XULRunner Milestone Builds

Good news for developers who are building applications on the Mozilla platform, XULRunner in particular. The wheels are in motion to start creating XULRunner builds (runtime and SDK) that coincide with major Firefox milestones. I encourage interested developers to watch the bug to see how the discussion and plan evolves.

This is a big deal for developers building and embedding applications using the Mozilla platform. Currently, the only official Mozilla build of XULRunner is an out-of-date 1.8.0.4 version. Builds based on snapshots of Firefox milestones will go a long way to creating a stable platform to build gecko-based applications.

As a platform Mozilla has a lot going for it: maturity, flexibility, standards & openness. At the same time, there is certainly more that could be done to make the platform approachable to new developers, maintainable to established Mozilla-based projects and suitable for a variety of application types. Your feedback is always appreciated. It’s ok if you just want to vent, but ideas for improving the situation are even better.