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Creating Applications with Mozilla
On the first and most obvious level, the book is just the typical, thorough treatment of the important APIs that we've come to expect from O'Reilly. There are chapters addressing all of the important layers of the Mozilla platform and plenty of examples that show you how to customize the platform. Some may want to change the icons and others may want to add more robust features. The range of possibilities is surprising and coders are creating one-to-one communications enhancements, add-on widgets, and even games. There are certainly some things missing, and some areas that could use more detail or more complicated examples, but the book is already 454 pages long.
On another level, this book is also one of the first finished documents that explains what the Mozilla group has really been up to for the past five years. Some have abandoned the project, and others have attacked it as fundamentally misguided. This book shows why it took so long by demonstrating all of the cool features added during the long march to a new, thoroughly extensible architecture.
Are the results enough to justify the time and the effort? Some note that the features may be a bit overhyped, because building your own browser with the Mozilla API is like making a pizza with $15 and a telephone. While there's a large part of the book devoted to the work you can do to change the look and feel of the buttons on your browser, the book and the project offer much more. The Mozilla project is one of the biggest threats to simple tools like Visual Basic to come down the pike in some time. The various layers offer many ways to provide good, customizable interfaces to databases, the web, and much more. I can see how many corporate development shops may want to start making Mozilla the platform for a license-free front-end, simply because it's a straightforward tool without extra costs or restrictions.
At the most abstract level, the book is a great way to get a taste of modern software development. Computer scientists sometimes fix problems by adding more and more layers of indirection. This may not solve anything, but at least there are hooks for a real solution to use some time in the future if some one ever does figure out how to make the box do it. The Mozilla browser is one of the most extreme examples of this philosophy to ever emerge. Emacs was something special, but this is even more insane. Everything can be changed around by rewriting some XML and Javascript and most people don't need to juggle the pointers in grubby C to do amazing things. I realize it's not as beautiful as Lisp to some, but it's got a clarity and level of abstraction that's stunning to behold. Lisp was just procedural, while XML is more like logic programming.
This relentless customizability embodies one of the deepest reasons for the success of open source. Technology is inherently complicated and the only way we can use it is if we can look under the hood. You can say all you want about CVS trees and bazaars filled with competing code, but opening up the interface is one of the most powerful themes of open source. It's not about teaching people to build their own VCR or PVR from scratch, getting the VCRs for free or even debugging the VCR's source code -- it's just about making them easy enough to program.
The book illustrates how Mozilla opens up the API to create a relatively easy language for people to use. The real open source is not the C in the tar ball, but the XML interface spelled out in the book. Many people feel that the most important thing that the first browser designers did was make it easy for people to see the HTML tags marking up the document in front of them. The new Mozilla takes this transparency to a new high.
If you look at the book at all of these levels, you can see that this is one of the most important documents to emerge from the open source community in some time. At first glance, it's just another set of APIs for us to wiggle. I realize it's not fair to credit the Mozilla team or the book authors with creating the browser or XML ex nihilio -- they just jumped on some of the most popular bitwagons propagating across the Net. But the result is a stunning completion of a very important and cohesive vision. The book doesn't crackle with bleeding-edge novelty, but shines with the certainty of a job well-done.
Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases , Disappearing Cryptography , and a number of other books. You can purchase Creating Applications with Mozilla from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Well, the only difference I see is that Mozilla at least runs on many OS'es. But you got a good point there.
-- Cheers!
It could be a stand alone app that uses mozilla as the core functionality. It's my understanding Mozilla runs on almost every available platform where IE is windows specific (the mac version is nothing like the windows version).
That being said I run mozilla on mac os 8, 9 & 10, linux, solaris and windows. I'm not sure what the problem would be.
from what i've read in the past it sounds like mozilla can be used to develop just about anything. is this true? who has done it? what about applications? it's odd to think of a browser as a platform for application development. i'd really like to get my hands on a good explanation. perhaps this book.
I would not call it a web application in the common interpretation of the word. The Mozilla framework would be used to create a client/server application. It would be more similar to creating a new alternative to (X)HTML.
Besides, Mozilla technology is available on most important platforms by now.
Stop the brainwash
Mozilla just becomes a toolkit and VM to run applications. Think of it like Java. Can you run a java app w/o the JVM? No. It's not executable without it.
It seems Mozilla is working closer and closer to being an OS than just a browser. Kinda funny if you think about it, where MS has windows which was supposed to be an OS and is now including a browser.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Let's see... can I embed IE into my web app?
Nope.
Can my IE web app run on almost every platform out there?
Nope.
Can I modify IE in case I need additional functionality?
Nope.
There's the tip of the iceberg in differences...
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Not sure whether it will catch on, but it's nice that they make it easy for other developers to benefit from all the work that's gone into coding Mozilla.
This is one way in which you just know that the Mozilla developers are at the top of their field(s) -- deciding to go with XML full-fledged (several years ago, too) was one of the greatest decisions they've made so far. The XUL interface, which is basically XML-based at its core, is about as flexible as one can get with the UI experience.
Furthermore, and of particular interest to someone like myself, the XML format offers a number of advantages for computational physics: clear markup of input data and results, standardized data formats, and easier exchange and archival stability of data.
I will definitely use a few dollars of grant money to purchase this book and keep it in the labs for all to read and enjoy.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
On another level, this book is also one of the first finished documents that explains what the Mozilla group has really been up to for the past five years. Some have abandoned the project, and others have attacked it as fundamentally misguided. This book shows why it took so long by demonstrating all of the cool features added during the long march to a new, thoroughly extensible architecture.
To me this is the one of the most important parts. I'm not a programmer, nor will I ever be I think. But from an evangelism perspective, I can point to this and say: "See, see? They were not just f-ing around for years, they were building something with amazing functionality!"
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
How come Lisp become 'just procedural'?! Do u have any idea baout what u r writing?
Ugg you got modded insightful. I better clarify before I get modded down:
This article is about the mozilla application framework. The application can be a stand alone application! This is not some kind of "mozilla only webpage."! This is just a method for creating an application that uses parts of the mozilla codebase, or more appropriately (though you and the mdos don't seem to understand the meaning of this) the mozilla application framework.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
this could catch on. Why on earth do you think they were so hot to kill the browser market for anything but IE?
Hint: It was *not* to simply have the most popular browser that they made no profit on.
KFG
mozdev has it for free
Mayeb because these standards are open, and can be extended by anyone who chooses to extend them. That simple really
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
In true open source fashion, the book is also available in online form at http://books.mozdev.org/chapters/
An example of this kind of thing would be Komodo, an IDE for Perl/Python/Tcl/ development.
I seem to recall that some use MSIE as a component architecture to develop generalized applications in much the same way, but I can't think of any examples of this right now.
Isn't so much about standards, it's more about de-facto standards and their general tendancy to change. I couldn't see devoting 5 or 6 months to develop a custom application specifically for Gnu/Mozilla when one year down the road they may decide to alter the XUL "standard" and totally screw me.
This is why stuff like TCP/IP and "C" took off, because they were in the hands of a standards body who were responsible and considerate of issues like this.
The Gnu/Open Source community needs to take into consideration that since they are working their way into the mainstream they *must* begin to be more proffesional and intelligent in matters of "standards" or they risk alianating the commercial development community.
That would be a serious mistake on their end, serious indeed.
Warmest regards,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
What embedding Mozilla promises to me is the ability display and interact with appropriately transformed HTML and XML documents in any kind of application without having to reinvent all the complex machinery to do that. XML apps like MathML and SVG are particularly important to me, but who wants to write the code to display them? Now lots of things are possible that have little to do with browsers. I like it.
Helium balloons want to be free.
http://www.bookpool.com has it for $24.50
follow the [games] link in the review. thats what this web things alll about
Good troll attempt! I'll give you an A for effort!
Let's see... can I embed IE into my web app?
Nope.
Yes you can. I've done it before, and I currently use three different programs with IE integrated.
Can my IE web app run on almost every platform out there?
Nope.
You're right about this one, but for most commercial apps, hitting 99% of the users is pretty damn good. You can't please all the people all the time.
Can I modify IE in case I need additional functionality?
Nope.
Yup, you sure can. I run a customized version of IE for a few special projects.
Oh yeah, and this has all been true for several years now.
So, 2/3 were flat wrong, and the third one was pretty irrelevant. All in all, I gotta say this was a *very* professional troll. Blatantly wrong, and intentionally inflammatory.
You can browse different categories of Mozilla projects at MozDev.
I know this is short notice, but I'm going for dinner with one of the the authors tonight in two hours time, and then going to his talk with the Internet Society in Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). The details of the talk are here.
ActiveState's Komodo...
In addition to all of the fine examples above, it'd be great for a company Intranet. It's a case where you can standardize all the computers that will have access to the app to have Mozilla.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
For a group of people which rely on so many open standards (and indeed, complain when companies don't use them!) I've yet to see little progress here on ensuring XUL remains an open standard. Which is a pity, because otherwise it has little to recommend it, no matter how extensible it is.
Also, does anyone here know anything about performance issues? Visual Basic nowadays is fairly reasonable for certain aspects of enterprise solutions, but if this is anything like Mozilla I'm not sure I could recommend it as being a good platform for applications.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Good examples would be Oddpost, an email app that launches from the web, and RhymBox, a Jabber client.
Note that I've spoken to the froods who did both of these projects, and they've been constantly hitting the wall in terms of what IE can do. RhymBox now uses quite a lot of ActiveX code in order to work around the general lameness of using DHTML .hta files for the ui.
In short anywhere which requires a web-oriented application (preferably cross-platform) would do very well to evaluate Mozilla as a development platform. I expect database and server-side apps will ship in due course with applications based on Mozilla to do form design and other administrative tasks in a cross-platform manner.
Anyone planning to go to this probably knows already, but Brian King is giving a talk on Mozilla in Trinity College Dublin tonight. More details at http://netsoc.tcd.ie/events/0203/mozilla.php
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Well the subject of my comment pretty much gives away the comment.
ActiveState http://www.activestate.com (The Perl,Python,PHP,Tcl people) have a great IDE application written on the Mozilla engine called Komodo, it's up to version 2 now and certainly worth checking out.
Now if only ActiveState would just open source it, after all it's base is open.
Point two is not only correct, as you yourself admit, but is most certainly not irrelevant as you claim. Between desktop boxes, PDAs, embedded systems and non-Windows PCs, IE does not have a 99% market share. I think that perhaps you are confusing a particular segment (commercial retail) of commercial software with the universe of commercial software.
Point three is probably correct despite your denial. I'm fairly certain that the previous poster was referring to mshtml.dll and not IE itself. While IE provides a powerful and flexible toolkit, the fact remains that if there is a need to alter the core behavior of the toolkit there is no method for the developer to do so aside from petitioning Microsoft to change the behavior. This is not the case with Mozilla.
i have to say that i have converted a bunch of cgi's that deliver HTML to cgis that deliver XUL and provide RDFs. the interface is awesome ... so many things you cannot do with IE alone (unless you cookup some ActiveX)
... i hope an activex control for IE is around that will allow IE to use XUL
it was rough in the begining since i had people that were not using mozilla and even now some people just use mozilla because they have to.
but the power of the lists, tabs, etc are awesome compared to having to write javascript/layers/etc crap that takes more effort than the cgi environment to code.
i love it
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
One of the big updates being done for embedding purposes in the big 1.2 push is to get a basic installation prepared which can be used for all sorts of Gecko/Mozilla-based applications. See it coming to an application near you soon!
This is a very important development as it means that the full Mozilla suite will no longer need to be packaged with your custom application. The basic installation may even be installed on the system already - and can then be discovered and used by your system without installing a second copy!
This miraculous beast is the GRE, and its webpage is here.
Very Insightful
There are several book price comparing services, I like this one: www.bestwebbuys.com
There are a couple of very interesting examples developed using this technology out already:
- OEOne, a complete desktop environment.
- Kimodo, a python and perl IDE.
I myself am working on a Bible program that will run, locally, under Mozilla. This is probably the future of desktop application development for most stuff."He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
What is doubly amusing is that when Microsoft attempted to kill (perhaps did kill) Netscape, they did so because they were scared the browser would turn into a platform that would let you write kickass apps making Windows irrelevant. In a way, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as if Netscape hadn't been taken over by AOL and left to do its own thing, would Mozilla (a platform as well as a browser) exist today?
