Comments on: XUL Explorer – Updated!

By: Mark Finkle

Mark Finkle — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:08:04 +0000

@aharvey – Known (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462561)

Fix is coming up soon.

By: aharvey

aharvey — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:39:41 +0000

Hi – I installed XULExplorer and have been unable to use File | New Extension on either Mac or Windows. Here’s the error and maybe I am just doing something wrong. Is this feature functional in the 1.0a1pre release?

[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004002 (NS_NOINTERFACE) [nsISupports.QueryInterface]” nsresult: “0×80004002 (NS_NOINTERFACE)” location: “JS frame :: chrome://explorer/content/tools/extension-project.js :: anonymous :: line 85″ data: no]

By: Fabien Tassin

Fabien Tassin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 03:11:54 +0000

I just prepared preview packages for Ubuntu (both Intrepid and Hardy). I’ll try to get xul explorer officially in the next release of Ubuntu (Jaunty, aka 9.04).

My packaging code is linked to the project page in Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/xul-explorer

Mark: do you have a nice logo that could be used there?

By: Mark Finkle

Mark Finkle — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:28:03 +0000

@Jason Oster – Currently, Firebug doesn’t debug XUL. Chromebug is the work-in-progress to rectify that situation.

By: Jason Oster

Jason Oster — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:25:05 +0000

Personally, I prefer Firebug over both Venkman and DOM Inspector. XUL Explorer is a great prototyping tool, and having Firebug would make debugging a snap.

By: Paul Medlock

Paul Medlock — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:52:32 +0000

Sorry, it doesn’t display correctly when you click the link. You have to save-link-as and then use the File/Open file menuitem in Firefox.

By: Paul Medlock

Paul Medlock — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:48:29 +0000

Mark, If you have a few minutes, I would like to offer several ideas for an IDE by way of some XUL that I wrote a few months ago. It’s at http://paul.medlock.com/xuleditor.xul. It’s incomplete and has some bugs, but the layout should tell you what I have in mind.

Especially the left tabbed panel and the Information tab panel where you would click the XUL entity about which you want information, and the appropriate Mozilla page shows up in the Information tab.

Any ideas that you like and want to incorporate into XULExplorer would be great, just as long as you don’t mind that I, too, can “plagiarize” your XUL.

Anyone else want to finish this IDE, feel welcome to do so. Do what you can, leave your name in the comments, and pass it around until it’s done. I don’t know how it could be passed around, but if anyone is interested, I imagine there is a way. The project is fairly ambitious. I just would like to have a copy of it myself. Eventually, I would like to incorporate it into another IDE I’ve written for translating XUL into Java Swing, C# .Net, etc.

By: skierpage

skierpage — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:38:22 +0000

Sorry, ignore the bit about unins000.exe, it showed up when I refreshed my folder view.

By: skierpage

skierpage — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:11:33 +0000

I installed on Windows XP but chose not to install the XULRunner runtime. It created an “Uninstall XUL Explorer” start menu item that points to …\XUL Explorer\unins000.exe , but I don’t have that executable.

I changed application.ini to MaxVersion=1.9.1.* and it works fine with Firefox 3.1 nightlies using the
>”C:\Program Files\path\to\firefox.exe” -app /path/to/xulexplorer/application.ini
trick Very nice! I get a a resize triangle with odd location and behavior if I put a progressmeter in a statusbar.

I think XUL apps would get more uptake if they were also packaged as lean “Run this with Firefox 3″ packages. It’s currently too hacky, I still have to create a start menu shortcut and there’s no icon. Could they be packaged with a “Run XUL Explorer” batch file or executable that has the program’s icon and if necessary asks “Please locate your XULRunner or Firefox 3 program” and remembers it thereafter?

Cheers