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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

#201

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

war1025 wrote: post #143
Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of nostalgia: I created an application based on XULRunner at the end of high school. The project started out as a Firefox Extension, and since I wanted to create a standalone application, XULRunner was the obvious choice. I didn't know much programming, but it was, coupled with the excellent documentation on MDN, enough to get me started. What I remember best are the following few things: - XULRunner had an inc…

What was the application for? Just curious

Music. You could search for music, and the application would search a few mp3 sites for the track and play it automatically. Also, if the built-in browser detected music files or links embedded in the page, a bar popped up from the bottom offering to play the music.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#204

Post by jabl »

brailsafe wrote: post #66
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…

An app I use called Zotero uses XUL, though I believe they're trying to transition to Electron. It seemed like a potentially robust platform, but damn if I couldn't figure how it worked enough to even contribute a minor fix.

I think Zotero started out as a Firefox extension, and when Firefox deprecated those in favor of the new-style WebExtensions they saw the writing on the wall and converted it to a standalone XUL application.

The same team behind Zotero has another newer application called tropy (https://tropy.org/), which is based on Electron, and apparently they were happy with that and are indeed planning to transition Zotero to Electron as well.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#205

Post by aembleton »

pilif wrote: post #169
tzs wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of other non-native things Firefox does that annoy me. 1. It has its own certificate system. That would be fine if it used that in addition to using the MacOS built in system, but it seems to use it exclusively. 2. It has its own spell checker, which is orders of magnitude worse than the one provided by the native MacOS spell check API. I can't think of any program I've used in the last few years o…

> LibreOffice is open source and its spell checker is fine as far as I've seen Curious. Both LibreOffice and Firefox use Hunspell

and Chrome according to [1]. I guess LibreOffice has a more comprehensive dictionary.

1. https://hunspell.github.io/

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#206

Post by kqr »

marcthe12 wrote: post #177
tzs wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of other non-native things Firefox does that annoy me. 1. It has its own certificate system. That would be fine if it used that in addition to using the MacOS built in system, but it seems to use it exclusively. 2. It has its own spell checker, which is orders of magnitude worse than the one provided by the native MacOS spell check API. I can't think of any program I've used in the last few years o…

Web browser have a massive NIH issues.

Web browsers have practically become operating systems these days. I'm fully expecting someone to create a web browser web app at some point. Not as a joke, which has obviously been done before.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#207

Post by jabl »

paulrouget wrote: post #197
agumonkey wrote: post #54

Reminds me of the firefox.html protothingie someone showed a few years ago.

Yeah. It never took off. Really wanted to have a Firefox clone in with Servo + HTML UI. It looked very neat: http://paulrouget.com/bhtml/

Just like Servo never replaced Firefox outright, but components thereof were (and still are?) ported to Firefox, isn't this what effectively will happen eventually when they continue to get rid of XUL in favor of HTML?

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#208

Post by mathw »

topspin wrote: post #186
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…

> Back then people still thought Java would take off on the desktop. You know, I find myself using a substantial amount of Java desktop software. I license JetBrains products and earn part of my living using them. DBeaver is another frequently used tool. I've spent no small amount of time in Minecraft (the Java implementation.) Java desktop software even pops up in hobbies; SimSmith is one example. There are others.…

Java succeeded massively on the desktop, just not in quite the way people expected. We now run software that's written in Java without really knowing it's written in Java, with native wrappers and suchlike. Turns out the way to succeed is to hide, maybe.

After all, how many people know something like Slack is written with a web browser engine and a massive pile of JavaScript?

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#209

Post by mathw »

marcosdumay wrote: post #100
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…

From my POV, it didn't catch on because: - It had all the problems of Electron in a time where memory was a much more of an issue - Low quality documentation that didn't go into the details (although it had a great overview) - Performance problems due to the high abstraction level and bad JS interpreter - Memory leaking that appeared on several versions and disappeared on other versions, that randomly affected people…

I remember trying to write something in it and the performance was atrocious, it used masses of memory and I hadn't even really done much. I wasn't anything like the developer I am now back then of course, I was an undergraduate CS student, but still... also yes, the documentation was awful! The experience for an Electron developer today is far superior with documentation, performance and all sorts so much better before you even start doing work on making it go fast.

I'll pause now for my regular appreciation of what the Visual Studio Code team have managed to do with Electron.

Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components

#210

Post by gnomewascool »

jabl wrote: post #204
brailsafe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An app I use called Zotero uses XUL, though I believe they're trying to transition to Electron. It seemed like a potentially robust platform, but damn if I couldn't figure how it worked enough to even contribute a minor fix.

I think Zotero started out as a Firefox extension, and when Firefox deprecated those in favor of the new-style WebExtensions they saw the writing on the wall and converted it to a standalone XUL application. The same team behind Zotero has another newer application called tropy ( https://tropy.org/ ), which is based on Electron, and apparently they were happy with that and are indeed planning to transition Zotero to…

> I think Zotero started out as a Firefox extension, and when Firefox deprecated those in favor of the new-style WebExtensions they saw the writing on the wall and converted it to a standalone XUL application.

To add a bit more detail / a slight correction: Zotero did indeed start purely as a Firefox extension, but Zotero Standalone was released in 2011[0], far before the switch to WebExtensions. For a while, the Firefox extension and Zotero standalone were equally featured — i.e. you could use just the Firefox extension, or use Zotero standalone + the Chromium connector extension, and in both cases you'd get the same functionality. After the switch to WebExtensions, the Firefox extension was reduced to being purely a connector, just like the Chromium one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zotero#Zotero_Standalone

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