I doubt that one day all desktop apps will be written using Mozilla. But it's an intriguing possibility, I look forward to the GRE with much interest.
As pointed out in a discussion a couple days ago, this RedWolves2 guy is embedding his associates ID into his amazon links, in order to make a profit. And he's not telling anybody about it. He's done this a dozen or more times, and seems to be using Slashdot primarily for posting these Amazon ads. Moderators don't seem to be catching onto why this is a bad thing, and are modding up his posts. A user named Schlach had a couple great posts about why this is sleazy behavior. One's here, and the followup is here. Both are worth reading. Incredibly, I've been modded down for pointing out this questionable behavior on the part of RedWolves2. Read Schalch's comments and judge for yourself.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
If you buy it from the Slashdot link, you are supporting Slashdot; if you want to save money, go to BookPool. I don't see why we should make money for RedWolves2 (his link contains his referrer ID), and AFAIK, Amazon still has the OneClick patent in their name...
Eventually Mozilla will become emacs.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
komodo from activestate is a stunning example.
War is necrophilia.
$24.50 plus shipping, as of 16 October, 2002
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
Hiyas, Pave! Good trolling!
Folks, this is a rip of the preface of the book.
Have a look for yourself and then mod this troll down.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I've been developing a Mozilla-based application component since August 2001. It's an HTML-rendering MOO client, and recently I've been pouring some 90% of my free time into working on it.
75% of that 90% of my free time lately has been updating the application to newer standards which have come into place since August 2001. For example, the Navigator/Mail/Editor/Chatzilla options used to be on the 'Tasks' menu in Mozilla, and were moved to the 'Window' menu around 1.0rc1. Bang, suddenly my application stops working properly, and less importantly, stops being a friendly component which works like all the others. A patch from a friend moved just about everything over to the 1.0rc1 way of doing things, and all was fine. Not everything worked flawlessly, though. The 'MOO Client' menu option didn't have an associated key visible, and the 'Window' menu inside MOOzilla didn't have any visible keys. The menus inside the application had long since stopped graying-out/disabling properly depending on what you have selected in the window. Many hours of last weekend was spent fixing these problems by conforming to new command handler expectations, and so on. (Where 'new' means 'changed since 0.9.6'. ;))
XUL is a wonderful tool. However, it runs dog slow on OS X. You don't have to take my word for it, just look at the Pheonix project. Pheonix is available for Windows and Linux, but not for OS X. Why? Because Chimera exists for OS X, which is faster (I'm using it right now) and integrates with the OS better. But... it doesn't support XUL. That's why it's faster. So where is my Mozilla application left? Stuck in the massive Mozilla suite when it's run in OS X. Mozilla, at startup, uses over 120 megs of RAM on my TiBook. Thank God for good VMs.
When initially writting MOOzilla, the XUL documentation was shit. The only place to go for any idea of how things really worked was deep inside the Mozilla source. And sure enough, this worked. The official XUL documentation at that time had sections which trailed off in 'blah blah blah' often because someone got bored of writting. I specifically remember it once read 'This is very important because blah blah blah'. Arrrg! How frustrating!
Mozilla is a powerful application development environment. XUL is a wonderful tool. Books like this one are going to make the world a better place for Mozilla component developers. And more cross-platform software developed with Mozilla makes the world a better place for users. Now... if only we can somehow apply this book heavily to the head of people who don't want to download Mozilla to try out an application, because they don't want to use it as a web browser. *sigh*.
The XUL interface, which is basically XML-based at its core, is about as flexible as one can get with the UI experience.
When I last checked, XUL did not have coordinate-based positioning, but rather nested-based. Coordinate-based works better with visual screen builders IMO. True, it does not auto-scale as well, but when the boss wants something very specific WRT GUI layout, coordinates are much easier than nesting to give him/her precisely what they want.
Table-ized A.I.
Crap! No better yet, DOUBLE CRAP! Has the entire concept of higher level programming languages been lost?! WTF people we have to stop the mad-people (madman is not PC apprently) from screwing up the whole concept of high level language.
