% curl https://xslt.rip/
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="/index.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<html>
<head>
<title>XSLT.RIP</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>If you're reading this, XSLT was killed by Google.</h1>
<p>Thoughts and prayers.</p>
<p>Rest in peace.</p>
</body>
</html>The author is frontend designer and has a nice website, too: https://dbushell.com/
I like the personal, individual style of both pages.
Heh, I honestly thought the domain name stood for "D-Bus Hell" and not their own name.
I now wonder if XSLT is implemented by any browser that isn't controlled by Google (or derived from one that is).
Edge IE 11 mode is still there for you. Which also supports IE 6+ like it always did, presumably. They didn’t reimplement IE in Edge; IE is still there. Microsoft was all in on xml technologies back in the day.
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.
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...
You are on some very very small elite team of web standards users then
Intentionally in a humourous way, yes
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.
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.
It's like removing JPEG support because libjpg is insecure!
Being this is HN, did anyone suggest rewriting it in rust? :)
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.
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).
They should probably be called "decision-maders"
Was SOAP a bad system that misunderstood HTTP while being vastly overarchitected for most of its use cases? Yes. Could overuse of XML schemas render your documents unreadable and overcomplex to work with? Of course. Were early XML libraries well designed around the reality of existing programming languages? No. But also was JSON's early implementation of 'you can just eval() it into memory' ever good engineering? No, and by the time you've written a JSON parser that beats that you could've equally produced an equally improved XML system while retaining the much greater functionality it already had.
RIP a good tech killed by committees overembellishing it and engineers failing to recognise what they already had over the high of building something else.
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)
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.
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
Link: </style.css>; rel=stylesheet
I think the best strategy for Google is to support this and simultaneously ditch XSLT. This way nothing is truly lost.
[1] You can test your browse from: https://annevankesteren.nl/test/html-element/style-header.ph...
Unless I'm using XSLT without knowing, you can do this with the xml-stylesheet processing instruction
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.
And: Because it exists/existed and thus people relied upon it.
With the amount of sites on the web, even a small number relying on features, each having just a bunch of users, it becomes a big number of impacted.
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.
Or can't you polyfill this / use a library to parse this?
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.
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.
But that does not mean xslt should be kept alive just because of that. It should be judged on its own merits
I had a good chuckle at the idea of sitting around the dinner table at Christmas telling my parents and in-laws all about XSLT.
"Tell your friends and family about XSLT. Keep XSLT alive! Add XSLT to your website and weblog today before it is too late!"
Just kidding, Canvas is obsolete technology, this should obviously be done with WebGPU
Chrome supports it on Windows and macOS, Linux users need to explicitly enable it. Firefox has only released it for Windows users, support on other platforms is behind a feature flag. And you need iOS 26 / macOS Tahoe for support in Safari. On mobile the situation should be a bit better in theory, though in my experience mobile device GPU drivers are so terrible they can't even handle WebGL2 without huge problems.
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.
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.
"Inspired" is an interesting word for "didn't set custom values." And I believe Mosaic used the same colors before. I'm not even sure when HTML introduced the corresponding attributes (this was all before CSS ...)
https://geocities.restorativland.org/Area51/
> was more of a brownish beige.
Did you never watch MTV?
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.
In the 90s, sites did kinda look like that.
What came later was the float layout hell- sorry, "solution".
I once got into a cab in NYC on Halloween and the driver said to me, hey, you really nailed that 80s hairstyle, thinking I had styled it for Halloween. I had to tell him dude, I’m from the 80s.
It's just direct browsing support for rendering using XSLT that's removed.
> 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.
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.
If you can use it to generate HTML, you can use it to generate an interactive experience.
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.
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.
If people continue to use XML-supporting technology, these open standards will continue to thrive.
I'm sure this site will be supported eventually by the Ladybird Web browser - can't wait to switch to it next August.
For $0? Probably not. For $40m/year, I bet you could create an entire company that just maintains and supports all these "abandoned" projects.
No sane commercial entity will dump even a cent into supporting an unused technology.
You have better luck pitching this idea to your senator to set up an agency for dead stuff - it will create tens or hundreds of jobs. And what's $40mm in the big picture?
