[Seaside] XUL

[Stephen Pair]

Avi Bryant wrote:

>On Thu, 8 May 2003, Stephen Pair wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Has anyone built any applications using XUL (as opposed to HTML...see
>>http://xulplanet.com for more info)...I'm considering building an
>>application using Seaside for the server and XUL for the GUI (it needs a
>>richer UI than HTML can provide).  XUL seems like a nice alternative
>>because it's supported by Mozilla/Gecko and thus runs on any platform.
>>    
>>
>
>I've never written anything with XUL, but I have played around with it a
>bit.  The problem with using it with Seaside is that it's expecting a very
>different interaction style - basically you're supposed to load the entire
>UI at once, and control it with javascript on the client side.
>Connections to remote datasources are all done through RDF, which feels
>extremely unwieldy and heavyweight.  I did do some experiments in Seaside
>0.9x with abusing XUL widgets as if they were HTML widgets, and ignoring
>all the JS and RDF stuff, but ultimately I wasn't very impressed.
>
>I do think it would be interesting to try to build an extended thin client
>to work with Seaside - something that has the same interaction model as
>HTML/HTTP, but fewer limitations in terms of available controls.  I
>suppose if you built the client in Java or Flash, communicating with
>Squeak over XML-RPC or some such, it would have almost the same
>penetration as HTML... but I've never been convinced, yet, that it would
>all be worth the effort.
>

Well, ultimately, I would want the client done in Squeak...my interest 
in XUL is to get something cross platform working quickly.  All of this 
stuff (HTML, XUL) is about serializing objects to move to the client, 
and Seaside's component model is excellent for drawing a boundary 
between the client and server, and for providing a nice basis for 
implementing a capability based security model.  Seaside is so useful in 
fact, that it might be useful even for providing locally running UIs (it 
might help in the stabiliy of a Squeak UI for example, because you have 
a clear dividing line between processes that are rendering a UI, and 
processes that are interacting with the domain).  Seasides component 
hierarchy is effectively a DOM, you could transform that DOM into 
anything, HTML, XUL, or a morphic world.

- Stephen