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Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made
A reader writes: " Mozillaquest.com has an article about Patch Maker which is a new Perl script that let's you hack the Mozilla UI using JS, CSS, and XUL. You do not have to download or compile the source code or pull CVS. It makes writing and submitting Mozilla UI patches easier."
Stop posting stuff from mozillaquest.com!
Even if the stuff about scripting is true, mozillaquest exists solely to bash the efforts of those who spend their time working on the mozilla project. Don't vindicate that troll who runs it.
Here's the main text of the article:
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Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made Easy
Mike Angelo -- 6 October 2001 (c)
The Mozilla Organization's newest toy for Mozilla hacking is Patch Maker. It let's almost anyone familiar with XUL, JS, or CSS create patches to the Mozilla user interface - without having to deal with CVS (Concurrent Versions System), source code, C++, and/or compiling.
Patch Maker makes it easier to write and to submit Mozilla user interface (UI) patches. It was written by Mozilla developer Gervase Markham primarily for people who are not in to, or up to, dealing with CVS and compiling. Even people that are up to snuff skill-wise might not have sufficient computer resources to work with the Mozilla CVS and compiling Mozilla source code.
The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control. So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.
XUL (pronounced zuul) is Mozilla implementation of XML that is used to describe the interactive Web-like page faces of Mozilla-based applications. Think of XUL as the Mozilla developers' name for an XML-based language used to describe the UI (User Interface). Creating a Mozilla skin or UI is mostly a matter of hacking the XUL, XML, CSS, JS and so forth that define the chrome and skin, and/or redoing the graphic images and widgets they use.
To be more precise, however, XUL is not exactly XML. A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL. That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers. Mozilla-based browsers have a special parser that can interpret XUL.
Here is how it works. The Mozilla browser suite is built on top of the underlying Mozilla application programming framework, which is written in C++. For the most part, the Mozilla browser-suite user-interface employs XUL, JS, and CSS. Patch Maker is a Perl script that let's you modify the user interface XUL, JS, or CSS and try your modification(s) without having to download, compile, or recompile the source code -- and without having to deal with CVS.
More About the Mozilla Application Programming Framework
Mozilla-based Web-browser suites, including the navigator, e-mail, news, and composer components, all are applications built to run upon the underlying Mozilla application programming framework. So what you see when you run such Mozilla-based Web-browser suites essentially are interactive Web-like pages defined and controlled by the XUL, JS, and CSS code, which is interpreted at run time.
What you see when you open Mozilla or Netscape 6 (NS6) browser suites is not the Mozilla or NS6 program itself. What you see essentially is an interactive Web page generated by Mozilla and its Gecko layout engine.
Web page is an oversimplification. The Mozilla Web-browser face is similar to a Web page in that it is laid out by Mozilla's Gecko engine much as the Gecko engine lays out a Web page. Mozilla-the-browser is a combination of text, images, widgets and so forth laid out by Gecko to form an interactive user interface. That interactive user interface is very much similar to a Web page. Something we will call a Web-like page here.
Downloading & Using Patch Maker
Patch Maker is limited to the XUL, JS, and CSS code that runs on top of the underlying Mozilla application programming framework, It will not let you create patches for the underlying Mozilla framework.
You can download the Patch Maker script from the Mozilla Organization Web site. You also should read the Patch Maker Web page on the Mozilla Organization Web site. Links for the Patch Maker script and Web page are in the Resources Section at the end of this article.
Patch Maker is designed primarily for Linux. However, according to the PageMaker Web site, you should be able to use Page Maker with Windows if you also download ActivePerl and Cygwin.
If you would like to hack the Mozilla or Netscape browser suites without using Patch Maker, please check our Mozilla-skinning articles, MozillaQuest the Series: Building Your Own Mozilla-Based Web Browser .
For more information about Mozilla the organization, Mozilla the application programming framework, and Mozilla the Web browser suite, please see the series, Mozilla--A Lizard for All Seasons. (Please check the Resources Section at the end of this article for links.)
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Now, even though in the article Mike says that the reason for this "toy" is to help fix the bugs that are "raging out of control", at least he makes the article respectible, and professional.
