Google Is Killing XSLT, and One Developer Built a Site That Will Die With It
Death Comes for XSLT
Google is removing XSLT support from Chrome, with a planned execution date of November 17, 2026. The author, who built the XSLT.RIP protest site entirely in XSLT, argues this breaks the web's long-standing social contract of backward compatibility. Some Chromium-based browsers are even injecting warning banners into XSLT pages. The author calls the move arrogant and intrusive, noting that the site itself will stop working once the feature is gone.
“contact the maintainer of the site” — you broke the web Google, own it at least.
- kenferry
Seems rather absolutist. XSLT was an idea that sounded good, but in practice was quite awkward (like many xml technologies) and never got off the ground. Do we really need to hang every failed experiment around browser vendors' necks forever? I would prefer they work on things people care about.
From one of the issue trackers:
"While it's important to not break existing web content, it's also important to prevent security vulnerabilities. XSLT has been in maintenance mode in browsers and has been an ongoing source of security issues."
- IFC_LLC
I remember when in 2006 I updated my personal website to work via XML/XSLT. Opera at the time had no support for this so only Firefox users were able to use it in full. This was my only experiment with XSLT.
I've moved to HTML and never thought of the technology since. At times I was forced to use XML cause I was a .NET 2.0/3.5 junkie, but I remember how later MS switched to JSON in .NET Core and all.
Never used XML since. And Markdown has since become a gold standard for my personal documents. I'd rather work with the strict limits of MD than spend time trying to support endless variety of things in XML.
I would honestly ask your help to enlighten me on the necessity of XSLT. I'm totally willing to be wrong here. Can someone explain me how it is used?
- nayuki
I used to use FTP in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox about 15 to 30 years ago. It was convenient at the time. FTP was unceremoniously killed in mainstream browsers too. You can still use it through other software and raw libraries. Later, I read the protocol specification and realized it is badly designed - though at least simple and concise compared to the sprawling number of features in HTTP.
- telebub
I find this whole removal idea a bit lazy.
In theory some logic possibly declares some
aspects of the BOM/DOM must be JS for introspection
reasons, etc, but the reverse can't really be true..
There's nothing that can declare things like XSLT
must be more native than a little trick with a
otherwise standard JS VM, so the unique security
edges of delegating things to a second class
backwards support level could be quite small.
- sheepscreek
I have good memories of using XSLT. It was a neat idea at the time.
I suppose the world has nearly moved away from XML (for browsers, not yet for folks still enjoying SOAP APIs). And as a result, XSLT has fallen into obscurity.