Certainly, there is overlap between CSS and XSL functionality, since both these technologies are often employed to describe how (X)HTML is to be displayed. Both CSS and XSL can also be used to style XML documents in general – for example, SVG images.
But they also differ in some aspects, one of the salient differences stems from their intended scope – CSS was designed from the outset as styling language to be used for HTML documents, while XSL was designed to style and transform XML documents.
This resulted in the two technologies having significant differences:
This resulted in the two technologies having significant differences:
- CSS is terser, while XSL is verbose.
- CSS keeps contents separated from presentation.
- XLS is more intuitive – becoming proficient at styling and layout with CSS is not easy and takes a long time, and debugging layout issues is notoriously difficult for users with limited experience. XLS provides a more direct and explicit route to the desired outcome.
- XLS has, arguably, better browser support – XSL version 1.0, which contains enough functionality to ensure an adequate level of customization, is supported by all major browsers
- XSL has less cross-browser issues
