Remember when a tab freezing didn't make Firefox's UI chrome unresponsive? I do, too.
Web 4.0 is the internet of race conditions. Thanks, javascript everywhere.
What? JavaScript is a single threaded language...
The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
71–80 of 260 posts
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#72I built a userChrome.js replacement [+] back when FF 57 came around, that uses an XBL loophole to permit users to add custom javascript to their profiles that would run in the browser context. I wanted to be able to use pre-OS X Lion fullscreen mode, and couldn't find any other way to do it.
I'm a little bummed that this loophole is going away in FF 72 (I still can't get pre-Lion fullscreen!). On the other hand, it has always been super clear that this is a loophole that will eventually go away, and I did get 2 years of use out of it, so I'm not complaining too loudly. Congrats to the team for removing XBL!
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, chrome UI is also web components in many places.
Do you mean that it is OK to have messy code as long as your competitors do too or do you mean that since chrome is doing it, it can't result in messy code?
I see no connection between WC's and messy code. Can bo good, can be bad.
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it. Javascript would have categorically improved on this compared to more traditional multi-threaded solutions.
You can still have race conditions in single-threaded async code.
Well I don't think that could technically be considered a race condition, as it's clearly a design problem in the code causing what would appear to be a "pseudo" race condition.
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#75I'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
So what would a native context menu actually do for me?
Allow the context menu to close when releasing right-click outside the menu for example. There's a ticket for that as well.
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#76XUL 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!
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#77XUL 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…
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 included application update mechanism. You basically created a diff between two application versions and placed that on a server. XULRunner would automatically detect it and apply it. No configuration needed. This was huge.
- XULRunner obviously had a built-in browser. Using a few XML elements, you could embed a browser view.
- Porting from a Firefox extension to a standalone application was very easy. Add some boilerplate and you are done. Pretty much no need to change the application code.
- Since my application didn't include any native code, it was automatically cross platform. And it integrated beautifully into all platforms.
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#78I built a userChrome.js replacement [+] back when FF 57 came around, that uses an XBL loophole to permit users to add custom javascript to their profiles that would run in the browser context. I wanted to be able to use pre-OS X Lion fullscreen mode, and couldn't find any other way to do it. I'm a little bummed that this loophole is going away in FF 72 (I still can't get pre-Lion fullscreen!). On the other hand, it h…
It’s been so long that I genuinely can’t remember what that full screen mode looked like! Do you have a screenshot by any chance?
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#79People seem to love laggy web-sights, let's port the lag into the browser's UI!
Firefox has always been built with DOM, JS, CSS technologies, as the linked article calls out. This change replaces a large proprietary extension, XBL, with a standard equivalent.
Calling XBL a proprietary is weird when considering that it is published by w3c and that firefox is FOSS.
> Firefox has always been built with DOM, JS, CSS technologies, as the linked article calls out
I am aware of that (and imo, it was a mistake). That however does not mean that moving to more web-y stuff will not make the performance any worse.
Re: The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components
#80I'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
So what would a native context menu actually do for me?
Services is one which annoys me a lot. I have a few around text edition and formatting, not having them in firefox is quite inconvenient.