Mike is a very experienced writer who will undoubtedly move on to higher journalism, like maybe ZDNet. Heck, ZDNet might even turn MozillaQuest into a full-blown print magazine.
Just remember folks, in a couple years, Mike Angelo will have gone places you have never dreamed. Even though people call the stuff he writes now "crap", I believe in him.
Every time there's a story linked to MozillaQuest.com, somebody links to MozillaQuestQuest.com. So now I am. Why does Slashdot continue linking to this retard?
That's why I sent him this email.
Unfortunatly he must get so many requests from potential advertisers that he can't find time to reply to them all, as he didn't reply to mine.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Could their scripts be set up to run from a website? I remember the Netscape "Brown Orifice" crack that turned a browser into a trojan. Internet Explorer is already a laughingstock because of all the security flaws, would this make Mozilla just as bad?
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
I am the author of Patch Maker. Any questions about it may be directed to me :-)
Gerv
So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.
He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved.
--Asa
Did you read any other comments? Take everything you read at MozillaQuest with a very large pinch of salt.
XUL is an XML-based language - just like XHTML, SVG or any of the others. The sentence "A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL." is either wrong or extremely misleading. No XML parsers can _interpret_ what they read, but an XML parser can parse XUL perfectly. Mozilla uses expat for this purpose.
That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers.
"Displaying XML as a web page" makes no sense. What happens is that you apply a style sheet to some XML (whether XHTML or something else) to display it. If you gave XUL a style sheet, it would display according to that style sheet. Essentially, this is what Mozilla does when it renders its UI.
Gerv
Darn, Slashdot doesn't like title attributes in links :( Repost with good links
So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.
He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved.
--Asa
Take a look at the docs at Mozilla's site:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/patch-maker/
I have to say that with the Tab interface, support for the LINKS toolbar, and all of the other cool things Moz has been picking up lately, it is really becoming a brilliant application. I cringe when I am stuck using I.E. now.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
Mozilla would benefit from constructive criticism appropriate to a not-yet-finished application. Mangelo's criticism is never constructive, and usually misleading and factually incorrect. You may claim that a view of Mozilla based on MozillaZine is rather rosy; a view of Mozilla based only on MozillaQuest would be wildy warped.
:-)
For example, "Netscape denies Netscape 6.1 based on Mozilla code". Or how about "Mozilla is getting steadily buggier because there are more bugs in the bug database." By that measure, no code at all would be the ideal, as it would be bug-free.
MozillaZine has its fair share of dissenters as well. Strauss, for one. And macpeep.
Gerv
Yes, with the tabs they've taken a lovely interface that I first saw in Konsole... it's my favoured form of MDI. (PWM does a similar thing as a window manager, but there would be a seperate instance of the program in each tab). I'd love to see this interface implemented in many more applications -- Konqueror for a start.
Sadly, I didn't get to see the LINKS toolbar because it was only enabled for about half an hour, and I'm not downloading loads more 15 meg old nightly builds to see what it looks like. Does anyone have any screenshots?
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Why the heck does /. keep posting stories at this site? MozillaQuest's content can be summed up as 1/3 FUD, 1/3 idiocy, and 1/3 plagiarism. At best it can can termed a "wannabe" site, and I'm more inclined simply to label it a travesty.
This story was originally posted at MozillaZine on Thursday. For anybody who visits MozillaZine or who has the Mozilla Sidebar turned on in their /. preferences, this is both a bad joke and stale news. Get with it, /. editors! There's just no excuse for this kind of sloppiness.
Don't give this poseur any more hits! Please!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
MQ is neither informed nor constructive. Mike Angelo (the only contributor to MQ) seems to make a point of not finding out all the facts, of leaping to the wrong conclusions, of concocting conspiracies to explain the mundane and of ignoring the facts even after he is corrected. All-in-all it make MQ an extremely unreliable, sensationalist and downright mean site.
If you want criticism (independent and internal) you'll find plenty of it in the netscape.public.mozilla.* newgroups, and on mozillazine.org, and on mozillanews.org.
But not nearly as obnoxious as the constant use of XML entities for localizing strings.
How would you like us to do localisation?
Gerv