Author just has never done anything serious. I fully agree with Cynic comment above — XSLT is a way to go.

I have experience, where switching from JavaScript processing of XML DOM to XSLT boost performance in 300-400 times.

This was (is) kind of a virtual table, where chunks of records were loaded on demand via Microsoft.XmlHttp (we didn’t know that someone calls this Ajax one day ;) . Size of chunk was not less then “view port” size but in reality it was 2-3 times larger: we pre-cached 2 regions right above and below currently visible region, so small scroll deltas did not cause content loading in most typical cases.

Original JavaScript solution yields terrible user experience: when table control was expanded to whole browser window (large view port size, approx 300 records -> 900 records to process) and user scrolls in list with mouse, she gets frozen screen for 2-3 seconds. XSLT approach reduces this time down to 50-70 ms.

Besides performance improvements, we get natural separation of content and presentation, so later when we apply “skins” process went smoothly — small changes was possible with CSS, complex one (it was developed for IE after all, so there were things impossible with CSS ;) was done with different XSLT template + CSS.

Valery

Blasphemy…:-)
He doesn’t mention XSL at all.