xsl-website
Dev tools
static site templating
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
4 positive, 13 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 4 critical, out of 21 comments about the project. Thread score +0.02.
Idea: 4 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Declarative, non-JavaScript, no-build way to handle HTML components.
From 1 comment
It's kind of too bad XSLT didn't take off. It is quite complex, until you compare it to the complexity of what now solves this problem (e.g. a build step with React and webpack…
simpaticoder on HN
Objections
XSLT is hard to write and its syntax is awkward.
From 2 comments
I remember admiring the intent of XSLT when it was born. And how difficult it turned out to be to write; using XML framing makes it terse/verbose/arcane, eg. when compared to the…
msylvest on HNWhat's the whole point of bending over backwards to be "JavaScript-free" when the chosen alternative is using something as half-assedly hamstrung and counterintuitively crippled…
DonHopkins on HN
Client-side includes may cause request waterfalls and flicker.
From 1 comment
This works client side right? So when a user navigates to this page, it recursively fetches content from the server? And if you have nested includes it would waterfall? Even…
b_e_n_t_o_n on HN
XSLT security concerns in libxslt led to Google's removal push.
From 2 comments
To be fair, some things should be legitimately considered to be removed from the standard. O.G. XHTML basically mandated that you accept XML logic bombs and we got over that.…
johncolanduoni on HNWhilst I can't be certain, I've been hearing that part of Google's want to move away from XSLT is two-fold - and relates to the idea of the security problem. Partly, there's…
shakna on HN
Questions
Does the browser wait for includes before showing the page?
From 1 comment
This works client side right? So when a user navigates to this page, it recursively fetches content from the server? And if you have nested includes it would waterfall? Even…
b_e_n_t_o_n on HN
Alternatives named
CSS stylesheet rendering of XML
From 1 comment
Since this seems to be about the recent proposal to remove xslt, i'd point out you can do the same thing with CSS https://bawolff.net/css-website/index.xml is Evidlo's example…
bawolff on HN
SGML/XML entities
From 1 comment
This is how the simplest variant of SGML (or XML) entities have worked since 1986: ``` <!doctype html [ <!entity e system "e.html"> ]> <html> <title>Hello, world!</title> <p>The…
tannhaeuser on HN
Server-side PHP XSLTProcessor
From 1 comment
To overcome the two problems here (client side loading the template and ending browser support) you could throw in php in the mix and have a wonderful solution for templating…
ulrischa on HN
Server-side React rendering
From 1 comment
React supports rendering to HTML ahead of time (SSR) which doesn't need any client-side javascript, and this is a prominent feature of most frameworks using React. This feature…
AgentME on HN