[1] https://github.com/pizlonator/fil-c/tree/deluge/projects/lib...
As for money: Remind me what was Google's profit last year?
As for usage: XSLT is used on about 10x more sites [1] than Chrome-only non-standards like USB, WebTransport and others that Google has no trouble shoving into the browser
[1] Compare XSLT https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity... with USB https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity... or WebTransport: https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity... or even MIDI (also supported by Firerox) https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity...
Browsers should try things. But if after many years there is no adoption they should also retire them. This would be no different if the organization is charity or not.
Last i checked, google isn't a charity.
Besides, xkcd #2347 [1] is talking about precisely that situation - there is a shitload of very small FOSS libraries that underpin everything and yet, funding from the big dogs for whom even ten fulltime developer salaries would be a sneeze has historically lacked hard.
- 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>
AFAIK the "google graveyard" is just for google products they have killed off.
When it comes to killing web technology, Google is mostly killing their own weird APIs that nobody ended up using or pruning away code that almost nobody uses according to their statistics.
It has RSS feeds for individual channels. It does not _support_ RSS in any meaningful way.
What they can do is remove support for XSLT in Chrome and thus basically kill XSLT for websites. Which until now I didn't even know was supported and used.
XSLT can be used in many other areas as well, e.g. for XSL-FO [2]
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-30/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects
The google graveyard is for products Google has made. It's not for features that were unshipped. XSLT will not enter the Google graveyard for that reason.
>We must conclude Google hates XML & RSS!
Google reader was shutdown due to usage declining and lack of willingness for Google to continue investing resources into the product. It's not that Google hate XML and RSS. It's that end users and developers don't use XSLT and RSS enough to warrant investing into it.
>by killing [RSS] Google can control the media
The vast majority of people in the world do not get their news by RSS. It's never would have taken over the media complex. There are other surfaces for news like X which Google is not able to control. Google is not the only surface where news can surface.
> Google are now trying to control LEGISLATION. With these technologies removed what is stopping Google?
It is quite a reach to say that Google removing XSLT will give them control over government legislation. They are completely unrelated.
>How much did Google pay for this support?
Google is not paying for support. These browsers have essentially a revenue sharing agreements with the traffic they provide Google with. The payments are for the traffic to Google.
They moved everything into a wiki later.
EDIT: Oh, their developers' manual is still done like that: https://github.com/gentoo/devmanual into https://devmanual.gentoo.org/
Also: "the needs of users and authors (i.e. developers) should be treated as higher priority than those of implementors (i.e. browser vendors), yet the higher priority constituencies are at the mercy of the lower priority ones": https://dev.to/richharris/stay-alert-d
What the hell is Mozilla doing with that money? How useless are all those people?
(IIRC her salary increased something like 10 folds over the past 15 years or so)
Edit: It has jumped from $490k[1] to $6.25M[2] from 2009 to 2024.
Edit 2: by looking the figures up, I learned that she's gone at last, good riddance (though I highly doubt her successor is going to take a 12-fold pay cut)
[1]: https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2009-irs-... page 8
[2]: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-fo... page 8 as well.
I cannot tell if this is satire or not, very well done
Say what you will about how this is technically allowed in open source, it is nothing short of morally despicable. A real https://xkcd.com/2347/ situation.
It would cost Google practically nothing to step up and fix all security issues, and continue maintenance if they wanted to. To say nothing of simply supporting the original maintainer financially.
But IMO the more important topic within this whole saga is that libxml2 maintenance will also end this year. Will we also see support for XML removed?
Hopefully YES.
Let the downvotes come, I know there are XML die hard fans here on HN.
I think https://xkcd.com/1172/ is more fitting.
> But IMO the more important topic within this whole saga is that libxml2 maintenance will also end this year. Will we also see support for XML removed?
No, because xml has meaningful usage on the web. The situations are very different.
They're really not. If "meaningful usage" was a factor, Google should stop maintaining AMP, USB, WebTransport, etc.[1]
If security and maintenance are a concern, then they should definitely also remove XML, since libxml2 has the same issues as libxslt.