new BlogCommentContext("Aaron Powell");

Anon

Anon — 2009-11-12 18:22:32Z

Thanks. I was having exactly the same problem.

Dan Diplo

Dan Diplo — 2009-11-09 21:19:50Z

LinqToUmbraco sounds awesome. But if the new implementation works directly off the XML cache (umbraco.config) then will there be any way of accessing unpublished nodes, or previous versions of a node? Also, does LinqToUmbraco work with media library?

Dan Diplo

Dan Diplo — 2009-11-07 03:14:48Z

Having watched some of your screencasts I'm very excited by LinqToUmbraco. XSLT has it's uses, and is OK for simple output, but it's weakly typed, verbose and lacks the ability to actual process data. The fact is, it's not a programming language and lacks even the most basic of functions (such as re-assigning variables or string manipulation) - hence the need for extension methods. People who think XSLT is somehow simpler than LINQ are probably so used to the eccentricities of XSLT that they have forgotten what an obtuse and ugly language it can be! There are things XSLT does well, but there are many things it simply never can do, or requires jumping through hoops to achieve.

I think the combination of the power of LINQ with strongly-typed collections and objects would make Umbraco amazing. In fact, if you swapped user-controls for MVC views and LINQ was used for the models then Umbraco could be the ultimate CMS. Keep up the good work, Aaron, and don't let the luddies put you off - LinqToUmbraco is the future!

Warren Buckley

Warren Buckley — 2009-11-06 20:28:58Z

Hello Aaron ok finally got round to writing you a reply to this. All your reasons are valid but the main difference between you and me is that your a proper developer and fully into .NET coding as opposed to me where I am front end developer. I was solely working with XHTML,CSS & JS at one point a few years ago, but my job evolved and I needed to find a CMS to use that was FREE and somethign that could be run on the M$ platform due to the works servers. So I came across Umbraco and was forced more into becoming a developer. So I had to learn XSLT and .NET quickly. As someone coming from a frontend dev point of view XSLT was alot easier to pickup and understand than .NET coding was (and to the day it still baffles me, I can do some coding with it but I will never be AMAZING code) and that is the main reason why I preffer XSLT over .NET or LINQ. I may over time have a dabble with Linq but at the minute i'll carry on putting on my comfy slippers and stick with XSLT :) Warren

Jais Edelmann

Jais Edelmann — 2009-11-06 00:38:34Z

Hate XSLT love LINQ :)

Petr Šnobelt

Petr Šnobelt — 2009-11-05 21:49:25Z

Hi AAron, I think using XSLT as viewengine in mvc is OK, there are no benefits using c# as viewengine in Umbraco today, maybe after L2U will be RTM and umbraco support actionHelpers... I v3 it will be much easier/faster to use XSLT, then write usercontrol, in V4 is easy to put c# code directly into templates, but you still miss compile time checking, strong typing and reusability. About API design - I agree with you, it's nice to have great API model, but in current umbraco, there is nothing like viewmodel -> it's not about XSLT, it's about umbraco BTW: I like XSLT and c#, both samples are easy readable but you miss / in your xslt example :-) @Matt: You don't need asp.net form on most pages in mvc style, and if you don't use servercontrols (and in xslt you can't) you have no problem with screen readers, its easy write view in both xslt and C# with same results

Chad

Chad — 2009-11-05 15:07:23Z

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that prefers XSLT over a linq/lambda solution... you guys just need to find a way to plumb this all in so that macros can be written with linq so we no longer have to resort to using external controls :)

Matt Perry

Matt Perry — 2009-11-05 05:30:00Z

I can see your point in certain circumstances but I do feel both have a future. XSLT's produce far superior output with no work-arounds and are semantically correct if done properly but also accessible. Wrapping a whole page inside a single form tag might produce valid code but makes it very difficult for people using screen readers to know what is a feedback form and what is someone using web forms.

I personally find the XSLT example far easier to understand than the Linq example but I'm certainly glad Linq2Umbraco is around and bringing more developers to Umbraco.

Jason

Jason — 2009-11-05 05:18:35Z

I'm super excited for LINQ and MVC, but I also like XSLT for simple read-only tasks. ASP.NET can make great markup. But they don't always make it easy. Plus, when you're talking 15 minutes with XSLT its hard to beat that with a User Control.

Ricky Beard

Ricky Beard — 2009-11-05 01:32:40Z

You make some great points here. I first ran into XSLT while building a site using AspDotNetStorefont and I hated it. However, I have really enjoyed the implementation of it in Umbraco. With the addition of the XSLT visualizer, it has become a very powerful tool for developers who do not want to rely on user controls at all for complex functionality (there are a surprising number of devs like this).

