XUL Tutorial
http://www.xulplanet.com/
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The XUL Tutorial was created by Neil Deakin, upload by thp117
1. Introduction
Introduction
This tutorial guides you to learning XUL (XML User-interface Language) which is a cross-platform language for describing user interfaces of applications.
This tutorial will demonstrate creating a simple find file user interface, much like that provided by the Macintosh's Sherlock or the find file dialog in Windows. Note that only the user interface will be created and some limited functionality. The actual finding of files will be not be implemented. A blue line will appear to the left of a paragraph where the find file dialog is being modified. You can follow along at these sections.
What is XUL and why was it created?
XUL (pronounced zool and it rhymes with cool) was created to make development of the Mozilla browser easier and faster. It is an XML language so all features available to XML are also available to XUL.
Most applications need to be developed using features of a specific platform making building cross-platform software time-consuming and costly. A number of cross-platform solutions have been developed in the past. Java, for example, has portability as a main selling point. XUL is one such language designed specifically for building portable user interfaces. It takes a long time to build an application even for only one platform. The time required to compile and debug can be lengthy. With XUL, an interface can be implemented and modified quickly and easily.
XUL has all the advantages of other XML languages. For example XHTML or other XML languages such as MathML or SVG can be inserted within it. Also, text displayed with XUL is easily localizable, which means that it can be translated into other languages with little effort.
What kinds of user-interfaces can be made with XUL?
XUL provides the ability to create most elements found in modern graphical interfaces. Some elements that can be created are:
Input controls such as textboxes and checkboxes
Toolbars with buttons or other content
Menus on a menu bar or pop up menus
Tabbed dialogs
Trees for hierarchical or tabular information
Keyboard shortcuts
The displayed content can be created from the contents of a XUL file or with data from a datasource. In Mozilla, such datasources include a user's mailbox, their bookmarks and search results. The contents of menus, trees and other elements can be populated with this data, or with your own data supplied in an RDF file.
There are several ways that XUL applications are created:
Firefox extension - an extension adds functionality to the browser itself, often in the form of extra toolbars, context menus, or UI to customize the browser UI. This is done using a feature of XUL called an overlay, which allows the UI provided from one source, in this case, the Firefox browser, to be merged together with the UI from the extension. Extensions may also be applied to other Mozilla based products such as Thunderbird.
Standalone XULRunner application - XULRunner is a packaged version of the Mozilla platform which allows you to create standalone XUL applications. A browser isn't required to run these applications, as they have their own executable file.
