XML Styling with XSLT

What is this?

Most websites have several .xml files that are used by search engines and other services to index and follow the site.

By default, these files look horrible when a human looks at them in a browser. But there is a simple way to make them look better: add an XSLT line to your XML file!

RSS/Atom Feeds

RSS and Atom news feeds are a great way to get updates from your favorite sites.

Instructions Demo

Sitemaps

Sitemaps (sitemap.xml files) help search engines index your site.

Instructions Demo

Outlines

OPML Outlines are a great way to share the sites in your news feed.

Instructions Demos

How do I use it?

You need to have a XSLT stylesheet along with your .xml file. Download one of the ones above or created your own with the help of the resources linked below.

At the top of your XML file, it will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data-depends-on-type>
...

Add a line in the middle so it looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="my-downloaded-file.xslt"?>
<data-depends-on-type>
...

Gotchas

A couple key points that I learned the hard way:

You must serve the page with the content type text/xml.
The stylesheet must be on the same host as the XML file.

Otherwise various browsers will ignore the stylesheet. See the test page for more details.