With that said, I am looking forward to Umbraco 5 mainly because of the MVC foundation it will bring. I think that both XSLT and MVC/LINQ will each have their place and I will most likely use both.

kipusoep

kipusoep — 2009-11-05 00:22:11Z

Take a look at your comment-encoding/decoding ;-)

Stefan Kip

Stefan Kip — 2009-11-05 00:21:38Z

I agree with you on most topics, but it's far more easier to just write a quick XSLT for some common tasks, than to write a usercontrol or whatever.
Like outputting a menu, or breadcrumb, or just display some document properties...

Daniel

Daniel — 2009-11-03 10:08:49Z

Sitecore do have a few features that Umbraco could do well to learn from. They support different layouts for alternate rendering targets, such as mobile devices, without the need to do any JS trickery as per the Umbraco iPhone template. The multi-language support in Sitecore is also way ahead of Umbraco's setup, in my opinion. I think that even N2CMS is better than Umbraco in this area. There are other cool things in Sitecore that could be made into packages for Umbraco, such as the ability to create RSS feeds through the UI and customise the content that's published through them, instead of having to create them all through XSLT. The media management in Sitecore is more refined also. You can select multiple items and delete them, for example. I think that Umbraco's backend interface is better though, even without the new tree JS before 4.1. It doesn't kill your browser as often as Sitecore's admin UI does, and the functionality is the same in all browsers. I don't see the point of MS Word editing in Sitecore if you can only edit the content that is contained within RTE fields. Doesn't Sitecore's equivalent of Umbraco Canvas offer the same? I think MetaWeblog API support in Sitecore would be more useful. Looking forward to Umbraco 5, as that's going to be a clean-slate redesign isn't it? Hopefully some of these things will be addressed in that version.

Soeren Sprogoe

Soeren Sprogoe — 2009-11-03 07:27:47Z

Very nice writeup Aaron! Heh, some of those features also make me go "But why?" :-) It is always nice to hear the views on other CMS' from someone who understands Umbraco. I myself am always wondering if Umbraco is just that great, or if I've just been working with it for too long and ignoring all the other systems :-)

Ricky Beard

Ricky Beard — 2009-11-03 01:10:54Z

I am not real familiar with Sitecore, but MS Word editing has always made me cringe and will never be a selling point for me. I would take a look at the product, but their "Instant Demo" turns into "Schedule a Demo" as soon as you click the button!

Daniel

Daniel — 2009-11-02 14:26:29Z

Their mouse mats would probably make your mouse crash.... I'll pass.

Petr Snobelt

Petr Snobelt — 2009-10-26 21:30:59Z

Hi, download is really slow (max 10KB/Sec) :-( Maybe Niels can put it to umbraco Wiki?

Dominic Pettifer

Dominic Pettifer — 2009-10-26 20:06:22Z

Awesome work! I've been waiting for something like this as I secretly despise XSLT and hate having a 'program' in it. I would rather program in something like C# an actual programming language.

I know that XSLT is suppose to be elegant in that you can easily transform one XML format to another, this fits umbraco well as you're basically working against data in one xml format (Umbraco's cached XML data file) and eventually outputting in another XML format (XHTML). And don't get me wrong, XSLT + XPath does this really well. The trouble is that in real world applications its rarely as simple transforming from one XML format to another, normally there are complex business rules and display logic that has to get embedded into the XSLT so you effectively start using XSLT as a programming language, which it's not meant to do. As an exmaple take trying to render paging in XSLT, you have to get th 'first' and 'last' CSS classes into the

's as well as the 'odd/even' and make sure the current selected page is rendered different, as well as the code to work out the paging data, this clutters up the XSLT. We have XSLT files at work that are 2000+ lines long, madness!

I realise the solution is to refactor your business rules into carefully crafted C# classes and have the XSLT call C# code that serves nicely pre-formatting XML, but then you have a bunch of C# classes to support your XSLT, so the benefits of XSLT being a quick way to get Umbraco data onto the page are lost.

/Rant over!

Remco Harmsen

Remco Harmsen — 2009-10-22 05:08:23Z

The best work is always done in the last few hours of a release. Tomorrow we'll be demo-ing the 4.1 release, since we're eager to see the tree thingy you've made! Thanks for the great work you guys have done!

We'll be testing it the next few weeks, hopefully no big issues! Regards, Remco

Aaron Powell

Aaron Powell — 2009-10-20 22:28:16Z

Yeah i think i might do something like that, would be a good idea as I think I'm still having email problems :P