When I have criticized Microsoft for the lack of
complete and correct CSS support in IE5, I have found that many
are quick to class me among the irrational
Microsoft bashers. In
fact I am keenly interested in seeing Microsoft create
a browser which adheres to Web standards. I want to
see this because I believe that to a significant extent
it is the character of our new information-based civilization
which is at stake. I also happen to believe that we will
sell many more of our 'Zillas if the technology we use
is also supported by Microsoft and by other browser
vendors. Finally, I think that the vendors can be
persuaded that it is in their interest to support
web standards if consistent pressure is applied to
them from the marketplace and from those people who
are the catalysts for new technological developments.
Today there is one and only one W3C Recommendation for the
formatting of XML documents on the Web, CSS. Today there is
one and only one W3C Recommendation for transformation and manipulation
of XML documents, DOM. This year we could have had semantic
markup on the web, in the major browsers, with support for XML 1.0,
CSS and the DOM. This did not happen and I am sorry to say
that XSL advocates that did not clearly articulate their
support for current Web Recommendations contributed heavily
to that state of affairs.
I think it is clear to all that the early implementation
of XSL by Microsoft was a disaster. As predicted,
the next version of the W3C XSL draft created two XSLs, the
W3C's and Microsoft's. But more important than this is the
fact that XSL has been a major marketing coup for Microsoft
in enabling them to "hide" their deficient implementations of
web Recommendations and to force the entire marketplace to
postpone XML implementations for another couple of years while
we wait for common standards that work in the all the major
vendor's products.
The corrective action at this point is to do what we
as a community should have done six months ago,
to insist on full implementation of CSS, the DOM, and XML.
If we clearly articulate this message now we may have XML
on the Web in one year instead of two. If we wait for XSL
to either flop or succeed it will definitely be two and if
it does flop perhaps it will be three. There are also
issues far more basic and critical than XSL which the W3C should
be addressing with greater attention and priority. These
include linking, row and column spanning in CSS-specified
XML tables, and inclusion of scripts in XML files possibly
followed by query and schema issues. Our
first order of business is to create a workable and standard
XML environment for the Web. XSL, a standard designed to
improve the layout composition of printed documents, should
not be in our first order of business.
The second part of this article consists of a comparison of the well-known
Microsoft stock-sorting XSL and an enhanced application which uses the DOM and
CSS instead of XSL.
