Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Finally I dont have to keep secrets...

Author:cameron@alphanumerica.com
Posted:4/5/2000; 1:27:32 PM
Topic:Finally I dont have to keep secrets...
Msg #:15964 (In response to 15951)
Prev/Next:15963 / 15965

Much kudos goes out to the Mozilla development team for their incredible job of re-writing the browser. Instead of a GUI being locked into a piece of software code, Mozilla (and Netscape 6 to some extent) can display any GUI written in XUL.

What's truly amazing is that XUL is simply a subset of XML. It uses CSS and Javascript (DHTML) to control the functionality of the GUI, allowing any competent web designer or interface designer to quickly apply a new GUI to Mozilla (or their web application built using Mozilla).

For instance, it took me a mere two weeks to design a new GUI (called Sullivan) and change the XUL files in Mozilla to display it instead of the default GUI. And I know next to nothing about Javascript. Amazing.

Sullivan: http://www.alphanumerica.com/projects/mozilla/skins/sullivan/ http://www.mozillazine.org/chromezone/component.html?component=17

Just the idea of using the browser's HTML rendering engine (called Gecko) to draw the browser's own GUI is an amazing concept indeed. This completely opens up the customization options for Mozilla, allowing developers to do just about anything their minds can think of. And because Mozilla is open source, new functionality can easily be added without a lot of fuss (ActiveX, etc.)

This is good news for Netscape 6, as it's codebase is the same as Mozilla's. Any new innovation that's checked into Mozilla can easily be added to future revisions of the consumer Netscape browser.

Mozilla also will be very big in the web applications market. Because it's open source *and* standards-compliant, it has a better foothold for future growth than the closed and proprietary browsers that most of today's web applications are built upon.

I can't wait.

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