No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#1

Post by mmastrac » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 12:27 AM UTC

No XBL Components Left in Firefox
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Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#2

Post by ahbyb » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

>And now a major browser's UI is built with web components!

Proud that you need to use your HTML/JS engine to render your UI instead of using faster native code? I mean you have the opportunity of getting rid of XUL and instead you change it... for something similar?

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#3

Post by Causality1 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

Mozilla, proudly celebrating the death of user control, UI customization, and truly useful extensions. Don't forget your custom userChrome.css is next on the chopping block.

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#4

Post by tomc1985 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it.

This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#5

Post by ainar-g » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it. This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

What is the closest thing we have left that is close to “mostly declarative GUI”? QML? Tk? Please don't say Electron.

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#6

Post by Touche » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it. This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

XUL wasn't native.

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#7

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

ainar-g wrote: post #5

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it. This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

What is the closest thing we have left that is close to “mostly declarative GUI”? QML? Tk? Please don't say Electron.

React Native? SwiftUI?

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#8

Post by tomc1985 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #6

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it. This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

XUL wasn't native.

It rendered GTK I believe? Which used native controls.

I used to build a Firefox addon and the things you could do were amazing -- I could render into the status bar and popup a native window fed with data from a remote server. All from an XML file and some javascript! And you could style it with CSS!

The hacks and contortions addons have to go through now just to do something like that are insane, and the results are almost always janky as fuck.

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#9

Post by johnchristopher » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

Will https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.x... be updated :-) ?

Re: No XBL Components Left in Firefox

#10

Post by tomc1985 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

ainar-g wrote: post #5

tomc1985 wrote: post #4

XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it. This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

What is the closest thing we have left that is close to “mostly declarative GUI”? QML? Tk? Please don't say Electron.

GTK sort-of fits the bill