I've just installed songbird: it has a fantastic user interface. Then, I've read it's made with XUL, the core of Mozilla Firefox.
Ok, but I don't understand: Songbird is a desktop interface behind a web interface? And What is XUL? A library?
What can I do with XUL? Desktop application GUI/interface like Web application (HTML+JS+...)?
XUL is a markup language designed to describe user interfaces(in many ways similar to XAML). Like you mentioned, XUL is what Firefox is made of(along with JavaScript).
XUL is used for desktop applications(usage of XUL for web applications is likely to be discontinued in Firefox 4). The fact that Songbird is made of XUL doesn't change the fact that it is a desktop application.
Although XUL may look similar to HTML in some ways(both can use JavaScript), the two are not the same. XUL is mostly for desktop applications. HTML is mostly for web applications.
XUL is not "native code". To run XUL applications, you need a "XUL runner".
With enough programming knowledge, what you "can do with XUL" is create applications. It's that simple.
In addition to luiscubal's answer:
Here's an overview of XUL benefits: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/The_Joy_of_XUL (a bit dated)
Here's a list of applications that use XUL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner_Hall_of_Fame
Related
How can I develop an installable desktop application on top of the Mozilla Engine or the Webkit engine.
We want to have best of both worlds, ease of development with DOM+Javascript+RenderingEngine+ContinuedImprovements in a Browser and user's control as in a desktop app
I looked at using C++ XPCOM for Mozilla but it seems to be quite complicated, Is there any other way to code like a WebApp using Javascript but burn it into the browser and dress it to give a feel of a desktop app. Also I require that javascript is compiled into native so that one cannot sneak into the source code
Are there any examples of desktop applications done this way ?
Web apps are fine but there are concerns of piracy, privacy, security and version control. The moot point is that in a web app the control lies with the software vendor, moreover the data is also with the vendor. Not only these, any changes to the application may also necessitate another around of training. What we want is that once the customer buys a version he is sure of what he owns and that he is in total control of it and we as software developer do not exposed our source code.
The issue is we have expertise in Web App development and we want to utilize that to develop a Desktop App
Your last point is that :
The issue is we have expertise in Web App development and we want to utilize that to develop a Desktop App
Well then BowLine can be an option though it requires Ruby, so you need to consider that. You can also take a look at WebKitDotNet if you are with .net Background.
Use XUL for the user interface and code your functions using JavaScript. You problably only need C++ to expose native functionality not yet available in Gecko. Examples of software that works this way: Komodo IDE, Songbird, Firefox and Thunderbird.
I am looking for some start up guidelines to share their experience on XUL development in web application. How good is the option to develop the interface in XUL ?. Can IE understand XUL interface?. I have started reading about XUL and I am liked confused a lot.
Please share your development experience on XUL development.
Thanks
XUL is a Mozilla-only technology meaning that it will only work in Firefox and other browsers based on the Gecko engine. I have bad news for you though: Firefox 4 (meaning Gecko 2.0) disabled support for remote XUL for security reasons, so using it in web applications will no longer be possible. It was arguably a bad idea in the first place.
Take a look into Ample SDK UI Framework, XUL (see examples) is just one of the several XML-based technologies it enables across all browsers, also in IE6.
The ZK web framework (www.zkoss.org) is based on XUL. Actually the web pages you built, using this framework, have the extension ZUL. It produces html + ajax code capable to run in all modern browsers. We are using it in my company for two years now and i have to say it changed my view about XUL.
I have a project that will involve heavy automation of complicated web pages.
I realize there are Mechanize and Beautiful Soup, but don't these break when dealing with large amounts of DOM scripting and other weird stuff you find on complicated web pages?
I think I want essentially a barebones running instance of WebKit that allows me to either do "GUI scripting" or access the DOM. Ideas?
Try Sahi with PhantomJS. Sahi is a browser automation tool, and PhantomJS is a headless Webkit browser. You can find set-up instructions here: http://sahi.co.in/w/sahi-headless-execution-with-phantomjs
Disclaimer: We created the Sahi product.
