Mozilla

I put together a simple XUL validator based on the ideas in my last post. There is a primitive front end where you can put XUL into a textarea and validate it. The validator is completely client-side JavaScript with a simple JSON rules file. You can view the source and the rules from the validator “Tests” page.

A validator for XUL could be a good idea. I am thinking about something more than just ‘schema’ validation. Something to help with best practices and accessibility. Maybe ‘validator’ isn’t the right word. Here are some checks that could be useful:

A few common questions seem to be asked a lot, especially by developers new to the Mozilla platform. So, I wanted to draw attention to some relevant articles on the Mozilla Developers Center (MDC).

I was a little surprised how “popular” my XUL/E post became. The demo viewer page alone has over double the hits of the second place page. In that post, I demonstrated how Mozilla’s rendering engine (Gecko) could be embedded in Internet Explorer and used to display rich XUL applications and advanced SVG and canvas graphics. Of course, XUL/E is a play on Microsoft’s brand-new-fantastic-sliced-bread WPF/E technology and Mozilla is not mounting a XUL/E initiative (but I can dare to dream).

Even though Firefox 3 is only in early alpha, you can still see a list of new features available to web and extension developers. The list will be updated as development continues.

Cédric Savarese has a demo of using XUL to make a richer HTML form. Cédric’s approach is different than my XUL-in-Internet Explorer idea. His method only uses XUL in a XUL-enabled browser (Firefox, SeaMonkey or Netscape). In other browsers, it falls back to DHTML elements.

Removing obstacles for extension developers is my group’s primary task at Mozilla. There are lots of ways we can do this and areas include documentation, tutorials, samples and tools. One thing that becomes clear after watching and helping extension developers is the difficulty some have getting familiar with the Mozilla framework and the plethora of object and interfaces available. Not only are some of the concepts foreign, but in many cases there are no clear ways for extension developers to achieve their goals. There are places to get help. The Mozilla’s IRC channels are a great place to ask questions, especially #extdev.