1. Building Desktop Applications with Mozilla XULRunner Brian King BRIKS Software mozdev.org FOSDEM February 26, 2006

2. “ “Atlas was condemned to bear the heavens upon his shoulders by Zeus as punishment for leading the Titans in their war against the gods.”

3. What Is? ● Bootstrap XPCOM+XUL applications - GRE (Gecko Runtime Environment) ● Customisable executable name, icons, profile directory, and more ● Uses the latest toolkit ● Still in development stages, but maturing all the time. Only stable developer releases.

4. Where To Get It BINARIES 1.8.0.1: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XULRunner_1.8.0.1_ Release_Notes Nightly: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/nightly/latest -trunk/

5. Build From Source ● Standard Mozilla build environment ● Grab the code: make -f client.mk checkout MOZ_CO_PROJECT=xulrunner ● Custom mozconfig in file in xulrunner/config/ ac_add_options --enable-application=xulrunner

6. Application Structure Similar to structure of Firefox/Thunderbird extension Typical: application.ini * chrome components preferences Misc : icons, configuration files,...

7. Directory Structure marup | ---------- application.ini | ---------- chrome.manifest | ---------- chrome | ---------- components | ---------- defaults | ---------- preferences

8. chrome.manifest content marup jar:chrome/marup.jar!/content/ locale marup en-US jar:chrome/marup.jar!/locale/en-US/ skin marup classic/1.0 jar:chrome/marup.jar!/skin/

9. application.ini [App] Vendor=CoolCompany Name= Version=0.0.1 BuildID=20060226 Copyright=Copyright (c) 2006 My Company [Gecko] MinVersion=1.8 MaxVersion=1.9a1

10. Entry Point How does XULRunner know which window to start? Via preferences pref("toolkit.defaultChromeURI","chrome://marup/content/marup.xul"); Multiple Instances? pref("toolkit.singletonWindowType", "marup:main"); Value matches the windowtype of the entry window

11. Registering XULRunner./xulrunner -register-global./xulrunner -register-user This updates the registry on Windows (HKLM\Software\mozilla.org\GRE), and writes to /etc/gre.d on Linux.

12. Deployment 3 Methods: 1) Direct launch from flat structure 2) Using -install-app command 3) Bundled XULRunner

13. Direct Launch ● Flat file structure only ● Useful for developing/testing xulrunner /path/to/my/application/application.ini

14. -install-app Linux :./xulrunner -install-app /path/to/my/app.xpi Installed to: /usr/lib/ / / Mac : /Library/Frameworks/XUL.framework/xulrunner-bin -install- app /path/to/my/app.xpi Installed to: /Applications/ / Windows : xulrunner.exe -install-app c:\path\to\my\app.xpi Installed to: c:\Program Files\ \ \

15. Bundled XULRunner ● Have your own installer that bundles XULRunner ● commercial or custom installer on commercial OS ●.tar.gz on free OS ● No installer with XULRunner so far ● Requires core changes??... build from source.

16. Modules What is shipped with XULRunner? :... ● Gecko features: XPCOM, networking, rendering engine, XUL, SVG, XSLT, XML Extras, history, accessibility... ● UI Features: Extension Manager, Find Toolbar,... ● Embedding APIs: cross-platform embedding, PyXPCOM, JavaXPCOM, gtkmozembed (Linux only),... (Some of these are not complete)

17. Maybes and Outs Maybes: ● LDAP ● Spellchecking ● Profile Roaming What is not shipped? ● Bookmarks & History UI ● XForms (as an extension) ● The Kitchen Sink

18. The Mozilla Platform ● Each application has it's own user profile generated ● Runs in it's own process space Ensures peaceful co-existence of multiple Mozilla applications

19. ENABLES THE MOZILLA PLATFORM

20. Platform Problems ● Perceived* high barrier of entry ● Large and daunting code base ● Dispersed documentation (now improving) ● Lack of IDE ● Sketchy support in some areas (e.g. SOAP) ● Browser/Mail bugs take priority over 'Platform' bugs

21. Platform Advantages ● Quick prototyping ● Separation of content, style and functionality ● Standards Support ● Access to 2,000+ XPCOM interfaces ● Growing Tool Set (Bugzilla, LXR, DOM Inspector, JavaScript Debugger, Dev Tools on mozdev.org such as fastcomponent and xpistubs,...) ● Flexible licensing (MPL/LGPL/GPL tri- license) ● Active (and helpful) developer community

22. The Mozilla Desktop

23. XULRunner Applications ● Songbird ● Chatzilla ● Zap : SIP Client ● Many more... unpublicised

24. Other Mozilla Applications Mozilla Products – Firefox/Thunderbird/... Others – Nvu, Komodo,... ● Currently not running on XULRunner ● Porting is on the Roadmap for Mozilla Products, might be trickier for other projects. ● Move for other projects depends on their needs.

25. Future Directions Worthy Goals: ● Stable APIs ● Installer ● Development Tools ● Versioning system

26. End Questions? brian@mozdev.org