High Level Language is to make it easier and quicker to code. Remember doing "Hello World" in ASM? Then compared to when you wrote it in C? Where did that innovation go? I remember having to code 300 to a 1000 lines to accomplish what I was able to do in 10 lines in C. Also complexity was reduced in high level languages. Where did that mindset vanish.
Now I have some yahoo trying to tell me to use Mozilla as a front end to programs? Does using Mozilla some how make life easier for me? Quicker development times? Less errors? Let me think
NN NN OOOOOOOO !!
NNNN NN OO OO !!
NN NN NN OO OO !!
NN NNNN OO OO
NN NNN OOOOOOOO !!
So once again we have another programming FAD! Aww crap can I just get a good programming language...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Do you do any database access with it? Are there Native 'Mozilla' database modules, or do you use ODBC?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
But is the book any good. All I got from the "review" was that the reviewer thinks Mozilla is cool. What about the book? Was the book good? Was it well written? What did the reviewer like about the book, not the subject, that warrants a 9? Why not a 10, what didn't he like about the book?
LoRider
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'll admit my use of the word "Troll" was a bit loose, however:
My Review
by Pave Low
While this is a nice repost of the preface, it's altered just enough and titled so as to make the poster look intelligent. Please take the time to peruse his user info and notice the quality of his comments. He's just being a karma whore to make up for some very bad posts of his.
Personally, I would find reposting of the preface redundant: this article is a *review* of the book, we're aware of what it's about. Even so, this is not a straight-up repost.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
And here I thought he was one of the knights who say "Ni!"
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Because the book's not about web applications. Replace your statement with: "How is developing a web application which will run only on GTK+ different from doing an IE-only website?"
Exactly. Doesn't make sense. A Mozilla toolkit-based application doesn't necessarily talk to an HTTP socket. It could also be a database administration tool. Or a chat client. Or a presentation tool. More, much more, than just a web application framework.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
How is developping a web application which will run only on Mozilla different from doing an IE-only website ? Honestly, I'd like to know.
Open-source bugs instead of proprietary bugs
Table-ized A.I.
The book is good and interesting, but it reminds me another book, Programming Jabber: a lot of examples in the book, and no available examples in real life (besides Jabberd itself).
Less is more !
You do have a good point.
If I considered this good information, I would feel guilty about getting him modded down just because it's him and of what he did. Good info is good info. I do feel guilty that I'm glad he's not getting his precious karma, and it's small of me to get into the mindset of a karma war. Karma means nothing.
However, this system is in place to rate the "jewels" highly, and an altered repost of a preface is redundant, IMO, as I said before. This article is a review, I think it explains the book fine.
Just my opinion. Sorry if you disagree or fault me for pointing out undeserved karma.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
>>Nope.
Yes you can. I've done it before, and I currently use three different programs with IE integrated.
Wow. We must be using the word ``embed'' completely differently. I had always thought of ``embed a in b'' as meaning something along the lines of: ``Make the source for a an include file for b.'' Are you saying that you can call the IE library (dll?) from your program? Can you do it if you aren't using Windows? Can you redistribute it? Freely? Can you (or your agent) fix it if it is broken?
>>Can I modify IE in case I need additional functionality? >>Nope.
>Yup, you sure can. I run a customized version of IE for a few special projects.
Wow. We must be using the word ``customize'' completely differently. I had always thought of ``customize c'' as meaning ``change the program c''. I'm not sure how you're using it. Has Uncle Gates let you use the source, Luke?
>All in all, I gotta say this was a *very* professional troll. Blatantly wrong, and intentionally inflammatory.
I disagree. I might have said that about your post, if I wasn't so polite, but certainly not about the post you replied to.
Please let me know how you're embedding IE, and how I can do it on, say, Solaris; and how you have modified IE, and where I can get the (redistributable) source.
See what I've been reading.
>Good examples would be Oddpost [oddpost.com], an email app that launches from the web, and RhymBox [rhymbox.com], a Jabber client.
From the Oddpost website:
Gee, I guess I could run that at work where I have no use for it, but I don't have Windows or IE at home, where I might want to use it. Guess they should have used something multiplatform, that they could distribute with their application. Like Mozilla.See what I've been reading.
