Microsoft and XUL: Embrace and extend...

Here was an interesing note:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp...xul.announce/17

It seems Microsoft is going to be doing XUL applications using something called XML Application Markup Language (XAML).

Whenever Microsoft "embraces" a technology you have to wonder if it's going to increase its acceptance or if they're just going to mess things up by making it proprietary.

At least they know a good thing when they see it.

lol - i like this post on the talkback:

I've read about this Microsoft-XUL thing in a couple of places, but everytime I go to the source, I fail to see where it exactly says Microsoft will be implementing XUL. Sure, they will implement some sort of XML GUI description language, but how do we know it will be the same as XUL? Am I missing something?

Believe me, I would loooooove for it to really be XUL, because then I could quit worrying about platform stuff and get back to programming, but it seems too good to be true, yet.

I don't think it will be identical to Mozilla XUL. I thought the article was interesting because Microsoft recognized a good idea and was implementing it into their programs. If their implementation worked well with open-source alternatives, I would be shocked.

For some additional reading and discussions you might want to look at:

http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=3213

http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20030507S0037

Thanks dc,

Hmm... From that Mozillazine thread, it looks as if someone wants to hijack the name XUL and make it apply to an XML-based GUI definition language:

Notice one Mozilla member's response:


It seems to me this person in question is tied in with the xul.sourceforge.net site, and maybe with LuXor. That site made me a little suspicious anyway, as I realized not all of those links in there really deal directly with "the specific Mozilla-designed syntax called XUL".

I hope this person doesn't get too far in these shenanigans, because IMHO it is disrespectful of the guys who spent so much time working on XUL.

Of course, Asa Dotzler's response to this are a little ironic, given the recent Firebird naming fiasco:



Maybe I'm being a little too snide here...

Thing is looking at the variety of GUI libraries out there (e.g. MFC, QT, wxWindows, Swing, TK etc.) in the end they're all similar enough to allow an XML format meant for one to be "translated" to another. After that, compatibility with XUL pretty much just XSLT (ignoring any issues with programming languages here such as JavaScript vs. VB/C# etc. where things get a little trickier)

Good point, although as you say, once there is any scripting, it becomes messy quick.

But it is nice if we can deal in the abstract with just the GUI rendering. I really like the idea of coming up with a generic set of transforms that would allow GUIs to be traded back and forth between environments. And XUL is the obvious language for that generic definition set.

And theoretically, if each GUI platform were to take a very basic approach to ECMAScript, then we could even allow for a certain amount of scripting.

But even better, I think a nice add-on would be a project that creates a standard "lite" business rules layer for each environment, which could respectively use each environment's scripting/programming language to process. With something like that in place, it would be easier to have cross-platform input masks, display rules (show field in red if amount < 50, etc...). Fun...

But maybe that's just me... I like the idea of getting away from the concept of "scripting" as much as possible, and I think GUI+rules would go a long way towards bug reduction, allowing developers to concentrate more on the overall logic of the app.

Thoughts, opinions...?