. I'd still use it it if it weren't for number 3...

3) It munges my code! As bad as an old version of Frontpage, after doing a Preview of my XSL, about half the translation is gone. Here's an example:

BEFORE:

<xsl:template match="row">

<tr>

<xsl:attribute name="class">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="(position() mod 2) = 0">even</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>odd</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:attribute>

<xsl:variable name="foo" select="item" />

<xsl:for-each select="/portlet/table/columns/column">

<xsl:variable name="useMe" select="@name" />

<td>

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="@type='integer'"><xsl:value-of select="$foo[@name=$useMe]" /></xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="@type='string'"><xsl:value-of select="$foo[@name=$useMe]" /></xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="@type='date'"><xsl:value-of select="$foo[@name=$useMe]" /></xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="@type='boolean'">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="$foo[@name=$useMe]='N'">-</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="$foo[@name=$useMe]='Y'">YES</xsl:when>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:when>

</xsl:choose>

</td>

</xsl:for-each>

</tr>

</xsl:template>

AFTER:

<xsl:template match="row">

<tr>

<xsl:for-each select="../../table/columns/column">

<td>

<xsl:value-of select="."/>

</td>

</xsl:for-each>

</tr>

</xsl:template>

Any ideas why it is doing this? The before code was good and worked great.

The Preview is also not seeing my css and javascript files, but maybe I have to move them to the temp directory it uses or use absolute paths.

Wow, FrontPage 2003 does it perfectly - live preview, drag and drop, UI for filters and sorting, no code munging... Play with it yourself here, no install required, it runs via a java Citrix remote desktop client and connects you to a private Windows 2003 server session where you can play as much as you want: http://www.runaware.com/microsoft/frontpage2003/?refname=FP2003

But... it seems that this feature is for Sharepoint users.. in other words the XML must come from the Sharepoint server. Is that true, or am I just not finding the right toggle somewhere?

Cool, this entry has been Scobleized.

http://scoble.weblogs.com/2003/12/04.html#a5654

Dylan, where on the Runaware site can you edit an XLST file, I cannot seem to find one?

Regs....David.

Nobody mentioned XML SPY, or Eclipse plugins, or http://www.editix.com?

ok

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