Cross-platform, cross-browser XML apps

Firebird Mac running an XSLT app

Let's review what's happening in this screen shot. I'm running Mozilla Firebird on my Mac. The application is a structured search of my OSCOM slides. There's no search engine beyond the browser itself, which provides the JavaScript UI, the XPath-based search, and the XSLT-driven results display.

This app behaves identically in Firebird on Windows and Linux. It also behaves identically in MSIE 6.

One more thing. Although it's not obvious from this screenshot, my AirPort is turned off at the moment. Search still works, since the DOM that was built from the XML content at infoworld.com is hanging around in memory.

Pretty freaking cool. I'll leave as an exercise for the reader the fact that this DOM could have been built from a SOAP call, the mechanism for which is now also commonly available in Mozilla and MSIE.

Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/06/05.html#a713