Jake@Nitobi

Safari 3 has a Javascript interface to the browser’s XSLT processor. Adobe AIR, like Safari, is built on the WebKit engine. Unlike Safari, there is no scripting interface to XSLTProcessor - scratch that, there is no XSLT processor period. That means that any standards-loving developers out there who code their pages in XML with embedded stylesheets (using <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl"?> processing directives) are hosed. It also means that RIA developers can’t make use of a wicked fast template processor in our apps.

To paraphrase a great man: that’s the power AIR developers don’t have. It’s power web developers have, which means it’s power AIR’s direct competitors Google Gears and Dojo Offline provide, but if you’re developing on AIR, you’re giving up that option. AIR has some unbelievable features. I want to drag and drop files from my desktop to my web app. I want to run my web app chromeless, and seamlessly within the host OS. But I need XSLT support or it’s going to be half-baked.

The only way AIR will get traction is by delivering more than the browsers. As it stands I’m looking at the only current-version browser renderer not to support XSLT. The XSLTProcessor code from WebKit is sitting in the AIR perforce repo, so there is some chance that 1.0 will ship with a working XSLT implementation. Adobe, consider this one vote in favour.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.