Google is killing the open web, part 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#91

Post by ndriscoll » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #86

ndriscoll wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JavaScript is better than XSLT in every way Obviously not in every way. XSLT is declarative and builds pretty naturally off of HTML for someone who doesn't know any programming languages. It gives a very low-effort but fairly high power (especially considering its neglect) on-ramp to templated web pages with no build steps or special server software (e.g. PHP, Ruby) that you need to maintain. It's an extremely natu…

> XSLT is declarative and builds pretty naturally off of HTML for someone who doesn't know any programming languages. Have you ever met a single non-programmer who successfully picked up XSLT of their own volition and used it productively? I'd be willing to bet good money that the Venn diagram of users that fit the intersection of "authoring content for the web", "care about separating content from HTML", "comfortabl…

I was such a non-programmer as a child, yes. At the time that XSLT was new, if you read a book on HTML and making web pages from the library, it would tell you about things like separating content from styles and layout, yes. Things that blew my mind were that you could install Apache on your own computer and your desktop could be a website, or (as I learned many years later) that you could make a server application (or these days now Javascript code) that calls a function based on a requested path instead of paths being 1:1 with files. By contrast, like I said XSLT was just a natural extension of HTML for something that everyone who's written a couple web pages wants to do.

The fact that the web's new owners have decided that making web pages is too marginal a use-case for the Web Platform is my point.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#92

Post by dpark » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

akerl_ wrote: post #54

svieira wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Removing XSLT from browsers was long overdue > Google is willing to remove standards-compliant XML support as well. > They're the same picture. To spell it out, "if it's inconvenient, it goes", is something that the _owner_ does. The culture of the web was "the owners are those who run the web sites, the servants are the software that provides an entry point to the web (read or publish or both)". This kind of "well…

Can you cite where this "servant-oriented" mentality is from? I don't recall a part of the web where browser developers were viewed as not having agency about what code they ship in their software.

It’s utter nonsense. Development of the web has always been advanced by the browser side, as it necessarily must. It’s meaningless for a server/web app to ship a feature that no browser supports.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#93

Post by tiffanyh » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

Isn't Google one of the few (if not only), major tech company that would want to keep alive the open web ... given their business model.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#94

Post by ErroneousBosh » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

dfabulich wrote: post #31

In part 1 of this article, the author wrote, "XSLT is an essential companion to RSS, as it allows the feed itself to be perused in the browser" Actually, you can make an RSS feed user-browsable by using JavaScript instead. You can even run XSLT in JavaScript, which is what Google's polyfill does. I've written thousands of lines of XSLT. JavaScript is better than XSLT in every way, which is why JavaScript has thrived…

> In part 1 of this article, the author wrote, "XSLT is an essential companion to RSS, as it allows the feed itself to be perused in the browser"

Wow. I can see the proposed scrapping of XSLT being a huge problem for all of the seven people who do this.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#95

Post by James_K » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

matthews3 wrote: post #88

James_K wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use XSLT because I want my website to work for users with JavaScript disabled and I want to present my Atom feed link as an HTML document on a statically hosted site without breaking standards compliance. Hope this helps.

Could you run XSLT as part of your build process, and serve the generated HTML?

No because then it would not be an Atom feed. Atom is a syndication format, the successor to RSS. I must provide users with a link to a valid Atom XML document, and I want them to see a web page when this link is clicked.

This is why so many people find this objectionable. If you want to have a basic blog, you need some HTML docments and and RSS/Atom feed. The technologies required to do this are HTML for the documents and XSLT to format the feed. Google is now removing one of those technologies, which makes it essentially impossible to serve a truly static website.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#96

Post by ErroneousBosh » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #53

dfabulich wrote: post #31

In part 1 of this article, the author wrote, "XSLT is an essential companion to RSS, as it allows the feed itself to be perused in the browser" Actually, you can make an RSS feed user-browsable by using JavaScript instead. You can even run XSLT in JavaScript, which is what Google's polyfill does. I've written thousands of lines of XSLT. JavaScript is better than XSLT in every way, which is why JavaScript has thrived…

> JavaScript is better than XSLT in every way Obviously not in every way. XSLT is declarative and builds pretty naturally off of HTML for someone who doesn't know any programming languages. It gives a very low-effort but fairly high power (especially considering its neglect) on-ramp to templated web pages with no build steps or special server software (e.g. PHP, Ruby) that you need to maintain. It's an extremely natu…

> not at all approachable for someone who just wants to make a web page

If someone wants to make a web page they need to learn HTML and CSS.

Why would adding a fragile and little-used technology like XSLT help?

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#97

Post by ErroneousBosh » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #91

munificent wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> XSLT is declarative and builds pretty naturally off of HTML for someone who doesn't know any programming languages. Have you ever met a single non-programmer who successfully picked up XSLT of their own volition and used it productively? I'd be willing to bet good money that the Venn diagram of users that fit the intersection of "authoring content for the web", "care about separating content from HTML", "comfortabl…

I was such a non-programmer as a child, yes. At the time that XSLT was new, if you read a book on HTML and making web pages from the library, it would tell you about things like separating content from styles and layout, yes. Things that blew my mind were that you could install Apache on your own computer and your desktop could be a website , or (as I learned many years later) that you could make a server application…

> it would tell you about things like separating content from styles and layout, yes.

That's what CSS does.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#98

Post by bilog » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

matthews3 wrote: post #88

James_K wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use XSLT because I want my website to work for users with JavaScript disabled and I want to present my Atom feed link as an HTML document on a statically hosted site without breaking standards compliance. Hope this helps.

Could you run XSLT as part of your build process, and serve the generated HTML?

XML source + XSLT can be considerably more compact than the resulting transformation, saving on hosting and bandwidth.

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#99

Post by _heimdall » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

nwellnhof wrote: post #20

Removing XSLT from browsers was long overdue and I'm saying that as ex-maintainer of libxslt who probably triggered (not caused) this removal. What's more interesting is that Chromium plans to switch to a Rust-based XML parser. Currently, they seem to favor xml-rs which only implements a subset of XML. So apparently, Google is willing to remove standards-compliant XML support as well. This is a lot more concerning.

Given that you have experience working on libxslt, why do you think they should have removed the spec entirely rather than improving the current implementation or moving towards modern XSLT 3?

Re: Google is killing the open web, part 2

#100

Post by echelon » Mon, Nov 17, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

granzymes wrote: post #34

xmcp123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to see the casual slide of Google towards almost internet explorer 5.1 style behavior, where standards can just be ignored “because market share”. Having flashbacks of “ ”

The standards body is deprecating XSLT with support from Mozilla and Safari (Mozilla first proposed the removal). Not sure how you got from that to “Google is ignoring standards”.

Then standards body is Google and a bunch of companies consuming Google engine code.