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The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

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Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#101

Post by Hamuko »

catalogia wrote: post #97
Hamuko wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't close when you release right-click, they don't contain services, they don't select the word you are on. That's the stuff I've noticed in the couple of days I've been using Firefox.

As I expected, petty bullshit. Firefox should do those things if other applications do and it's reasonable to say as much, but to say that it's "garbage" for those reasons is completely out of proportion. Edit: Response to response: Didn't I just say that Firefox should conform to the standards of the platform? Failure to do so might be severe, or it might be petty, in either case it should be fixed. In this instance…

Being inconsistent with the operating system and removing OS functionality is petty bullshit? Okay then.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#102

Post by pawelk »

prima-facie wrote: post #62

XUL was ahead of its time when it was introduced by Netscape/Mozilla many years ago. It was a capable XML based language used to describe rich graphical user interfaces. Together with XULRunner this was supposed to be a generic framework for creating graphical applications. This was long before HTML became what it is today. Back then people still thought Java would take off on the desktop. I believe that most Mozilla…

I built some personal desktop apps with XUL(Runner) ~ a decade ago, it was fun to use web technologies (markup, JS, CSS, web browser view with relaxed security etc) to create a cross-platform executable. I have recently played with Electron and got the impression that it barely scratches the surface of what was possible back then but makes up for this thanks to the advancements in JS performance & ES6 syntax, CSS features (like flex, which was part of XUL) and the huge ecosystem of third party libraries.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#103

Post by pault »

ajxs wrote: post #98

Isn't this the kind of thing we've been looking to move away from? I personally think that this modern trend of implementing, or even worse -porting-, important functionality in Javascript is very worrying. There was another recent controversial discussion of Electron on HN where I and many others shared our reservations about badly Electron apps perform overall. They're disproportionately resource intensive, shred b…

The problem with electron isn't JavaScript, it's running an entirely seperate instance of an infamously memory hogging web browser, that comes with an enormous amount of features that aren't utilized by the application. The JavaScript runtime itself is not going to cause noticable slowdowns or memory use, especially so if you already have one running anyway as is the case for Firefox.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#104

Post by sixplusone »

ajxs wrote: post #98

Isn't this the kind of thing we've been looking to move away from? I personally think that this modern trend of implementing, or even worse -porting-, important functionality in Javascript is very worrying. There was another recent controversial discussion of Electron on HN where I and many others shared our reservations about badly Electron apps perform overall. They're disproportionately resource intensive, shred b…

Unfortunately OS/WM/DE makers didn't provide a common API, so now web browsers are the "Lowest Common Denominator" for cross-platform apps.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#105

Post by marcosdumay »

tomc1985 wrote: post #91

Everyone celebrates this, as if it were something worth celebrating. Yet all I see is another stake through the heart of desktop and native UI.

Most people don't like native desktop UIs. What is a shame, because we still didn't get something as nice to program for the web.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#106

Post by jlengrand »

ng12 wrote: post #25
ravenstine wrote: post #15

Poor web components. Everybody rags on them.

Because the API is really ugly. I can't see them ever taking off except maybe as an implementation of another library with a cleaner API.

Which is exactly the point :). So good news!

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#107

Post by hnick »

steveklabnik wrote: post #83
user_50123890 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticket opened 20 years ago, damn.

There was a very old ticket that was closed recently when a component was re-written in Rust. I can't find a link right this second, but if you could have told the future, it's kinda amusing. "Sorry, we'll fix this, but first we have to invent a new programming language. We'll get back to you in a decade." Frankly, I think it's pretty amazing that bugs this old end up getting fixed. Not many projects live even live t…

> Frankly, I think it's pretty amazing that bugs this old end up getting fixed. Not many projects live even live that long, let alone keep up their infrastructure...

Our internal dev team has changed their feedback/requirements system 3 times in the last few years.

Motion without moving...

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#108

Post by albru123 »

Hamuko wrote: post #101
catalogia wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I expected, petty bullshit. Firefox should do those things if other applications do and it's reasonable to say as much, but to say that it's "garbage" for those reasons is completely out of proportion. Edit: Response to response: Didn't I just say that Firefox should conform to the standards of the platform? Failure to do so might be severe, or it might be petty, in either case it should be fixed. In this instance…

Being inconsistent with the operating system and removing OS functionality is petty bullshit? Okay then.

How is that removing if it wasn't there in the first place (AFAIK)?

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#109

Post by StanAngeloff »

girvo wrote: post #76
prima-facie wrote: post #62

XUL was ahead of its time when it was introduced by Netscape/Mozilla many years ago. It was a capable XML based language used to describe rich graphical user interfaces. Together with XULRunner this was supposed to be a generic framework for creating graphical applications. This was long before HTML became what it is today. Back then people still thought Java would take off on the desktop. I believe that most Mozilla…

For years I used Komodo IDE, which is (was?) written using XUL — writing plugins for it was a breeze even though the docs were a little lacking, because JavaScript and XUL got me exploring easily. I miss that editor. Now everyone’s moving away from it. Ahead of its time indeed!

Ah, Komodo! I wrote a bunch of extensions for it [1][2][3] that got me started with XUL. I loved both. XUL always felt like every feature you can think of was available and thoroughly thought out, you just had to discover it (not always straightforward given how lacking the documentation was, especially for internal/private APIs). XUL was way ahead of its time.

[1] https://github.com/StanAngeloff/komodo-html-toolkit [2] https://github.com/StanAngeloff/komodo-fuzzy-open [3] https://github.com/StanAngeloff/komodo-aero-theme

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#110

Post by pier25 »

Hamuko wrote: post #51

I'm waiting for Firefox to start using a native context menu on macOS instead of the garbage that they are now using and which doesn't behave anything like any other context menu on macOS. It's luckily on Bugzilla, so I can keep monitoring progress daily. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34572

Not only context menus, any type of alert is garbage.
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