I run Komodo, so I know you can build on the Mozilla base, but other than the miriad of browser variations built on it, just what the heck can you do? If I were to replace some Perl/Tk stuff I wrote (simple filing tools, that kind of stuff, on Windows) would I be able to build it all on Mozilla? Anyone care to describe some applications that developing under Mozilla would be relevant for?
Dude-- read the review. Here are a few sentences from the top: On the first and most obvious level, the book is just the typical, thorough treatment of the important APIs that we've come to expect from O'Reilly. There are chapters addressing all of the important layers of the Mozilla platform and plenty of examples that show you how to customize the platform. Some may want to change the icons and others may want to add more robust features. The range of possibilities is surprising and coders are creating one-to-one communications enhancements, add-on widgets, and even games. There are certainly some things missing, and some areas that could use more detail or more complicated examples, but the book is already 454 pages long.
Sounds like he talks about what can and can't be done with the code samples and even a bit about a few of the individual chapters. He just didn't do one of those boring Slashdot reviews that goes through each chapter one by one. I can get the chapter breakdown from the book's website.
And if you ask me, knowing what to do with the XML is pretty important. If the Mozillians are smart, then that means there's something of value int he book. I really don't want a well-written, witty book about how to write assembler code. Dis
Is that the way Microsoft went about killing Netscape was by building a browser that could be easily customized and utilized to create client side applications.
Internet Explorer has been doing what this book talks about since about 1997. It is the reason why many products like Quicken, etc. require IE to install, and by requiring IE, Microsoft guarantees universal deployment of the browser. In so doing, they chipped away at Netscapes marketshare.
Sorry, I just chuckle whenever I hear people talk about this with regards to Mozilla as if it's a new concept. You mean you never knew you could do this with IE?
Yeah. You call the dll's directly. You can use any of all of the functionality in IE, and yes, it is distributable. I don't remember the names of 'em now, but there are several to use. And yes, you can customize it however you'd like. You can do a web browser window, do whatever buttons you'd like, however you'd like. I have one tool which is does something automatic, and doesn't even have a GUI. You can absolutely embed and customize it. Check out the details at MSDN. Hell, I'm looking at Quickbooks 2002 which is built around IE. They just use it for the rendering... no actual browsing per se.
I use a customn app that I wrote that is completel automated using the XML object that comes with IE. You don't need the source since you have access to every possible property/method in every DLL, and they're all documented. If you have to muck with the source, that's because the program itself doesn't work, or has a shitty API. IE works and has a very extensive API. Has for years.
And no, of course you can't use it on Solaris. But, I'm not aware of a whole heck of a lot of products that would need to be ported to Solaris (Quickbooks for Solaris? I don't think so.).
So yes, you are completely wrong.
I can get plenty of opinions about XUL by looking through previous Mozilla /. posts. I just want to know if I should buy the book. Do they have a tutorial and step us through a FOO test application? If so, what is the application? What other tools do I need to create the application?
This isn't even close to a book review. He does nothing but glower over how great Mozilla is (which we all agree on), but says nothing about the quality or content of the actual book.
The book itself *IS* good (at least that which I have read so far). You'd never be able to tell from this review though....
I laud Mozilla for going down this road and it is clear to me that the core developers for Mozilla are a step above your standard programmer. Some accuse Mozilla for not following a method that would create "standards" for their XML GUI description language, but I have found that the successful "standards" usually follow already adopted and reasonably mature technologies. You do not know how you want to design something until you have done it, used it, and given it to other people to play with. Only after an application has grown sufficiently to include all the thousands of unexpected details is it sufficiently mature for people to talk about standards. For example, I consider the EJB specification's largest failing is that they tried to standardize it before it was actively used for a couple of years. Only now that we have some mature app servers do we really have an idea what needs to be in the core EJB specification. If EJB had followed this road, maybe application developers would not need to use vendor specific code for the critical parts of the functionality. Like OO, the mantra of "standards" seems to be more of a marketing tool to get Fortune 500 companies to cough up millions of dollars than something that really influences how sophisticated and successful applications get developed.
