Comment by shakna
Comment by shakna 18 hours ago
As of the next version of Chrome, XSLT will be gated behind a flag.
Google have also asked for it to be removed from the standard [0].
Comment by shakna 18 hours ago
As of the next version of Chrome, XSLT will be gated behind a flag.
Google have also asked for it to be removed from the standard [0].
The meeting referenced there, from March not last month, also gives no indication that they'd go ahead and make any moves - "stick a pin in it". But they did anyway. [0]
panos: next item, removing XSLT. There are usage numbers.
stephen: I have concerns. I kept this up to date historically for Chromium, and I don't trust the use counters based on my experience. Total usage might be higher.
dan: even if the data were accurate, not enough zeros for the usage to be low enough.
mason: is XSLT supported officially?
simon: supported
mason: maybe we could just mark it deprecated in the spec, to make the statement that we're not actively working on it.
brian: we could do that on MDN too. This would be the first time we have something baseline widely available that we've marked as removed.
dan: maybe we could offer helpful pointers to alternatives that are better, and why they're better.
panos: maybe a question for olli. But I like brian's suggestion to mark it in all the places.
dan: it won't go far unless developers know what to use instead.
brian: talk about it in those terms also. Would anyone want to come on the podcast and talk about it? I'm guessing people will have objections.
emilio: we have a history of security bugs, etc.
stephen: yeah that was a big deal
mason: yeah we get bugs about it and have to basically ignore them, which sucks
brian: people do use it and some like it
panos: put a pin in it, and talk with olli next time?
panos: next thing is file upload control rendering
[0] https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11146#issuecomment-275...
> But they did anyway.
Did what? The GP asked for a citation for XSLT support going behind a flag in the next version of Chrome, but you forgot to add that. As best as I can tell, the GP is right and you're confused.
Tracking issue: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/435623334
Add flag to disable XSLT: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/68...
It's approved, I don't know which release it will be.
Additionally, quote from the GitHub discussion:
--- start quote ---
Q: why has Chrome already started working on removing the feature from the browser?
A: To explore the effects of removal. It's hard to tell what will break without being able to turn it off and see.
https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11582#issuecomment-320...
--- end quote ---
By “started talking about it this month” I meant this specific advocation for removing it. Yes, it’s been talked about for years, but this time it’s specific.
> brian: we could do that on MDN too. This would be the first time we have something baseline widely available that we've marked as removed.
They were advocating for removing it. And it was specific. And is labelled by the Chromium report you mentioned as the cause.
It wasn't "this month".
It's kind of too bad XSLT didn't take off. It is quite complex, until you compare it to the complexity of what now solves this problem (e.g. a build step with React and webpack and javascript absolutely required on the client-side). As the OP ably demonstrates, XSLT provides a declarative, non-javascript, non-build way to solve the basic HTML component problem. Perhaps a devastating 0-day in V8 will make us really, really want an alternative to the current best practice.
Whilst I can't be certain, I've been hearing that part of Google's want to move away from XSLT is two-fold - and relates to the idea of the security problem.
Partly, there's increasing attacks against XML.
And also, libxml2 has said "no" to security embargoes altogether. [0]
They might well consider there to be 0-days waiting in XSLT.
I think the big difference there is that browsers are only responsible for Javascript, which is a big general purpose solution that solves a lot of problems and not just templating/styling XML. Everything else either happens server-side (build steps and webpack) or is userland code that lives inside the sandbox. So there's one task for browsers to do (make a fast and secure Javascript sandbox), and if that works that developers can do whatever they want. Whereas XSLT is not a general purpose tool in the same way, and so needs to be maintained in addition to Javascript and anything else that exists.
If course XSLT can also be used server-side (which is probably a good idea if you want access to the latest features and not some ancient, frozen version of the spec), but browsers aren't the reason that that didn't take off. My guess there is that it's just not an intuitive way of manipulating and templating data in comparison to more traditional HTML templating libraries.
React supports rendering to HTML ahead of time (SSR) which doesn't need any client-side javascript, and this is a prominent feature of most frameworks using React. This feature of React was one of its major innovations over many other front-end frameworks of the time.
Literally not one person said XSLT can't do it. But in case you missed it somebody did said React can't do it and so XSLT is better.
> build step with React and webpack and javascript absolutely required on the client-side
This was a false statement.
both XSLT and React can be used for this except React can additionally do a bunch of other stuff that does use JS and that XSLT can't do.
Yeah, I think that was what prompted this submission.
All this has also reignited my idea for a compile-to-XSLT templating language, too – maybe I’ll get to it finally this time; definitely if XSLT 3.0 gets into web standards: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11578, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987552
Also, I’ve put together a simple XSLT playgroung a while ago! https://xsltbin.ale.sh/
I haven't tried it yet, but I came across this alternate syntax for XSLT which is much more friendly:
I was thinking it would be possible to compile a subset of Jinja2 (or your favorite equivalent) into XSL: https://chatgpt.com/share/68a95439-ad54-800a-919f-23caecce43...
Thanks for the playground! I'll check it out.
I find it bizarre that Google can just ask for a feature to be removed from standard and nobody bats an eye.
To be fair, some things should be legitimately considered to be removed from the standard. O.G. XHTML basically mandated that you accept XML logic bombs and we got over that.
Also, while this is certainly Google throwing their weight around, I don’t think they are doing it for monetary advantage. I’m not sure how removing XSLT burnishes their ad empire the way things like nerfing ManifestV3 have. I think their stated reasons - that libxslt is a security disaster zone for an obscure 90s-era feature - is earnest even if its not actually in the broader web’s best interests. Now that Safari is publicly on board to go second, I suspect it’s an inevitability.
XML "logic bombs" happens when the parser expand entities eagerly. If a parser does that one can easily assemble an enormous entity that will eat up all the memory. But a more sophisticated parser won't expand entities right away and thus can merely reject oversized ones. It is really a minor issue.
If I understand correctly, Mozilla and Apple don’t really want to support it either. And the reason for that is, the spec is still at XSLT 1.0, which is super old, and current implementations are effectively abandonware. Catch-22?
I believe the spec is at XSLT 3.0 but no browser actually implemented past XSLT 1.0 (not 100% sure - almost nobody cared about this feature last month so hard to find good docs on support). HTML5 and C++ are cut from the same cloth - massive and no reference implementation so full of features that have been “standard” for 10 years but never implemented by anyone.
Yeah, sorry, the XSLT spec is at 3.0 right now of course, but the browsers don’t implement it, and the WHATWG HTML Living Standard only mentions XSLT 1.0.
Browsers only implement XSLT 1
https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2025/08/22/no-google-did-...
It doesn't seem weird at all to me: standard is essentially the consensus of the major browser vendors; a spec which all of Chrome, Safari and Edge don't implement is really just a hypothetical.
The origin story of whatwg is that Apple, Mozilla and Opera decided that W3C wasn't making specs that they wanted to implement, so they created a new working group to make them.
> nobody bats an eye
I’ve seen a lot of eye-batting about this. Although Google, Mozilla and Apple are all in favour of removing it, there’s been a lot of backlash from developers.
Most of whom had never heard of XSLT before today - some were likely born after it had faded into obscurity. I don’t blame people for hating Google for whatever reason, but this is a weird way to try to stick it to them.
XSLT is widely used, for example by the US congress: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/19/xslt/
More likely the people complaining are those who use it. I've been using it as the sane way to template my personal stuff for ~20 years. It works very well for "hand written" sites. I'm also not trying to be a top site or even visible to the wider world; my audience is my friends and family members. So to me it's a clear "that's not an important use case for the web now" signal.
Mozilla asked for removal. Google just filled the paperwork
> As of the next version of Chrome, XSLT will be gated behind a flag.
Citation? That would greatly surprise me in its abruptness and severity (they only just started talking about it this month, and acknowledge it’s particularly risky for enterprise) and https://chromestatus.com/feature/4709671889534976 gives no such indication.