What platform are you working on? And what language do you intend to use?
Adobe Air let's you embed a webkit inside an Air application and interact with the page JavaScript (there is two-way communication between the page JS and the AIR runtime).
Otherwise, if you are not bound to webkit you could take Mozilla Chromeless for a spin.
My apologies if none of this does what you need to do, I can't quite figure what exactly you are trying to do (page scraping? submitting forms?).
For testing/scraping i would try:
Selenium
EnvJS
Windmill
Watir
Sahi
WebTest
I spoke to the boss of a major music software company a few years ago. He told me that if they were going to start again from the ground up, they might look at WebKit for their UI. This totally surprised me. But I'm wondering if other folks are thinking and acting this way. Is webkit working its way in to truly non-web software?
RealPlayer, iTunes, and many other applications are using it, so are some non-"web" apps such as desktop widget programs:
http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Applications%20using%20WebKit
Designing "web-apps" with HTML/Webkit UI is beneficial for Mobile users, since many devices have Webkit built in. Even if it is currently only used on a PC, you would have the possibility of hosting it on the web or local network later, with less work to convert it.
Gwibber, a Gnome twitter client that ships with Ubuntu, uses WebKit for displaying timelines (although it uses normal GTK+ widgets for the surrounding UI).
I would consider WebKit a viable option for many pieces of UI, particularly if the program shell exposes appropriate hooks into the surrounding platform to do things like launch a real browser or hook in to system notifications. You run the serious risk, however, of building an application that doesn't fit well in the UI conventions of the user's operating system.
It's not WebKit, but building a UI on a rendering engine is essentially what Mozilla does - Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. are built in XUL rendered with Gecko.
Anything you can do on webkit can be wrapped as an application easily with PhoneGap or other tools.
For example, store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com could be wrapped as an OSX app, an Android app, and still act as a regular website very easily.
Also: https://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/source_webkit.shtml
I am writing a desktop app in VB.Net, and I'd like to include a web browser control to automate certain functions the user might have to perform in the browser. I have to render the page so I do not want to use the webrequest to make direct calls. When I publish the app, do I have to be concerned with which version of Internet Explorer the user has on their machine? Are their any third party, freely available, stable web browser controls available for VB.Net that people are using?
You could always ignore the whole IE issue and use the Mozilla engine embedded in your app:
geckofx
"An open-source component for
embedding Mozilla Gecko (Firefox) in
.NET applications."
http://code.google.com/p/geckofx/
Several versions of Visual Studio support web browser controls. Here is an article on how to implement one.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.webbrowser.aspx
The web browser control will work with different versions of Internet Explorer, but will be limited to the functionality supported by that version of Internet Explorer.
The article is based on Visual Studio 2008, but in the right corner of the article there are links, on how to use the web browser control, to earlier versions of Visual Studio.
If you embed the Webbrowser control in your application, what you're really doing is embedding a COM object. At runtime, your app will CoCreateInstance() the Webbrowser control, which will load it out of the version of SHDOCVW.DLL or IEFRAME.DLL that is currently on the machine. So, in plain English, you'll be getting the IE6, IE7 or IE8 Webbrowser control, depending on what is installed on the machine.
The practical differences, however, are minimal since the interfaces were published a long time ago and haven't changed over those versions. Differences in terms of different commands that some interfaces (such as IOleCommandTarget) support are abstracted away by the managed layer anyway, so you don't have to worry about that. The biggest difference will be rendering differences, since there is a huge delta in CSS conformance between IE6 and IE8. You'll have to test the various versions using Microsoft's app compat VHDs.
When I worked on the IE team application compatability wrt the Webbrowser control was a huge deal; the team works very hard to make sure that behavior doesn't regress for precisely this scenario—the custom enterprise VB app hosting the WebOC.
Though if you decide to go with an open-source solution to distribute with your app, may I suggest WebKit? Its layout engine is very good and the source code is pretty well maintained and easy to read, though you'll have to write your own managed hosting layer. The Gecko code is much harder to read and debug.