Frank.unpets

20after4 — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:25:31 -0500

Facebook users: check out the application that a couple of my friends and I have been working on:

We just released this for public consumption a couple of days ago.

XHTML Applications and XULRunner

20after4 — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:05:16 -0500

As much as I love XUL and the Mozilla platform, I would like to introduce a related topic that I think deserves a little bit of attention. Maybe everyone is aware of this already but I rarely see it mentioned so I would like to devote a few minutes to the topic of XHTML applications in XULRunner. It may not be completely obvious to everyone: XULRunner can do a lot more than XUL. Just about any technology which works on the web will work inside of XULRunner - you can develop applications that utilize HTML, JavaScript, SVG and even Flash (via the Flash Player plugin.) Some developers may feel that XUL is superior HTML for user interface design, however, there are a lot more people who are familiar with HTML and JavaScript.

In my opinion, XUL should not be terribly difficult for any web developer with strong HTML, CSS and JavaScript. On the other hand, it's not exactly easy for new developers to familiarize themselves with all of the terminology and unfamiliar technologies provided by the Mozilla platform. It took me at least 6 months of casual coding and experimentation before I was beginning to be comfortable and productive working with XUL and XPCOM. The situation has improved since I first started coding Firefox extensions a little over one year ago; today the Mozilla Developer Center provides a lot of wonderful information to help newcomers familiarize themselves with the technology and become productive Mozilla developers. Even with great resources like MDC, it seems to me that Mozilla development can still be moderately intimidating for the uninitiated.

There was a point to all of this rambling, I'm sure of it. Oh yeah, XHTML Apps in XULRunner... I think that we should try to do whatever we can to make it very easy for web developers to write applications and deploy them into XULRunner packages. Developing web applications has never been easier than it is in 2007. There are many wonderful JavaScript libraries like jQuery, Prototype, YUI, Dojo and so many more. These tools, combined with HTML and CSS provide a framework for developing wonderfully rich applications. Compared to some other popular development environments, often web applications can be developed with less effort while having a lot more fun in the process.

I am very excited about one recent development that could be very interesting to the masses of web developers out there, though I am unlikely to reach many of said developers with this blog. The recent development that has me excited is called POW and it started as a Firefox extension by David Kellogg.

From the description of POW:

Turn the web on its head with the Plain Old Webserver (POW), which adds a server to your browser. Information and a tutorial for POW can be found at this wiki http://davidkellogg.com/wiki/Main_Page

POW is a very POWerful piece of software. It's a lot more than just a simple http server application. POW harnesses the power of the Mozilla platform in a way that I have never seen done before and it could be a basis for a lot of new and interesting applications. It should be possible to develop almost any small-scale web application using plain old html and javascript and deploy the application in unique ways with the help of POW and XULRunner. POW really blurs the line between client and server, making it possible to things like replacing server technologies such as PHP with "server-side javascript." I could go on and on about the possibilities but I'm not a wonderful writer; I would probably be boring my audience and that is assuming anyone even reads my blog. If you made it this far, I highly recommend that you take a look at POW and start thinking about the implications of this innovative approach to application development. If you love JavaScript as much as I do you should be getting excited about POW and the Mozilla platform in general. Thanks to so many incredible people in this community, It's a great time to be developing applications on Mozilla technology.

webapps

Frank.unpets

XHTML Applications and XULRunner