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Mozilla

XUL Runner

I wanted to comment on this the day I got back from vacation, but have been busy.

Way to cool! I can’t wait to get a chance to play with this.

I’m hoping a few things happen when this step is done:

  • Simple IDE – And I really do mean simple. Start with Composer/NVU as a base (since they rock). What both Composer and this IDE would need is color syntax editing (already in the works), and autocomplete. Additionally a XUL WYSIWYG editor would be great, but that could come later on. IIRC people are talking about a WYSIWYG editor already. The most important thing is good JS, and XUL editor. This could be repurposed for composer anyway, since many authors would like to edit code with ease, XUL is XML, which would be good for XHTML editing as well. JS is used on both web development and mozilla development.
  • Ability to ‘compile’ – By this I mean we should have a tool that essentially contains a stripped down FireFox. When you ‘compile’ you then create the equivilant of the browser.jar file. And put everything together Leaving you with a simple release ready build, with an executable, and necessary libraries. Ideally this tool would come with binaries for a few OS’s (Windows, Linux, Mac), so a simple checkbox on the compile dialog would allow you to build your product for all operating systems (take that .net). This tool ideally would be part of the larger IDE.

With the above, the Mozilla platform would really be ready for developers. Part 1 would minimize the learning curve, by helping you code. Part 2 would help you put together really nice packages (for multiple platforms). The great thing about the ‘compile’ feature would be that you can develop for more than 1 platform with ease on your platform of choice.

Just my $0.02

1 reply on “XUL Runner”

Hi

I don’t think we need an IDE. Wouldn’t it be simpler to develop a set of plugins for Eclipse?

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