Safari Guide
If you are using Safari web browser on the Mac, there is a handy little utility that works with it and lets you put your XSLT chops to some practical use.
The program is called Safari Guide. You run it alongside the version of the Safari web browser that comes with Mac OS X 10.4.
Safari Guide author Todd Ditchendorf:
Sometimes it is a bit of a pain. This program could make it a little less work to do, since you can test things interactively - and come back and test them that way a few weeks later to make sure they still work. Or tinker with the XSLT enough to create a fix, if you are informed the XSLT you wrote previously no longer works.
I rather suspect that people with the technical skills to use XSLT are using it to create their own ad hoc web page summaries. One indication of this is Firefox 2's capability to do exactly that. The Mozilla organization calls this feature
Microsummaries are basically just binding an XSLT spreadsheet to selected data in a pre-specified collection of web pages. What is kind of cool, is that Firefox helps you create these summaries by selecting portions of the rendered HTML page itself to create them.
There might be some debugging/refining coming into play afterwards. I think the Safari + Safari Guide combination could be a useful way to carry out that debugging/refining.
The program is called Safari Guide. You run it alongside the version of the Safari web browser that comes with Mac OS X 10.4.
Safari Guide author Todd Ditchendorf:
New in version 1.3: XSLT!
* XSLT! -- Now you can also evaluate remote XSLT stylesheets or arbitrary XSLT source code against the frontmost Safari window.
* New in version 1.2: JavaScript support!
JavaScript! -- Now you can also evaluate JavaScript expressions against the frontmost Safari window.
Safari Guide is now a multi-window application... you can have multiple Safari Guide controller windows open simultaneously.
* New in version 1.1:XQuerysupport!
Using Safari Guide is easy...
Open a webpage or XML document in a Safari browser window.
Launch Safari Guide and type an XPath expression into the XPath text field, or an XQuery into the XQuery text area.
Click 'Evaluate' and watch the matching sequence of nodes matching your expression from the front Safari window appear.
Screen scrapingis pretty popular. If not among programmers that have to do it, at least among those who tell them what to do.
Sometimes it is a bit of a pain. This program could make it a little less work to do, since you can test things interactively - and come back and test them that way a few weeks later to make sure they still work. Or tinker with the XSLT enough to create a fix, if you are informed the XSLT you wrote previously no longer works.
I rather suspect that people with the technical skills to use XSLT are using it to create their own ad hoc web page summaries. One indication of this is Firefox 2's capability to do exactly that. The Mozilla organization calls this feature
Microsummaries.
Microsummaries are basically just binding an XSLT spreadsheet to selected data in a pre-specified collection of web pages. What is kind of cool, is that Firefox helps you create these summaries by selecting portions of the rendered HTML page itself to create them.
There might be some debugging/refining coming into play afterwards. I think the Safari + Safari Guide combination could be a useful way to carry out that debugging/refining.
posted by John Collins at 11:31 AM
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