August 2003 Archives

The Thinlet micro XUL motor that fits in a single ultra-lightweigth 36 k class file now sports a revamped web site that includes a showcase page that hightlights projects propelled by Thinlet such as:

Theodore (XUL Editor for Thinlet) by Wolf Paulus

Easy to use all visual environment for Thinlet GUI development.

Luke (Lucene Index Browser) by Andrzej Bialecki

A diagnostic tool for Lucene indexes that lets you browse documents in the index, perform queries, navigate through terms, optimize indexes and more.

Skinlet (Skin Support for Thinlet) by Eugene Klein

Adds skin support to Thinlet.

ThinSQL by Klaus Gotthardt

A free applet-php_MySQL or applet-servlet utility that connects to an SQL server over the Internet to let you add, delete, change, and query data.

Sign'nCrypt II by Digitaltrust

Digitally sign and encrypt documents, guaranteeing the authenticity, the origin and the integrity, fullfilling the requirements of the European Community and the Italian law.

and many more

Now that Mozilla is no longer overshadowed (silenced) by Netscape or AOL but is a free-standing independent project the marketing drive is on to get everyone to use Mozilla.

The Mozilla site now sports a Why? special series to promote all the goodies Mozilla offers the world - from grandma to hard-core kernel hackers.

For example, the "Why Use Mozilla as an Application Framework?" page includes a "Did you know?" sidebar stating:

• The Mozilla app framework can be used to build standalone desktop applications like Komodo, apps that run on top of the Mozilla application suite like mozblog, and web applications like the Mozilla Amazon Browser.
• Mozilla has been ported to more than a dozen platforms including Windows (95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, CE), MacOS X, Linux, Solaris, BeOS, OpenVMS, OS/2, AIX, and HP-UX.
• You can build simple but powerful Mozilla-based applications using just JavaScript and XUL.

More @ http://mozilla.org/why/framework.html

And the "Mozilla Application Framework in Detail" page outlines the many benefits XUL offers by stating:

What this means to you as the developer is this: you can take advantage of skills you already have with XML or web technologies to design and implement anything from a simple text editor to a comprehensive IDE - complete with all of the interface widgets that you would find in virtually any major application framework.

Another benefit of this standards-based approach to UI development is that your application is cross-platform "out of the box". Imagine not having to re-write your application three times, or not supporting a less popular platform simply because you do not have the resources for parallel development!

Unlike many other application frameworks, you are not limited to the widget set we provide, nor limited to the "look and feel" of the native OS. You can create applications using our framework that either have a native look and feel for each OS, or one which is identical on Macs, PC's or Unix operating systems.

You may also further enhance the user interface by allowing 3rd parties to develop "themes" for your application. Themes are simply collections of images and CSS which can augment or replace your current UI elements.

Our platform also can take advantage of other internet standards such as XSLT and RDF. RDF, a core element to the framework, allows you to define dynamic elements in your UI (elements that may change after you have completed the application, such as a "history" menu item). XSLT could be used to translate information from web services, RSS, SOAP, or other XML-based languages and convert them into a form that you might display in your user interface.

More @ http://mozilla.org/why/framework-details.html

Mathew McBride writes in that Jazilla has reached milestone two and now sports a Mozilla XPFE (cross-platform front-end) port to Java proving that XUL is not a C or C++ thingy only.

Jazilla now also supports some W3C DOM along with some CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). For full details check out out the release notes.

MozillaZine also ran a story about the Jazilla NG Milestone Two release that includes a discussion with answers from the man, that is, Mathew, himself.

Last but not least the XUL News Wire also ran a story titled "Jazilla NG Milestone Two Released" a couple of days ago.

According to Amazon Prentice Hall will publish a 700+ pages XUL thriller titled "Rapid Application Development with Mozilla" by Aussie Nigel McFarlane in November (ISBN: 0131423436).

The book is part of Bruce Perens' Open Source series and you can preview the draft cover at Amazon that uses imagery from the American revolution and states:

• A million users, thousands of mozilla.org contributers and hundreds of Netscape engineers can't be all wrong!
• Learn to build sophisticated cross-platform applications-fast!
• Detailed coverage of XUL, Mozilla's revolutionary, XML-based GUI programming framework.
• and much more

Full story @ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131423436