Re: [GTALUG] Mozilla XUL is dead

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2020-08-25 2:45 p.m., William Park via talk wrote:

So, what does it mean for newbies?  Jump to WebExtensions?


Yes. Though I'm a little surprised that all this is coming out now, as 
Firefox Quantum arrived in 2017, and XUL stopped being useful with it. 
Maybe it's the ex-Mozillians released from NDAs?


 Stewart

---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] Mozilla XUL is dead

[William Park via talk]

So, what does it mean for newbies?  Jump to WebExtensions?
-- 
William Park 

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 11:23:15AM -0400, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/
> 
> Pretty interesting article on how Firefox has been evolving over the last
> 15-ish years.
> 
> I remember when Wrox Press asked me if I knew of anyone that knew about
> XUL, because their "hype wagon" thought that XUL was the next big thing,
> and they wanted a book on that.  And it was, though after a fashion much
> smaller than I expect Wrox was imagining.
> 
> XUL and XPCOM (which is kinda like COM, which was Microsoft's fork of DCE's
> DCOM, which was an extendible API system kinda like CORBA...) are now being
> actively deprecated.  A pain in the neck to anyone that had devoted a lot
> of resources to XUL, but probably not something others care about terribly
> much.
> 
> -- 
> When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
> question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

> ---
> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
> Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] Mozilla XUL is dead

[Christopher Browne via talk]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 12:10, Russell Reiter  wrote:

> Not specifically XUL related but I find this quick read interesting. It
> seems that API's used for managing IoT endpoints are coming under ever
> increasing threat of attack from botnets during the pandemic and probably
> from now on.
>
>
> https://www.cequence.ai/blog/tales-from-the-front-lines-attackers-on-lockdown-focus-on-apis/
>
>

Not XUL-related, but I can see why you'd go there.

Yeah, if internal application APIs can cross network boundaries, then
they'll make nice targets for security attacks.

And the "XUL-like" aspect is that it's easy for these APIs to emerge, get
used in applications, head out onto the InterWebz, and then moulder away,
not being upgraded based on modern security exploits (e.g. - if there's any
crypto in XUL, it's easily plausible for its design to be circa 1997, when
XUL came about, and certainly wouldn't have fixes for exploits post-2017,
when it started getting deprecated).

I suppose that's much the same problem as with Flash.  Much hated, but much
used, and people kept needing to run it even well after it got deprecated.

The more that APIs are auto-generated, such that the programmers might not
even be aware that anything *is* getting generated, yeah, I see that making
for good targets for those looking for vulnerabilities.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

Re: [GTALUG] Mozilla XUL is dead

[Russell Reiter via talk]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 11:23 AM Christopher Browne via talk <
talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

> https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/
>
> Pretty interesting article on how Firefox has been evolving over the last
> 15-ish years.
>
> I remember when Wrox Press asked me if I knew of anyone that knew about
> XUL, because their "hype wagon" thought that XUL was the next big thing,
> and they wanted a book on that.  And it was, though after a fashion much
> smaller than I expect Wrox was imagining.
>
> XUL and XPCOM (which is kinda like COM, which was Microsoft's fork of
> DCE's DCOM, which was an extendible API system kinda like CORBA...) are now
> being actively deprecated.  A pain in the neck to anyone that had devoted a
> lot of resources to XUL, but probably not something others care about
> terribly much.
>

Not specifically XUL related but I find this quick read interesting. It
seems that API
's
used for managing IoT endpoints are coming under ever increasing threat of
attack from botnets during the pandemic and probably from now on.

https://www.cequence.ai/blog/tales-from-the-front-lines-attackers-on-lockdown-focus-on-apis/


>
> --
> When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
> question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
> ---
> Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
> Unsubscribe from this mailing list
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>


-- 
Russell
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

[GTALUG] Mozilla XUL is dead

[Christopher Browne via talk]

https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-addons/

Pretty interesting article on how Firefox has been evolving over the last
15-ish years.

I remember when Wrox Press asked me if I knew of anyone that knew about
XUL, because their "hype wagon" thought that XUL was the next big thing,
and they wanted a book on that.  And it was, though after a fashion much
smaller than I expect Wrox was imagining.

XUL and XPCOM (which is kinda like COM, which was Microsoft's fork of DCE's
DCOM, which was an extendible API system kinda like CORBA...) are now being
actively deprecated.  A pain in the neck to anyone that had devoted a lot
of resources to XUL, but probably not something others care about terribly
much.

-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
---
Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk