World of WarCraft website build with XML+XSLT - not from HTML

The World of WarCraft web site is using Modern Web techniques.


Rather than trying to build the website by directly using HTML, which after all, is interpreted differently by every version of every browser - its designers have built it using XML.

The XML, in turn, is processed by a client-side XSLT stylesheet.

The result of that is HTML.

As an example, here is the XSLT stylesheet for the WoW encyclopedia pages. It handles the layout and processes special shorthand elements for things like flash and so forth.

If you want to see it in action, go visit the The WarCraft Enyclopedia.

The site works just fine in popular web browsers. I just tried it out on Firefox and Safari. I have a hunch it works on Internet Explorer too.

If the creators of the site need to work around some quirk in some particular browser, they just have to change their XSLT template.

They do not have to change every single page of their encyclopedia!

They also did not have to make up their own funky markup or markdown language, macros, or zany DHTML library written in JavaScript to do it.