Mozilla

XULRunner provides a lot of core functionality, but if you’re writing an application that is not a web browser or email client, you might feel some pieces are missing or not supported as well as they could. You may even have a list. Here’s mine:

We’ve been pretty busy around here with various sorts of things, but we finally got enough time to get XUL Explorer (XE) 0.4 out the door. XE 0.4 has some neat features that we hope will help Mozilla platform developers (extensions and applications) be a little more productive. The highlights include:

Alex Sirota started using WebRunner to host Google Reader. The result is a desktop application-like version of Google Reader.

The schedule for the Tokyo developer conference is really coming together. I’ll be giving separate presentations on FUEL and XUL Runner with some moderated Q&A. There seems to be a lot of sessions on various aspects of extension development. From tutorials and development environments to AMO submission and reviewing. There will also be several lightning talks from various extension authors. I am interested to see how the “extension dissection” session turns out. The session will be devoted to discussions of how various extension “do” what they “do”.

Currently, I am adding bookmark wrappers to FUEL 0.2 using the new Places API. As I do, I am just struck by how much functionality is exposed by the new API. Accessing bookmarks is a common request for extension developers. The old bookmark service isn’t as easy to use (IMO), mainly due to the amount of RDF that is seeping out of it. The new bookmarks and annotation services are very straight forward and clear. Here are some of my highlights so far:

Cesar and I have been working on stuff from the feature plan. The XUL Explorer trunk has support for DOM Inpsector and Venkman (JavaScript debugger). Future releases will bundle those extensions with XUL Explorer. Cesar has a patch for adding extension testing support. I have the basics of an extension generation wizard in place. Both of those features will be in the next release too.