Death comes for XSLT

Last halloween, Google decided to kill XSLT. That was not a unilateral decision mind you, Google said “jump” and other browser vendors said “how high?”

In response, I published my Intent to Deprecate and Remove Google Chrome. A performative declaration of course, I don’t install spyware.

Fearing my parody lacked seriousness, I created XSLT.RIP to ensure the developer world was informed of Google’s death note. This did the trick, although a few commenters believed it was satire. There is subtly to XSLT.RIP. The website itself is built with XSLT and when Google kills XSLT they’ll kill my website.

The web standards process and its stewards (Big Browser) used to adhere to a social contract. Backwards compatibility was a major design principle. Under no circumstances do you ever purposefully break the web.

Google decided to renege and break the web.

XSLT.RIP will be broken soon and I’ll sit back and watch Google break it. 17 November 2026 appears to be the date of execution. Some Chromium-based browsers have been running a man-in-the-middle attack by injecting propaganda into XSLT websites.

This site uses XSLT; that functionality is being removed from this browser very soon. When that happens, this page will likely no longer display correctly. You might be able to install a browser extension that allows you to continue viewing it. Otherwise, you should contact the maintainer of the site for further information.
Source: This site uses XSLT: what Chrome’s banner means - XSLT Playground

This appears to be an <xslt-warning-banner> custom element that fails to render when it violates content security policy.

Two examples of the XSLT warning banner quoted above. The first is white text on a red background, the second is broken default HTML styles.

I’m testing on ungoogled-chromium so who knows how it’s intended to look.

The line of death is another “social contract” that Google has forgotten. They’re blaming website owners and acting like questionable purveyors of free public Wi-Fi. This is arrogant and intrusive.

“contact the maintainer of the site” — you broke the web Google, own it at least.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky. Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.