Pale Moon forum

Or you need to update it? After digging up old posts on this forum praising the good old technology and compared the UXP with Electron (our Chromium based counterpart), I decided to actually learn more about it. I read the documents on RealityRipple's site. What I find out? XUL is not anyway comparable to HTML5! XUL has very few widgets available compared to HTML5. Even on the document acknowledge this and said we could mix HTML inside XUL for more widgets but not without caveats. Maybe the decision of the Thunderbird guys to change all .xul to .xhtml is a right decision. Either update XUL to add more widgets and abilities, or just leave to move to HTML5. I don't think there will be any problems with a HTML5 based XUL. After all XUL is just a markup language!

p/s: I'm telling XUL as a markup language not the technology. Please make it clear.

Well, the problem with HTML5 is that it's mostly designed around mobile and the stuff generated in it usually looks terrible on desktop. It isn't particularly good at generating native desktop styling. Extending XUL to do more things is on the roadmap, but we have to spend a lot of time working on the browser engine, plus we are very concerned with trying not to break the existing extensions that people rely on.

Your reasoning isn't necessarily unsound, but this project mostly exists to preserve XUL. If you want something that uses HTML5 and has a more modern design, that already exists. I'm not sure why you want to push this project in the same direction already taken by everything else. I don't think most of the people working on this are very interested in that idea.

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 03:47

Well, the problem with HTML5 is that it's mostly designed around mobile and the stuff generated in it usually looks terrible on desktop. It isn't particularly good at generating native desktop styling. Extending XUL to do more things is on the roadmap, but we have to spend a lot of time working on the browser engine, plus we are very concerned with trying not to break the existing extensions that people rely on.

Your reasoning isn't necessarily unsound, but this project mostly exists to preserve XUL. If you want something that uses HTML5 and has a more modern design, that already exists. I'm not sure why you want to push this project in the same direction already taken by everything else. I don't think most of the people working on this are very interested in that idea.

Updating XUL markup language to be more competence is not conflicting with preserve old XUL and improving the engine. What I propose is importing widgets from HTML5 so when writing XUL you no longer have to embed HTML elements into it. The engine is in bad shape but good enough to power the rendering of XUL. Updating to allow the users able to make beautiful appearance GUI is another way to impress more people to contribute. What you said about HTML5 being mobile first is wrong and the reality is different. HTML5 based app looks good. XUL based app lacking of widgets and looks primitive. From what you said I know you have not revisited any Electron based app recently. Your knowledge is of the distant past and well outdated. The fact is HTML5 looks good on any platforms.

nguyen9173 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 08:03

HTML5 based app looks good. XUL based app lacking of widgets and looks primitive. From what you said I know you have not revisited any Electron based app recently. Your knowledge is of the distant past and well outdated. The fact is HTML5 looks good on any platforms.

I use plenty of Electron-based apps, grudgingly of course. I think they look terrible and seem badly designed. They always look much worse than the old Win32 counterparts and have this ugly mobile-first design. This opinion isn't based on the past, I still see these apps and curse at their interfaces on a regular basis. If you think it looks good, then good for you, you'll be happy with what's popular.

I'm not ruling out adding widgets to XUL at some point, but talking as if HTML5 is just universally better for everything is silly. It seems like you don't really get what this project is about...

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 08:10

nguyen9173 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 08:03

HTML5 based app looks good. XUL based app lacking of widgets and looks primitive. From what you said I know you have not revisited any Electron based app recently. Your knowledge is of the distant past and well outdated. The fact is HTML5 looks good on any platforms.

I use plenty of Electron-based apps, grudgingly of course. I think they look terrible and seem badly designed. They always look much worse than the old Win32 counterparts and have this ugly mobile-first design. This opinion isn't based on the past, I still see these apps and curse at their interfaces on a regular basis. If you think it looks good, then good for you, you'll be happy with what's popular.

I'm not ruling out adding widgets to XUL at some point, but talking as if HTML5 is just universally better for everything is silly. It seems like you don't really get what this project is about...

I want more widgets. That's it. You could use HTML5 as the reference to add the missing widgets. That's my whole point. Don't want argue with you any further.

Well, you can use XBL to make your own widgets.
I think making only essential widgets was idea akin to xul based applications themselves - provide some base level, and if anyone needs more complicated/different/custom stuff - they can extend it as they please/need.

If you see a missing widget that would be very useful for desktop applications to use and would be beneficial for the platform as a whole, feel free to open a new issue and file a pull request for it.

The difference between XUL and HTML is that the latter is designed to lay out content, while the former is designed around user interfaces.
For example, a video element is content and not an interface: that would be the play/pause button in the video player for example. In this case having to use HTML to show a video is the right design choice.

vannilla wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 10:33

The difference between XUL and HTML is that the latter is designed to lay out content, while the former is designed around user interfaces.
For example, a video element is content and not an interface: that would be the play/pause button in the video player for example. In this case having to use HTML to show a video is the right design choice.

What if I need right in the ui the widgets only HTML5 has? XUL really has not much widgets to choose from. Your XUL graphical interface will look pretty much primitive compared to it Electron counterpart.

Nuck-TH wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 09:21

Well, you can use XBL to make your own widgets.
I think making only essential widgets was idea akin to xul based applications themselves - provide some base level, and if anyone needs more complicated/different/custom stuff - they can extend it as they please/need.

To be a framework for other to build their app with effortlessly like UXP aims to be, it should offer complete widgets set for the users to choose from.

nguyen9173 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 14:14

What if I need right in the ui the widgets only HTML5 has? XUL really has not much widgets to choose from. Your XUL graphical interface will look pretty much primitive compared to it Electron counterpart.

If having an interface that is sane, makes sense, and is suitable for desktop "primitive" for you, then yeah, I guess so. I'd rather take that than the bloated mess that is Electron.

If you really, really need an html widget in your interface it can simply be referenced by including the appropriate namespace. XML languages are flexible like that. Of course referencing the html namespace will also make your xul a lot heavier to render because it will pull the n a lot of stuff it won't need, so the best way to do it is via XBL bindings and ceating a tailored widget yourself

nguyen9173 wrote: ↑

2022-06-19, 14:14

What if I need right in the ui the widgets only HTML5 has? XUL really has not much widgets to choose from. Your XUL graphical interface will look pretty much primitive compared to it Electron counterpart.

I can't think of any HTML element that an interface would need that XUL doesn't cover already.
The translation between the two is not always 1:1, but all you need to make an interface is in XUL.

Is it <div>? There are <vbox> and <hbox>. For text you have <label>, so <p> and the like are not really needed - doubly so since you never write more than two or three lines of text on a user interface, so whole paragraph elements are not needed. XUL has built-in menus, which HTML does not provide in favour of in-site thingies made of <li> and javascript.
And so on so forth.

What widgets are you looking for that are absent in XUL?