As a last enhancement to our page let s add a special offer to platinum level members. This means to have an else statement requires two ifs. The first one saying if condition and the second one saying if not condition. Obviously there will be cases where greater flexibility is required, but the advantage of this technique is that only then, does the developer need to learn those constructs. As a further benefit, this technique minimized the interdependence of one XLST construct on another.
Local changes stay local thereby reducing the brittleness of solutions.
The developer also no longer has to remember and account for XSLT s default behaviors. I hope from these few examples, I have opened a few eyes to the power of XSLT and how a small change in how XSLT is framed can make a huge difference in its understandability and accessibility to web developers. If nothing else, I hope to encourage some good discussions.