XULRunner Wishlist

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:

• Interprocess Communication (bug 68702)
• Window transparency on all platforms (bug 307204)
• Hiding the main window menu on Macs
• Adding application to the system tray or appropriate location for other platforms (bug 325353)
• Allow extensions to be associated with the runtime and not only with applications (bug 299716)
• XUL Templates based on XML or SQL (bug 321171 and bug 321172)

These features are not critical “must haves” in order to build a good desktop application. Some of them just make it easier. Others are nice to have in the toolkit and not in patches or code that results in a custom build of XULRunner.

While I’m at it, here’s a list of developer “features” I’d like to see:

• Simple (not perl scripts) tool for MAR file generation so applications can upgrade themselves
• Tools to generate scaffolding for new application projects
• Venkman (or other debugger) added to the runtime so applications can be debugged easily (sort of bug 342590)
• DOM and Event libraries for XUL
• Packager to “build” applications from XUL & JS

Feel free to share yours. The Mozpad group is working on a list too.