I am pretty sure that the xml/xslt will not be removed in V5. It is very much part of the foundation of Umbraco, and it is one of the most popular ways to build websites fast. So you should be rather safe taking the course.
Umbraco 4 and 4.5 are both very stable platforms, and will be around for many years, so no reason why you shouldn't get better at working with xslt.
About whether or not you can render content with xslt in version 5, well, the talk has been about if that made sense at all, when building the CMS on the ASP.NET MVC framework (that's what I remember from the talk this summer at CodeGarden 2010), but with that said, I also remember hearing that version 5 will be even more of a framework, where every part of the CMS can be replaced by your own code, so my guess is that if version 5 doesn't come with the option of rendering content with xslt, somebody in the community could probably write what was needed.
As Morten and Steen are saying I really can't imagine XSLT being moved from Umbraco. It's one of the reasons that it has become so popular among people, that do not posses the skills of a .NET developer.
With XSLT and the default extensions provided people who know their way around XSLT can make some pretty fancy websites without having to write .NET code.
Other CMS's are also using XSLT so I think it would be worth it to take courses etc. anyway.
If I remember correctly there will be more options to render your site and XSLT is probably still going to be one of them once v5 is out.
No support for XML in v5
I've heard a rumor that Umbraco are changing the way the content is stored in v5.
I can't see anything to justify this rumor but am a little concerned as I'm about to undertake a course on XSLT to understand Umbraco better.
I don't want to be wasting my money or my time, can anybody point me to a roadmap or something?
Thanks.
I am pretty sure that the xml/xslt will not be removed in V5. It is very much part of the foundation of Umbraco, and it is one of the most popular ways to build websites fast. So you should be rather safe taking the course.
Umbraco 4 and 4.5 are both very stable platforms, and will be around for many years, so no reason why you shouldn't get better at working with xslt.
About whether or not you can render content with xslt in version 5, well, the talk has been about if that made sense at all, when building the CMS on the ASP.NET MVC framework (that's what I remember from the talk this summer at CodeGarden 2010), but with that said, I also remember hearing that version 5 will be even more of a framework, where every part of the CMS can be replaced by your own code, so my guess is that if version 5 doesn't come with the option of rendering content with xslt, somebody in the community could probably write what was needed.
As Morten and Steen are saying I really can't imagine XSLT being moved from Umbraco. It's one of the reasons that it has become so popular among people, that do not posses the skills of a .NET developer.
With XSLT and the default extensions provided people who know their way around XSLT can make some pretty fancy websites without having to write .NET code.
Other CMS's are also using XSLT so I think it would be worth it to take courses etc. anyway.
If I remember correctly there will be more options to render your site and XSLT is probably still going to be one of them once v5 is out.
/Jan
Thank you all for your replies. I'm going for the training...
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