Java and XSLT

Web Browser Support for XSLT

In a web application environment, performing XSLT transformations on the client instead of the server is valuable for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it reduces the workload on the server machine, allowing a greater number of clients to be served. Once a stylesheet is downloaded to the client, subsequent requests will presumably use a cached copy, therefore only the raw XML data will need to be transmitted with each request. This has the potential to greatly reduce bandwidth requirements.

Even more interesting tricks are possible when JavaScript is introduced into the equation. You can programmatically modify either the XML data or the XSLT stylesheet on the client side, reapply the stylesheet, and see the results immediately without requesting a new document from the server.

Microsoft introduced XSLT support into Version 5.0 of Internet Explorer, but the XSLT specification was not finalized at the time. Unfortunately, significant changes were made to XSLT before it was finally promoted to a W3C Recommendation, but IE had already shipped using the older version of the specification. Although Microsoft has done a good job updating its MSXML parser with full support for the final XSLT Recommendation, millions of users will probably stick to IE 5.0 or 5.5 for quite some time, making it very difficult to perform portable XSLT transformations on the client. For IE 5.0 or 5.5 users, the MSXML parser is available as a separate download from Microsoft. ...