Mozilla - From Browser to Desktop Environment?

An anonymous reader asks: "A while ago OEone released a thingy called Penzilla which was basically a Mozilla desktop environment like GNOME or KDE. Everything was written in either DHTML or XUL and ran within the Gecko engine. Recently a new project, Robin was released that is basically a desktop running within Mozilla using XUL as well. There is NetWindows that attempts something similar for more interactive web applications. What advantages would a 100% Mozilla engine desktop hold and what are the disadvantages compared to much more complex environments such as GNOME or KDE? Is a Mozilla desktop possibly more elegant or efficient for the typical user? Is the XUL runtime environment more robust than troublesome C/C++ widgets? It seems like most applications could make the transition as the growing collection of Firebird extensions like ChatZilla and Gnusto and have shown."

Comments

Re:First Post

[trompete]

I like Mozilla as a browser and as an email application. Desktop....hmmm I don't mind using C/C++ widgets. Once you learn how to do it, it isn't that hard. I thought tha people didn't like when a browser became the desktop environment. IE anybody?

unnecessary

[ratsnapple tea]

This is exactly what's wrong with the Mozilla project. Whatever happened to "make each tool do one thing and do it well?"

Re:unnecessary

[Eneff]

Mozilla != the UNIX philosophy.

The point behind Mozilla always was to have a platform from which people could create full fledged cross-platform applications using CSS, HTML, ECMAscript and XML.

It just so happens that the first major application was a web browser.

I'm starting to subtly push taking advantage of Mozilla's front end capibilities within my company's application, myself.

Re:unnecessary

[Planesdragon]

This is exactly what's wrong with the Mozilla project. Whatever happened to "make each tool do one thing and do it well?"

It fell apart, because "each tool" has to work with every other tool in existance.

Mozilla (and OpenOffice, Gnome, and KDE) are necessary corrections to the "one tool one thing" paradigm. Each project has multiple tools in it, and can be used to do many differnet things--but each tool was designed to be used with a specific set of other tools, and the tool authors are upfront and honest about this.

And for those of us who AREN'T tool authors, getting a "thing" working is as simple as grabbing a toolbox from Sears.

Re:unnecessary

[Coryoth]

In some senses they actually did do that. They made a very impressive rendering engine, and a means of rending GUI widgets via that rendering engine. It seems to do that very well. The fact that other people have taken that and used it to build a wide variety of complex applications is hardly the fault of Gecko and XUL.

What you are saying doesn't really make sense. It's like blaming QT or GTK+ for every app ever produced with them.

Jedidiah

Re:unnecessary

[OmniVector]

well, with mozilla it's hard to say much about doing one thing well, but firefox is quite good at just browsing the web. however they aren't talking about making mozilla a desktop environment, they are talking about building a desktop environment out of XUL. this would be just as separate from mozilla as firefox is from thunderbird.

HTML on Steroids

[Gortbusters.org]

Seems to be that this whole XUL/XAML/DHTML craze is all about creating more interactive web applications, not about rewriting the destkop system.

After all, the C++ code that implements the scrollbar, or button, or whatever isn't going away, it's just being described in a standard manner. I guess that gives the application more portability, in theory.

To switch gears with some thoughts on XUL (and XUL like technologies)... The other day I was reading how interesting XUL was on phpPatterns and using it to build a web-based desktop-like application. The one example people like to point to is that AmazonBrowser. Perhaps the greatest potential for these XUL like languages is for those web features we have a tough time building today.

Whoever thought of HTML frames probably wanted XUL, but knew that nothing like it could be done right now, so frames were a cheap navigational system that could provide a semi-familiar GUI to end users in that only the "content pane" gets updated.

HTML interfaces will still be around. Not only because they're still a great mechanism for internet information display, but because people are used to them. They're used to website design, they like the way it is. XUL-like apps will probably be most used as embedded application interfaces for managing devices... at least in the beginning.

Re:Let's see...

[NanoGator]

"Microsoft doesn't need to explain why it's system is better with the browser integrated into everything, everyone takes it as fact(or debunks it at myth)
Why treat mozilla differently?"

Heh. Internet Explorer desktop integration == bad, Mozilla desktop integration == good.

*sigh*

[tolan-b]

How many times do people like you have to be corrected before you get it?

There's nothing wrong with integrating your browser with your desktop. It's when you do so in a way that can't be undone to leverage your monopoly position to kill off a competitor that it becomes bad.

Who the hell modded that insightful?

Re:*sigh*

[squiggleslash]

Personally I think using either Mozilla or IE as a "desktop" is a silly idea. Although in fairness to Mozilla, they've built a platform on which the first application is a browser, XUL isn't just supposed to be for the web.

There are applications Microsoft could have integrated into the desktop that I'd have praised them for. Excel would be the most obvious example. Imagine being able to manipulate your files and folders like spreadsheet cells. Spreadsheets are arguably the most powerful tools that a complete novice can get their heads around. Coming up with a paradigm that would allow that kind of control would be, well, maybe too dangerous a tool.

A web browser though? So far the only justification I've heard for this kind of thing has been a tortured "Well, web browsers look at files, and let you navigate to other files, so I guess that's kind of like a file manager." A collegue likes it because he can turn a webbrowser window into a file manager window just by typing in a file path into the URL. Talk about an obscure, specialised, one time in a thousand, advantage.

It was a silly idea. Microsoft only did it to push Netscape out. Had they not done so, Windows might still be as user friendly as it was when the original Windows 95 came out. I suspect Apple would be dead by now.

Re:*sigh*

[nelsonal]

The idea is to have application development done at the browser levels allowing cross platform applications (if your browser runs the standard) commoditizing the underlying operating system and bringing the monopoly rents to the browser. Hopefully adding value to the user who can now access their applications from any web enabled device. Something like an exchange server. This was how the Internet caught MS by surprise, and why they worked so hard to both kill Netscape/Java and build their own light application space (.Net) to dominate this market as well.