Easier than C++ ... more powerful than XUL ...

Hello,

  Mark Birbeck writes in the blog story titled "Easier
than C++ ... more powerful than XUL...":

 I was pretty excited yesterday when we got
formsPlayer 1.2 out of the door, as we finally made
available the new features that warranted going up a
notch in the version numbers -- a module that allows
the browser to be extended, using standard mark-up.

  Now that may not sound that exciting, but bear in
mind that building side-bars and toolbars for Internet
Explorer usually involves writing C++ code, producing
a COM object, and then distributing with a standard
installer.

  And although building them for Mozilla is a lot
easier than this, it still requires learning another
XML language, XUL [1]. I'm not against programmers
having to learn new languages, especially if they are
useful, but in this case it seems a bit unnecessary to
learn a language that is specifically geared towards
GUIs, and only GUIs.

  With our new module you can build a side-bar,
toolbar or footer-bar with HTML, CSS and XForms --
languages that you can use over and over again in many
different contexts. Which is why I said in the
bulletin we sent out to our users [2] that extending
the browser with XForms is:

    Easier than C++ or C# and more powerful than XUL
... extensions can now be built quickly, and deployed
easily.


 So what exactly is involved?

  Well, one guiding principle of everything we do in
the world of Internet Applications, is to use mark-up
wherever possible, and use languages we already know.
For example, when you build a side-bar or toolbar in
C++ or .NET, the COM object you create must provide a
method that returns the title of the bar to Internet
Explorer whenever it asks for it. We can't get away
from that, but we don't see why an author defining a
new bar should have to write and compile this
function. We want to use simple declarative mark-up to
do complicated things, so we make use of the HTML
title element in the head of the document, and we're
done. (Note that we don't do what XAML does and use
mark-up to write the call to the function!!)

  The same goes for the size of the bar -- instead of
hard-coding the values into the resources in the
binary you will distribute, we use the meta element.
Now, when you need to change anything about your
toolbar or side-bar, you just edit the HTML document.
Add a new button or some text? Edit the document.
Change the background colour? Edit the CSS. No
compiling. No new domain-specific languages.

   More @
http://internet-apps.blogspot.com/2004/12/easier-than-c-more-powerful-than-xul.html

   - Gerald

-----------------------
Gerald Bauer
XUL News Wire - http://xulnews.com
XUL Alliance - http://xulalliance.org
United XAML - http://unitedxaml.org


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