Nmap Development mailing list archives
Re: Improving xsl stylesheet
From: Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 18:54:56 -0800
On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 11:29:24PM +0100, Benjamin Erb wrote:
I'll have some free time in the next days so I'd like to improve the stylesheet used for nmap. I already got some ideas what to change and to improve. For instance, I'd like to make the stylesheet work with Transformiix (the current sheet got some problems so I had to disable timestamp conversion on Mozilla-based viewers). Also the stylesheet for printing could have a better layout. And I also want to make the output more efficient. However, there are some general issues I am really note sure about. Should I add more comfortable functions based on JavaScript? Or should I try to do strip anything but plain XHTML code? Should there be an unified simple style for all uses or should it contain (more) special styles for screens, printers, handhelds etc.? Is there anything important missing in the current stylesheet or do you have any suggestions? Once again, I'll stick to the current nmap.dtd shipped with the source of the current release.
Hi Benjamin. I'm glad to hear about your improvement plans for the XSL. It is an important component, which I mentioned quite prominantly in the 4.00 release announcement. Hopefully other people will send their desires, but my suggestions are: o Try to degrade gracefully. Snazzy JavaScript may be helpful, but the fundamentals should still work on non-javascript browsers. o I don't know that there are enough users to warrant a special handheld style. If their handheld doesn't render the converted XHTML properly, they can always use the normal/interactive mode on their handheld until they gain access to a real computer. o I would avoid requiring the availability of special images and the like -- it is nice to have the reports as portable as possible. o It would be nice to fix some of the times used. My Firefox 1.5-rendered version says things like "nmap was initiated at 1138848144", even though Nmap has for a long time had an alternative string element too (start="1138848144" startstr="Wed Feb 1 18:42:24 2006"). o For some reason, my Firefox won't load a remote stylesheet from an XML on the local hard drive. Shrug, maybe this is done for security reasons or maybe it is just my installation. But for whatever reason, I get a blank page when I try to view /tmp/test.xml, which was generated with --webxml. But if I put the same file on my webserver and load it via http, it renders fine. Or if I rerun the scan without --webxml, it renders fine straight from the filesystem. o A optional view mode people could select which would put everything into one big spreadsheet/table, which includies the IP addresses as well as the info currently included in the ports table, would likely be useful. Especially if they could click a column to sort it. But maybe this would be too much of a pain. o Compatability is definitely very important. Most of the features should work on recent versions of Firefox and IE. The basics should (if possible) work on Safari, Opera, Lynx, etc. Anyway, I look forward to your changes! Cheers, Fyodor _______________________________________________ Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev
Current thread:
- Improving xsl stylesheet Benjamin Erb (Feb 01)
- Re: Improving xsl stylesheet Fyodor (Feb 01)
- Re: Improving xsl stylesheet Douglas F. Calvert (Feb 03)
- Re: Improving xsl stylesheet Fyodor (Feb 01)