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XML UI Language (XUL) Links

Contents:
Articles

Peter Bojanic; The Joy of XUL (March 2002)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/joy-of-xul.html
Praises XUL's key benefits including: Powerful widget markup (XML, Babe); Builts on proven standards (Reuse, Reuse, Reuse); Platform portability (Runs Anywhere); Splits presentation and application logic (Beyond Hairballs and Spaghetti Code); Easy customization, localization, or branding (Your Way or the Highway)

DevX: Nigel McFarlane; New GUIs: XML Is The Heir Apparent; The future of GUI development isn't class libraries, frameworks or platforms. It's XML (October 2002)
http://www.devx.com/DevX/Article/9605
Are you ready for a GUI technology that doesn't require you to learn a class library? Could XUL be, finally, the simple, cross-platform solution to two decades of GUI programming frustration? To me, there's no other future. It has that comforting old-fashioned buzzword-compliance feel about it: cross-platfrom, human readable, client-server, extensible, integrated. Most of all, it has the beauty of simplicity.

DevX: Nigel McFarlane; XUL Defines New User Interface Options (August 2002)
http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/9312
Because XUL files consist of plain-text XML, XUL avoids the problem of 3GL code tortuously exploiting some low-level library like Win32, Swing or Gtk.

DevX: A. Russell Jones; SWT, XML Put True Cross-platform GUIs Within Reach (October 2002)
http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/9782
Wouldn't you like to be able to design GUIs in a medium that wasn't entirely dependent on a specific development environment or delivery platform - and then be able to activate that GUI from the language of your choice, and have it run in any platform?

DevX: Laurence Moroney (Reuters Innovation Labs, New York); Build Rich, Thin Client Applications Automatically Using XML (July 2003)
http://www.devx.com/xml/Article/16704
There are new products afoot that let you do highly graphical client-side applications without the performance headaches of applets or the security concerns of ActiveX. Find out what these XWT-based technologies can do.

MSDN: Paul DiLascia; .Nyet GUI Bliss: Streamline Your Code And Simplify Localization Using an XML-Based GUI Language Parser (November 2002)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/11/NETGUIBliss/
I knew I wanted something like RC files that would let me express menu and other UI definitions in a separate and therefore more easily translatable file, using some kind of special language. What better language to use than XML? In fact, such a language already exists: XUL ("zool"), the XML Userinterface Language. XUL is a dialect of XML for describing user interfaces. But it's not hard to write a mini-XUL that supports only the widgets you need. XUL - or something like it - is just the ticket to GUI greatness!

Salon: Farhad Manjoo; Mozilla Rising (September 2002)
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/10/browser_wars/
Netscape won't dislodge Internet Exporer from its hegemony over browser space. But its open-source sibling is aiming at even bigger game: Windows; For a piece of software, the Web browser has remained remarkably stagnant during the nine years it's been around; But the way things are going now, whatever new features you want are probably not going to come from Microsoft; Now they say they've been proved right -- I.E. is not changing; Microsoft has no reason to radically change Internet Explorer. The product doesn't make the company any money and it's already overwhelmingly popular.

Sitepoint: Harry Fuecks; Introducing XUL - The Net's Biggest Secret (May 2003)
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1140 | http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1143 | http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1144
Episode I of Harry's XUL article trilogy: In one of the Internet's quieter corners, mozilla.org, a revolution has been taking place. A new XML format, called XUL (eXtensible User Interface Language), pronounced "Zool", is on the way to re-shaping what we know about both the Internet, and desktop applications. A bold claim perhaps -- but once you've finished reading this, you may just find yourself agreeing.

Open Source XUL Project Links

Mozilla Links
http://xul.sourceforge.net/mozilla.html
XUL Granddaddy; runs on Mac OS, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Irix, BeOS, HPUX, OS/2, BSD, and more

Luxor Links
http://xul.sourceforge.net/luxor.html
Luxor XUL toolkit includes web server, portal engine, template engine, scripting interpreter and more; Dual Licensed: GNU General Public License (GPL)+Classic License Option; Headed by Gerald Bauer

SwiXml Links
http://xul.sourceforge.net/swixml.html
Tiny (less than 30k) XUL Motor in Java for creating Swing UIs for apps or applets; Apache-Style License; Headed By Wolf Paulus

Thinlet Links
http://xul.sourceforge.net/thinlet.html
Tiny XUL Motor in Java (less than 30k); designed for applets or mobile devices; runs even on Java 1.1; no Swing required; GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL); Headed By Robert Bajzat

MyXAML Links
http://xul.sourceforge.net/myxaml.html
XUL/XAML toolbox for Mono/DotGNU/.Net; Dual Licensed: GNU General Public License (GPL)+Classic License Option; Headed by Marc Clifton

Misc Links

James Strachan's Radio Weblog; Building Rich User Interfaces with XML
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/stories/2002/09/10/buildingRichUserInterfacesWithXml.html
Its becoming increasingly common to learn from web technologies and apply them to older computing problems we faced before. For example, SOAP and XML-RPC is changing the way we implement distributed system intead of distributed object technologies like CORBA, DCOM and EJB. The area of rich user interfaces is also benefiting from lessons we've learnt building web based user interfaces.

Robin Cover; Cover Pages: XML Markup Languages for User Interface Definition
http://xml.coverpages.org/userInterfaceXML.html
Hundreds of links including tons of links to hot-air papers from academia describing Yet Another Abstract (translation: Useless) Interface Markup Language (YAAIML)

More Links

Xul Projects @ Sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=xul
Dissect Xul Apps

Xul Projects @ Freshmeat
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=xul&section=projects
Find Nuggets

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