Mozilla + XUL = RIA
January 22, 2005Shortly after downloading Firefox, I naturally installed some themes and extensions. Themes change the appearance of Firefox. I personally find the default buttons too cartonish so I use the Smoke theme. But the more impressive feature of Firefox (and its big brother the Mozilla suite) is the extensions, which as the name implies extend the features of Mozilla. WebmailCompose is one of the most useful: when I click on a mailto: link, Mozilla opens up a Compose window from the Webmail account of my choice.
All this was made possible by the XML
User-interface Language (XUL, pronounced zool, rhymes with ‘cool’ –
which it is 
). That got me to thinking that Mozilla could become the
foundation of a new class of applications known as Rich Internet
Applications (RIAs), which use the browser as a universal front-end.
Well, not so universal, because for now it’s limited to Mozilla and
Netscape 6. Still, Mozilla is available on a wide range of platforms
so… A recent post on the PLUG mailing list confirmed as much. You can go straight to the sample application if you prefer to skip reading the post. Programmer types might be interested in these online XUL tutorials.
Previous Comments
Thanks. This is really in some ways an outdated post because of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which is supported in all modern (21st Century?) browsers. Still, XUL should make for some Firefox- or Mozilla-specific applications.
Posted by Daniel Escasa at February 1, 2008, 8:22 amAll comments are moderated. Your comments will not appear here unless approved by the blog owner. Thank you.
That is very cool.
Posted by Bernahrd at February 1, 2008, 7:55 amFlexiebel incredible and spontaneous programmparts to recharge,
One could imagine, by the way through programmparts from a library a situation create customized application.
Because it is so needed.