A Brief Introduction To XULRunner: Part 1 - Revision history

Parasyte: /* That Doesn't Help Much. I Need More Persuasion! */

2009-10-21T06:21:43Z

‎That Doesn't Help Much. I Need More Persuasion!

Parasyte: /* That Doesn't Help Much. I Need More Persuasion! */

2009-10-21T06:19:35Z

‎That Doesn't Help Much. I Need More Persuasion!

Parasyte: /* XULRunner vs. wxWidgets */

2009-10-21T06:09:51Z

‎XULRunner vs. wxWidgets

Parasyte: /* XULRunner vs. Java/.NET */

2009-10-21T06:07:55Z

‎XULRunner vs. Java/.NET

Parasyte: /* Alright, So You Mean My Program Still has to be Written in JavaScript? */

2009-10-21T06:07:32Z

‎Alright, So You Mean My Program Still has to be Written in JavaScript?

Parasyte: /* Alright, So You Mean My Program Still has to be Written in JavaScript? */

2009-10-21T06:04:29Z

‎Alright, So You Mean My Program Still has to be Written in JavaScript?

Parasyte: /* Oh, So Why Would Anyone Want to Use XPConnect? */

2009-10-21T06:02:31Z

‎Oh, So Why Would Anyone Want to Use XPConnect?

Parasyte: /* Oh, So Why Would Anyone Want to Use XPConnect? */

2009-10-21T06:02:07Z

‎Oh, So Why Would Anyone Want to Use XPConnect?

Parasyte: /* What Makes XULRunner a Platform? */

2009-10-21T05:57:50Z

‎What Makes XULRunner a Platform?

Parasyte: /* How to Use XULRunner */ Fix link

2009-10-20T23:01:05Z

‎How to Use XULRunner: Fix link

@@ Line 93: / Line 93: @@
 Another nice thing about XULRunner is its ability to be skinned and themed. If you are writing a digital audio workstation, and want to keep your application within the mood of other DAWs, you might want to make a totally custom theme for it that looks nothing at all like the native OS GUI. Media players often do this as well. Then there's the option of making your program look even MORE like the OS GUI, by slightly tweaking the default widget stylesheet to more closely match other native applications.
-Internationalization and accessibility! (i18n and a11y) Even if you don't need these features, someone out there might appreciate them! You might have had experience with a program in the past which was written in a language you do not speak. Wouldn't it be nice if you could open that program in a text editor and run all of the user-facing text strings through an automated translator? You could potentially make that program readable and usable in about an hour, depending on how much there is to translate. But this usually isn't the state of things. Most programs are compiled with only one language. That makes them difficult to modify, and make usable to anyone of a different nationality.
+Internationalization and accessibility! (i18n and a11y) Even if you don't need these features, someone out there might appreciate them! You might have had experience with a program in the past which was written in a language you do not speak. Wouldn't it be nice if you could open that program in a text editor and run all of the user-facing text strings through an automated translator? You could potentially make that program readable and usable in about an hour, depending on how much there is to translate. But this usually isn't the state of things. Most programs are compiled with only one language. That makes them difficult to modify, and also makes them nearly unusable to anyone of a different nationality.
-With XULRunner, your applications can be built from scratch with i18n awareness, and they really can be easy to translate. It's a similar story with a11y; blind users and the hearing-impaired should be able to use your program with screen readers and visual feedback.
+With XULRunner, your applications can be built from scratch with i18n awareness, and they really can be easy to translate. It's a similar story with a11y; visually- and hearing-impaired users should be able to use your program with screen readers and visual feedback.
 Scriptability!!! If you wanted to automate some complex feature in your application, you can just tie those features together with JavaScript. Even let your users write their own little scripts to automate tasks or extend the application's usefulness for themselves. The best part is, this is totally free to you: full JavaScript support is already included, so why not make it user-facing?

@@ Line 91: / Line 91: @@
 Hypothetically, if a user of your XULRunner application wrote an extension that you really liked, you could integrate that extension into your application as a standard feature. This is how a lot of experimental features are done for Firefox, even. You could also pull out a feature that you think really doesn't belong in your application core, and make it an extension only, so that users may optionally install that feature if they want it.
-Another nice thing about XULRunner is its ability to be skinned and themed. If you are writing a digital audio workstation, and want to keep your within the mood of other DAWs, you might want to make a totally custom theme for it that looks nothing at all like the native OS GUI. Media players often do this as well. There's also the option to make your program look even MORE like the OS GUI, by slightly tweaking the default widget stylesheet to more closely match other native applications.
+Another nice thing about XULRunner is its ability to be skinned and themed. If you are writing a digital audio workstation, and want to keep your application within the mood of other DAWs, you might want to make a totally custom theme for it that looks nothing at all like the native OS GUI. Media players often do this as well. Then there's the option of making your program look even MORE like the OS GUI, by slightly tweaking the default widget stylesheet to more closely match other native applications.
 Internationalization and accessibility! (i18n and a11y) Even if you don't need these features, someone out there might appreciate them! You might have had experience with a program in the past which was written in a language you do not speak. Wouldn't it be nice if you could open that program in a text editor and run all of the user-facing text strings through an automated translator? You could potentially make that program readable and usable in about an hour, depending on how much there is to translate. But this usually isn't the state of things. Most programs are compiled with only one language. That makes them difficult to modify, and make usable to anyone of a different nationality.

