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What is it?

XslWebMaker is a web site preprocessor. Specifically, a web site development tool that facilitates your use of XSL (XSLT and XPATH) to transform source XML files into a web site of XHTML pages. It runs on Windows only.

Version

Version: 2.3
Version Date: 08 Mar 2006 12:00

Release Notes:

• Updated XslWebMaker with new xwmToXhtml file. Inline scripts (without a src attribute) are escaped properly with /* <![CDATA[ */

Version: 2.01
Version Date: 08 Mar 2006 12:00

Release Notes:

• Added helpful error message for when your processing instruction can't find the Xsl stylesheet.

Version: 2.0 Version
Version Date: 09 Nov 2005 16:31

Why would you use it?

It eases the maintenance of your web site by allowing you to have a single place to edit repeating text. For example you can have one file for your navigation menu. Changes to the navigation file will get transformed to all the web pages that share that navigation menu.

The transformation takes place on your development computer before uploading the web site. This reduces the load on the web server compared to other techniques, for example when using server side includes.

You can employ all the power of XML and related techniques. For example, allowing the complete separation of data from presentation.

It's free.

Limitations

Non-ASCII characters can't be in source .html files as they don't transform. This includes:

1. Non-Ascii literals, eg the euro symbol.
2. Named Entities, eg €
3. Numeric Character Refences, eg &#x20AC;

Programming and Markup skills used to Make XslWebMaker

As the user of XslWebMaker you don't have to be knowledgeable in these skills.

WSH

Used to process source files, trigger Microsoft's XML Core Services (MSXML), and clean up the output directory.

JScript (JavaScript/ECMAScript)

The programming language used in WSH files.

XML

Source files are in XML. Either pure customised XML or largely XHTML with some XML additions.

XHTML

The resulting output, after the transformation of the XML source files have occured.

XSL (XSLT and XPATH)

The language(s) that define how transformations of XML sources into XHTML should occur.

.BAT

Initiates WSH files, copies supporting web files (eg .jpegs and .css).