starcraft2.com's source code is really interesting

To a web designer, I mean. I got curious when I saw that their pages all end in ’.xml’. I figured they were just being cheeky, but when I checked, they’re actually throwing XML (not XHTML!) documents at you!

For a page such as http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml, the entirety of the source code is this:

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<?xml-stylesheet type=“text/xsl” href=“/layout/faq.xsl”?>

<page lang=“en_us”>
  <faq/>
</page>

 Then in /layout/faq.xsl, you’ve got stuff like this (just an excerpt):

    <dt><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=‘sc2.faq.basics.q1’]”/></dt>
    <dd><p><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.a1’]”/></p></dd>
    
    <dt><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.q2’]”/></dt>
    <dd><p><xsl:value-of select=“$loc/strs/str[@id=’sc2.faq.basics.a2’]”/></p></dd>

 …which references stuff in /layout/includes.xsl, which references stuff elsewhere… the rabbit hole just keeps going down.

I know some of the basic concepts about XML and XSL, so I can only just begin to understand how it works. It’s really fascinating, though, because I’ve never seen web design like this before.