Why to use XUL.
from http://www.infodraft.com/~faser/mab/:
[...] I find myself spending a lot of time designing the interface to reproduce the most basic widgets. Things like resizing the columns width of a data grid, make the application usable with the keyboard, scrolling result list with arrow keys, creating tab panels and so on, are not a so simple task in web development. I have to write or find somewhere a lot of javascript library and I waste my time in designing the basic interface when I want to focus on the business logic. I think web applications (that are a different things from public web site) should have a powerful user interface similar to the ones on desktop programs.
That's it. Using a HTML browser to implement a GUI for an application is like implementing a GUI using only a simple grafics library as its base.
But if this is true however, the whole "portal server hype" powered by IBM, SAP and others must be reviewed. Also the "iNotes concept" (HTML based mail frontend from IBM) and other tries to use a HTML browser as a frontend to complex backend software is probably a step back to the "terminal area".
XUL have almost all widgets. You can customize them using simple CSS or the GUI inherit the browser theme. I remind you that Mozilla is not just a browser, but a complete framework for building cross-platform applications. A big part of Mozilla is made with the same technology you can use in web applications: Javascript, CSS, XUL.
Why not building a portal server based on XUL? I used the portal server from Innovation Gate to try to build up XUP portal pages instead of HTML portal pages. Here is the result:
The HTML Portal Page (some month work)
The XUL Portal Page (one day work)
Both portal pages access the same (Lotus Domino) backend data. The XUL page however supports
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resizable and sortable view columns
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toolbars
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keyboard (press cursor down and then enter ...)
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drag & drop
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...
How can any user in the world live with that poor HTML userinterfaces?
In one of the next posts I will go into a deeper discussion how to build a XUL portal server and why IBM will fail with their Lotus Workpace Strategy (based on HTML and the WebSphere portal server).
But first I have to go skiing in the alps next week.
In the meantime you are wellcome to comment the idea of a XUL Portal Server ...
comment from Wolfgang Schmidetzki Sonntag, März 20, 2005 12:55 AM
References, Tutorials and a very good forum.
Using xulplanet is better than to use any book.
Sharing the source? This prototype of a XUL-Portalserver is based on the portalserver Webgate Anywhere from Innovation Gate. Therefore the sources does only run on that server.
comment from Stephan H. Wissel Sonntag, März 20, 2005 12:55 AM
cool idea. Would you share the source?
What would you recommend to learn about XUL development (boosk, tutorials, samples, URLs)?
Thx
:-) stw
comment from Stefan Tilkov Sonntag, März 20, 2005 12:55 AM