IDE for XSLT stylesheets

Question

What is the best IDE for creating and debugging complex XSLT stylesheets?

For debugging, the ability to set breakpoints and step through the source would be great.

I am interested in all options both commercial and free.

Answer 1

Editors worth checking out:

• Visual Studio
• Altova's StyleVision/XMLSpy
• Oxygen
• StylusStudio

All have their specific advantages, so just check them out. If you already have Visual Studio, I'd suggest you just getting started with this one.

Answer 2

I use Visual Studio. It lets you set breakpoints (conditional or otherwise) and establish watches on whatever XPath expression you can come up with. It also supports XSLT right out the box and colours it differently than regular XML so developing in it is very easy.

Answer 3

My recommendation is XMLSpy, but isn't free - http://www.altova.com/products/xmlspy/xmlspy.html

If you looking for free, you can try NetBeans - http://www.netbeans.org/

Answer 4

I got a recommendation from someone here for Altova XMLSpy, and it was pretty nice for the few days I used it.