IBM Donates Code to Firefox

OS24Ever writes "Internetnews.com is reporting that IBM has donated new DHTML code to the Mozilla foundation specifically targeted as accessability and rich interactive applications (RIA). These new features are expected to be in the next major update of Firefox (v1.5). Is this the first OSS application to get RIA/DHTML support for accessability? I would think this could open some doors for Firefox to replace IE in many Windows environments."

Comments

Re:Don't take your eye off the ball

[MemeRot]

Firefox already supports all the DHTML Javascript in discussion. All this will do is make those AJAX style websites more accessible to the disabled. A text reader trying to read something like google maps would be totall lost currently.

Re:What about...

[n0-0p]

There is a plugin (http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm) for Firefox that allows you to run ActiveX controls, but that doesn't solve the problem. Most sites that use ActiveX also heavily use IE only scripting objects. As such, they still won't run even if you have ActiveX support in Firefox.

Re:Not unless

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately they can be implemented in a cross-browser way:

Using XML Data Islands in Mozilla

This is a problem which plagues Mozilla overall

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to write a firefox extension over this summer and was absolutely shocked by the degree to which firefox-related documentation either doesn't exist or is completely inadequate and disorganized. The solution for every problem of this sort seems to be to point you at source code, and expect you to puzzle out for yourself what meaning the programmers intended that code to have. The ONLY instructions on how to create a firefox extension are an open source demonstration extension on the blog of someone unconnected to firefox-- an extension which itself has few comments and no documentation, you're just supposed to use it as sample code. While there is something to be said for learning by example, this just doesn't work as the sole form of information. You find yourself immediately hitting two problems:

1. At some point you're going to need to know how to do [X random thing] that your sample code doesn't already do. Your only options at this point are to start scouring the internet for firefox extensions, looking for extensions which do something kind of like what you want to do, and then looking at their source code to see how they did it; or mercilessly bother the IRC channel until somebody who's already done this comes by
2. At some point, inevitably, you're going to hit a point where the sample code deceives you! All code contains implicit contracts. You cannot learn those contracts simply by looking at source code. Without documentation to make those contracts explicit, you are left either breaking contracts-- and thus your entire program, when some other part of the program expects something to be X at a certain time when it is in fact Y-- or doing a crazy kind of cargo cult programming, terrified to change anything unless you break the magic incantation that makes the component or preferences or whatnot system recognize your existence. I lost about two weeks on my project because I looked at the sample code, saw it always did a certain thing a certain way, concluded I could do the same thing the same way elsewhere, and was entirely ignorant as to the fact that there was another file in a totally different part of the package which I had to modify for every instance of this specific thing. What this meant was that I made extremely simple alterations to the file I was working on, and the entire extension broke-- for no reason I was aware of-- because I had accidentally caused a mismatch between the file I was working on and a totally different file.

And this is just for extensions, a VERY common thing many people have done. As I started to poke my nose into more intricate and obscure things-- say, components-- I found the amount of available information on how to proceed went from inadequate to absolutely nonexistent. I can only imagine what you are going through trying to embed the entire engine.

Re:This is a problem which plagues Mozilla overall

[StarDrifter]

But since this summer, developer.mozilla.org has gone live. They've got instructions for Building an extension. And a Javascript reference. There's also the Embedding API Reference with documentation on all the nsI* interfaces. And while not from mozilla.org, there's XULPlanet, which documents XUL.

The documentation has been lacking historically, but things are quite a bit better now.

Re:IBM == Good code.

[Bogtha]

Usually IBM has got good code

It's worth noting that IBM built one of the most popular browsers for blind people, IBM Homepage Reader, which is currently based on Internet Explorer. Perhaps this is a move to help them switch to Firefox in the future?

I can't help but point out though, that in a landmark website accessibility case, SOCOG were fined A$20,000 for not having an accessible website for the Sydney Olympics. Guess who built their website? Yup, it was IBM :).

Re:I don't follow...

[JimDabell]

Firefox already adheres to standards better than IE, has a more rubust, and secure environment, and arguably provides a superior user experience to IE, and yet IE lives on... So why would some (arguably nice) DHTML addons make a difference?

Many organisations are legally obliged to make their internal applications, including web applications, accessible to the disabled.

Two of the most popular applications that can read websites out to blind people, JAWS and IBM Homepage Reader, are both based on Internet Explorer.

This code will supposedly make it easier for web applications using DHTML to work in Firefox for disabled people.

Re:As a nerd...

[the_mighty_$]

No, I dont think its in CVS yet. The ZDNet article has a few more details than the one the submitter gave. It says that IBM "will donate", not that they have donated.

The ZDNet article also states that IBM is giving 50,000 lines of code. Pretty cool stuff!

Re:Firefox was a great idea.

[TheRaven64]

Now that GCC supports Objective-C++, it is possible to build WebCore with the GNU toolchain (rather than Apple's fork). Work is already underway porting WebKit to GNUstep. Once this is complete, it will run on Windows, OS X and *NIX/X11. While it won't be Safari, it will have exactly the same rendering engine, and a UI built by people with a similar human interaction philosophy to Apple (or, more accurately, NeXT).

RIA = Rich Internet Application

[TFowl]

Just to inform the author of this article, RIA, in this context, stands for Rich Internet Application and NOT Rich Interactive Application. The term was originally coined by Macromedia in late 2003. In addition, Rich Interactive Application is a pretty generic term and could apply to any number of areas where an "application" of any sort (not just an Internet application) might be used.