XUL is good
Jan 17

XUL is good

In the comments on Deane’s latest bit of Spolsky-worship, I had postulated that, given the idea that thick clients for the web can provide a better experience, and Firefox’s increasing market share, 2006 could become the year of XUL.

There was a great link posted on digg this morning that illustrates this. Firefox users, check out MAB, a XUL-based Amazon search interface. (After you click through, click on the ‘launch’ link on the right).

There you have it. A thick client that runs on nearly any OS, and requires no installed components other than a Mozilla browser (and with Firefox’s popularity, that may already be there). What if, say, Basecamp worked this way? Or Flickr? I think we’re fast approaching the point where it would be commercially viable to at least create an alternate interface for a web app in XUL.

by Joe   January 17, 2006 9:07 AM    |   Follow Gadgetopia on Twitter

Comments

by Deane,   January 17, 2006 9:30 AM  

That's wicked awesome. I really wish more apps (Basecamp, eZ publish, etc.) developed XUL interfaces.

Someone should build a XUL template for Movable Type. If anyone out there knows of one, I'll install it here.

by WWWGeek,   January 17, 2006 9:54 AM  

Whoa. Sweet.

I wonder how creative XUL lets you get with the interface design.... have to go read some on this now.

by Noel,   January 17, 2006 11:31 AM  

FireFTP is a cool little XUL Firefox extension. For the most part, I use FileZilla for my FTP needs, but I think FireFTP is at least as good as FileZilla (for what I use it for anyway).

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