@@ Line 79: / Line 79: @@
 ===XULRunner vs. wxWidgets===
-wxWidgets is a native OS widget toolkit written in C++. Almost all widgets provided by wxWidgets are native to your OS. They will look and feel right at home no matter where your run your application (if you can build it to run anywhere, that is). However, some operating systems do not provide all types of widgets that wxWidgets supports. Such widgets will be "emulated" with non-native widgets.
+wxWidgets is a native OS widget toolkit written in C++. Almost all widgets provided by wxWidgets are native to your OS. They will look and feel right at home no matter where you run your application (if you can build it to run anywhere, that is). However, some operating systems do not provide all types of widgets that wxWidgets supports. Such widgets will be "emulated" with non-native widgets.
 On Linux, wxWidgets always uses GTK+, even under KDE. So it will have the same problems as running a GTK+ app in a KDE desktop environment. XULRunner also only uses GTK+ under Linux.

@@ Line 67: / Line 67: @@
 By contrast, XULRunner tries to mimic the native operating system GUI as closely as possible. That means it does not use 100% native OS widgets (and it would never work like that! Remember, XULRunner applications are styled with CSS) but it does make an attempt to look and feel exactly like a real OS GUI.
-Java and .NET use statically compiled byte code interpreters, meaning the application's source code is compiled before it can be used. XULRunner uses JavaScript, which is scriptable and never needs to be compiled. This can make development times very rapid. It can also make JavaScript interpretation slower than either Java or C#. Recently however, Mozilla has been working on making their JavaScript implementation run with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, to produce very efficient (and very fast) JavaScript execution in native code. That means JavaScript is recently a whole lot faster than it used to be (this is new in Firefox version 3.5, the JIT compiler is called "Tracemonkey").
+Java and .NET use statically compiled byte code interpreters, meaning the application's source code is compiled before it can be used. XULRunner uses JavaScript, which is scriptable and never needs to be compiled. This can make development times very rapid. It can also make JavaScript interpretation slower than either Java or C#. Recently however, Mozilla has been working on making their JavaScript implementation run with Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, to produce very efficient (and very fast) JavaScript execution in native code. That means JavaScript is recently a whole lot faster than it used to be (this is new in Firefox version 3.5, Tracemonkey is its JIT compiler).
 ===XULRunner vs. GTK+/QT===

@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 But all is not lost! JavaScript is really a wonderful and extremely powerful programming language. It's not just a simple scripting language that makes web browser users' eyes bleed. When used properly and responsibly, JavaScript can be coaxed into building things like, well, Firefox! And pretty much every add-on extension for Firefox, or even your own full-fledged application.
-JavaScript is also a lot faster than you might think, starting with XULRunner version 1.9.1 (which Firefox 3.5 is based on). The technology within XULRunner that makes JavaScript so fast is called TraceMonkey.
+JavaScript is also a lot faster than you might think, starting with XULRunner version 1.9.1 (which Firefox 3.5 is based on). The technology within XULRunner that makes JavaScript so fast is called "Tracemonkey".
 ==Why Use XULRunner?==

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:04, 21 October 2009
Line 52:		Line 52:

	But all is not lost! JavaScript is really a wonderful and extremely powerful programming language. It's not just a simple scripting language that makes web browser users' eyes bleed. When used properly and responsibly, JavaScript can be coaxed into building things like, well, Firefox! And pretty much every add-on extension for Firefox, or even your own full-fledged application.		But all is not lost! JavaScript is really a wonderful and extremely powerful programming language. It's not just a simple scripting language that makes web browser users' eyes bleed. When used properly and responsibly, JavaScript can be coaxed into building things like, well, Firefox! And pretty much every add-on extension for Firefox, or even your own full-fledged application.
		+
		+	JavaScript is also a lot faster than you might think, starting with XULRunner version 1.9.1 (which Firefox 3.5 is based on). The technology within XULRunner that makes JavaScript so fast is called TraceMonkey.

	==Why Use XULRunner?==		==Why Use XULRunner?==

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 ===Oh, So Why Would Anyone Want to Use XPConnect?===
-Because it allows you to do things that ordinary JavaScript cannot! For example, JavaScript has no concept of file I/O. But C++ does. Writing an XPCOM component in C++ to do simple file I/O operations can effectively give JavaScript a means to open files for reading and writing, and doing other similar things like directory traversal. This is how JavaScript is capable of being used to develop real-world desktop applications; XULRunner contains a lot of these XPCom components by default. File I/O and directory traversal are included out-of-the-box, for instance.
+Because it allows you to do things that ordinary JavaScript cannot! For example, JavaScript has no concept of file I/O. But C++ does. Writing an XPCOM component in C++ to do simple file I/O operations can effectively give JavaScript a means to open files for reading and writing, and doing other similar things like directory traversal. This is how JavaScript is capable of being used to develop real-world desktop applications; XULRunner contains a lot of these XPCOM components by default. File I/O and directory traversal are included out-of-the-box, for instance.
 ===Hey, Slow Down! What's this XPCOM Thing, Now?===

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 XULRunner is also kind of like the .NET framework. The .NET framework is also a VM, like Java. And .NET is also a framework of objects and classes, again like Java. One thing that makes .NET different from Java is that .NET is not a programming language; .NET programs are typically written in the C# language.
-However, XULRunner is not .NET, and it is not Java. The main thing that XULRunner shares with these technologies is that it is also a frameworf for cross-platform application development. In some ways, it even competes directly with .NET and Java.
+However, XULRunner is not .NET, and it is not Java. The main thing that XULRunner shares with these technologies is that it is also a framework for cross-platform application development. In some ways, it even competes directly with .NET and Java.
 ===How Does Firefox Fit into the XULRunner Equation?===

@@ Line 103: / Line 103: @@
 ==How to Use XULRunner==
-Continue to [[A_Brief_Introduction_To_XULRunner:_Part_1|Part 2]].
+Continue to [[A Brief Introduction To XULRunner: Part 2|Part 2]].
 [[Category:Developer_Documentation]]