Death Comes for XSLT

The piece argues that Google’s planned removal of XSLT from Chrome breaks the web’s longstanding promise of backward compatibility. The author says Google’s decision, expected to take effect on November 17, 2026, was followed by other browser vendors, turning a change by one company into a broad loss of support. In response to Google’s earlier announcement, the author published a satirical declaration about removing Chrome, then created XSLT.RIP to draw attention to the issue. The site itself is built with XSLT, so the planned removal will stop it from displaying correctly in affected browsers.

The author objects not only to removing the technology but also to browser warnings shown on XSLT sites. These banners tell visitors that the site uses soon-to-be-removed functionality, suggest installing an extension, and direct users to contact the site maintainer. The author describes this behavior as intrusive and as shifting responsibility for the breakage onto website owners, rather than acknowledging that browser makers are causing it. The warnings reportedly appear inconsistently or fail to render properly in some Chromium-based browsers, possibly because of content security policy restrictions. Overall, the piece frames XSLT’s removal as a breach of the web’s social contract: browser vendors should avoid deliberately breaking existing websites and should take responsibility when they do.