I have my own questions for the Mozilla team. How do you deploy "overrides" of existing configurations. Suppose I want to deploy a "batch" of changes that I want to turn on or off. Is there a way to create configuration "layerings" in XML files so a group of data specifications can be conditionally included from a set of external files? How much scripting is allowed in these files? If I want to write conditional code for specifying a color (such as a color choice per day of the week), is there a way to write scripting solutions for that need? Of course, I could read the book but I am lazy and I suspect that it would not give a full answer.
I'm a vi lover through and through, but I gotta say this much.
"Better it become like emacs than vi? We don't wanna go back to lynx!"
Sorry... had to say it, it wouldn't be prudent if I didn't.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Though integrating IE (or any browser for that matter) into a web app doesn't quite sound right. Talk about recursive code. I think (hope) that the author is talking about an application that has html-based components of the interface (like the aforementioned Quicken). Or am I missing something here?
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
I do not do any database access with it (I've been using it to create client-side apps, and all our database access is on the server side); that said, I know it can access SQL databases using PHP. There may be other methods as well.
How close is this Mozilla thing to supporting that?
I picked Solaris as being a platform on which MS once supported IE [1]. I believe that MS no longer does that. There are a LOT of non-windows platforms out there. Solaris is one, AIX is another, IRIX and Linux and the BSDs are others, then there are the Macs, then there are the palm-tops and embedded devices (some of which are candidates for Mozilla, or Gecko). If you can't run your app on any of these, you're limiting your user pool. If you can use this on Mac today, will MS make it available there tomorrow? Remember, they once had IE on Solaris.
Somehow I suspect that we are using freely distributable in very different ways.
Having the source code is a big deal for ``distributable'', since it means that someone can make it run on his platform, I could make it run on my platform, and so on. No source code means that it only runs where MS allows it to this week.
So, you have in IE a library which you can call to render things onto the screen, IF you are developing for Windows only. I'm glad you are so easily pleased.
[1] Never saw it myself, but was told by a usually reliable source that MSIE 4.x was available for Solaris. If it still is, it isn't current enough to be relevant to the topic at hand.
See what I've been reading.
Show me the source code, or shut up.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
yeah but most book reviews go through the chapters and tell us what they cover, mentioning the quality and quantity of examples, clarity of writing, etc. This "review" didn't go through the chapters at all. I mostly agree with the guy that this wasn't much of a review.
Overall, you need standards like those for TCP/IP and ANSI C much more urgently for closed-source products.
Please send me the source to your IE embedded app so I can edit it then compile and run it on my Linux box.. or my Mac box.. or my BeOS box, or my Solaris box.
If you can't, try to figure out what 'Troll' means, and practice some STFU.
And have a nice day.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
My home machine is an Athlon 900 with 640MB of RAM. My work machine is a Duron 800 with 384MB.
I've yet to see a version of Mozilla, up to an including 1.1 and Phoeniz 0.2, whose UI performs adequately. Gecko is fine, Galeon is great, XUL is not. Why is Mozilla so slow, and if I can't stand having mymenus lagbehind my mouse clicks, why should I expect my users to?
Yes, that's a serious question.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Huh? I was using an Athlon 800 with 256MB of RAM and Mozilla 1.0 for Windows ran great on it (I just replaced this machine this morning with a brand new Athlon XP 2000+). The problem is that the XUL/Mozilla GUI in Linux is still not as fast - strike that, nowhere NEAR as fast as in Win32. I just don't know why, if it's Gtk+ cruft or what. Frankly, anything above a 500Mhz PIII era machine runs modern versions of Mozilla (1.0+) in subjectively fast time (i.e. you don't notice UI lagging). The Moz team needs to work out their UI performance problems on Linux (I haven't used Mozilla on Linux in upwards of 6 months, so I'm assuming it still has the same issues it used to).
> all mozilla needs now is support for more than just Javascript.
/ library/co-xpcom.html
Oh, I see you are talking about Mozilla's XPCOM:
C++
Perl
Python
Ruby
Also see http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices
I agree. If you aren't a starving poet then support the community as best you can, lest it wither and fade away...
Well, I'm obviously not a poet so I picked it up last weekend.
