Tailoring Content Using XML and XSL

Introduction

The advent of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a dream come true for consumers wanting information at their fingertips. However, it's a nightmare for web site operators. Not only must they maintain multiple sets of web pages for different web browsers, they now have to add a new set of documents to serve WAP users. To make matters worse, different WAP devices support different subsets of the standards.

One way for web site operators to approach the problem is to maintain two main sets of pages: HTML for the web users, and WML for the WAP users. However, this increases redundancy, and would mean maintaining multiple user interfaces for essentially the same content. A better option is to make use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Extensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations (XSLT).