Web Work
XML & XSLT
The majority of projects I’ve worked on have a set of designers, a set of developers and a lot of throwing hand grenades between the two. I’ve spent a long time in my career being the man in the middle trying to be the “web builder” who interfaces between the two sides for the good of the product.
XML & XSLT is the language of that conversation.
XML is many things but when used as a human readable database (or database output) it becomes a way of allowing designers to build the finished front end before the back end is even started, with its similarities to XHTML XSLT is a designer friendly way of sharing the work of page layout throughout a development team.
In practical terms this has meant that designers have been able to take control of the look of a finished page personally — moving text, adding elements and so on — while developers have been able to focus resources on creating a back end.
There are drawbacks naturally but I have found in deploying XML & XSLT moves the control of page layout to the designer and gives the developer a chance to better focus on back end work.