So far I am impressed with how clearly it is written. And now that I am starting to understand what Mozilla is built on, I have much more respect for its developers. They weren't just building a browser, they were building a platform that can quickly adapt to become whatever the browser morphs into over the next decade. Navigator couldn't keep up with IE's pace of development but now I think the shoe is on the other foot.
Try http://bitflux.ch/editor.IIRC from one of the authors of the book.
For remote access, all the server has to do is send XML data to Mozilla. Also, Mozilla natively supports the SOAP API, so it can access any SOAP data source. Cool, huh?
;-).
It's a little different if you are talking about accessing client-side data sources. Mozilla/XUL is (kind of) a virtual machine (VM), meaning it doesn't intrude too much upon the client's OS. But, XUL/XPCOM has bindings for all kinds of programming languages, such as C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, and the list keeps getting longer (Good intro here). Thus, on the client-side you can use the database capability of any of these to talk to the Mozilla elements. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to whip up just a little communication between Mozilla and ODBC
I would like to relate a recent experience with NETSCAPE 7.0. Please excuse two paragraphs or so of background information...
But I digress... So back to *N*E*T*S*C*A*P*E* I installed Netscape for my mom, because Internet Explorer is trash. Netscape, in my opinion, is lacking in many areas (such as usability), but I'll classify it as software, rather than trash. So I installed it. The install went along pretty smoothly and before I knew it, I had Netscape launched. The new graphics are MUCH nicer than the extremely crappy ones in Communicator 4.x. But the initial screen was SOOOOOO cluttered!!! Buttons and tabs and side bars EVERYWHERE! As an experienced user of computers and web browsers, I couldn't hear myself think, so to speak, in all this optical noise. I immediately turned all that crap off and modified all the settings to my liking, so that my mother, who has much less experience than myself, would actually be able to use the damn thing. And then it happened. The next time I launched Netscape, everything locked up and the disk started crunching and grinding away like there was no tomorrow. Even the ctrl-alt-delete window took forever to show up. I ended up forcefully shutting off the power, because I couldn't even log out. (Yeah yeah... File a bug report--but do you HONESTLY think that my mother knows what a bug report IS, let alone knows how to file one?!!) And this is where the background information on XP comes in... I guess it REMEMBERS what made it crash and when you reboot it (or log out and log back in) it does it over again, consequently putting itself in the same situation and locking up again. That's what happened. Whenever I logged into my mother's account, the whole computer became so unresponsive (from the grinding and whatnot) that I couldn't even open up the huge, cumbersome Start menu. (Mafiasoft. Where do you want to pay today?)
I noticed that the other account, that I had originally set up for her out of the mere habit of always giving myself three or four accounts on my BSD boxen, still worked fine, so I logged into it, created yet another new account, moved all her files over, and deleted her original account. Oh yeah, and I removed Netscape and purchased a copy of the newest Opera 6.x for her. Sure, its initial screen is a bit cluttered and I have a few complaints about the increasing complexity and proliferation of seemingly unnecessary features (that other people probably want, just not me), but it's small, fast, and it WORKS. Extremely well, I might add. (It's what I am using right now under FreeBSD with Linux compatibility turned on.) Now she's happy as can be... And I know for a FACT that I will not buy a computer with Windows XP. And I am pretty disappointed with Netscape once again (not so much for the crash, but very much so because of the clutter), as I have been for several years. (Yes, I will continue trying it from time to time, because somewhere deep inside, I believe that it will BECOME a very good, reliable web browser. I just wish it'd become as SMALL as Opera (3 megs or so) and as fast. Netscape is very, very slow.)
I hope if any Netscape developers are reading this, that they'll take this as constructive criticism rather than as flamebait. Oh yeah. And YES, I know the Gecko engine is found in Galeon and several other browsers.
For the record, my home system is an Athlon 1200/512Mb and my laptop a P4 1400/256Mb. Both run Linux -- which isn't Mozilla's primary platform. None have lagging menus.
People I know who're using mozilla -- including some newbies -- say it's faster than IE. This is probably because of the better rendering engine (and not having to close Casinoonnet popups and X10 popunders :-)
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
I would suggest that when flaming, you should get your facts straight first. And if someone demonstrates you're in the wrong, stop digging.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.