Tutorial: Customizing the User Interface Using XSL

This tutorial discusses how major interface changes can be done in XSL, the eXtensible Stylesheet Language, regardless of the version of Watson™ Explorer Engine that you are using. XSL is an XML language based the simple idea of transforming XML into other markup, but can easily perform complex tasks. In addition to the many books published on XSL, there are also excellent online resources such as the tutorials provided by W3Schools. Watson Explorer Engine XSL rendering also supports the EXSLT extensions. These provide more advanced functionality to XSL such as random number generation and string tokenization.

Note: The components that are provided to modify the interface of a Watson Explorer Engine search application are stored in the online Watson Explorer Engine repository, and can easily be updated or enhanced. For this reason, the components discussed in this section may not exactly match those that you see in the version of Watson Explorer Engine that you are using, though they will provide equivalent functionality.

To proceed with this tutorial, click XSL Components.