Hi Pavel and all!
On 10/10/2012 02:15 PM, Pavel Krivanek wrote:
About XUL, what is your impression about its future and, do you plan
some replacement for it in the future, maybe with full HTML5, Amber
based maybe?
XUL not fulfilled the expectations that have been inserted into it.
The only big vendor that supports it is Mozilla. A the role of native
non-web applications will certainly gradually decrease. So I have long
wondered if I should devote time to this project.
But XULRunner is actively developed and certainly in the long term
will also. It is good enough for our needs and it is very close to the
web development so possible future switch to HTML5 or something
similar would be natural. From this point it is maybe better time
investition than native UI bindings.
The XULRunner is very much such a "UI player" that I have envisioned for
over 20 years. Given the diversity of UI platforms these days I have
always thought the concept would gain more attraction - not less.
On the other hand - the "no install" argument for pure web apps is still
very strong.
One thing that could really boost the attractiveness of XUL is if we had
runners for iPhone/Android/WP8 etc. Quick googling shows a bit of
discussion, but no such beasts?
If I will need it for some project (or if someone will support it), I
will modify it for the web development too.
I really think you should consider talking a bit to Nicolas and take a
look at what he has been doing with Amber plus Pharo backend (in
SmalltalkHub for example) using Magritte and Promises etc.
Amber has a Seaside-canvas style UI framework with components called
"widgets" etc, and taking your work in XUL and putting it into Amber
seems like a perfect fit IMHO.
And it would also create a really nice native UI Smalltalk IDE. :)
regards, Göran
