Limitations of XUL

Question

I'm trying to understand if it is worth the pain to learn XUL more thoroughly.

If you have experience with a moderately complex project (like an independent application rather than a Firefox extension), can you tell me what your experience has been like?

I am particularly worried for feature which are not supported by the XUL framework natively. There are two possibilities: either create more XPCOM components, or using external tools. The latter approach is not completely satisfactory, as interprocess communication seems somehow lacking in XUL.

On the other hand, I have no knowledge of C++. How difficult would it be for a first time learner to wrap an existing library in XPCOM dressing?

Answer 1

I have not written any XPCOM in my three years of developing XUL applications. It does seem intimidating. So far, though, I haven't had a good reason to create any XPCOM. I do use some external tools - for reporting, working with mobile devices, etc. I eventually figured out that you can at least get the STDOUT return value from a process that runs (at least on Windows, it seems that this particular feature might not be consistent across platforms). That allowed me to have at least a single return value, which allowed me to implement error handling.

I think that you will find that you can do quite a bit without touching XPCOM. However, everything is not polished and easy, and there is not a large, helpful, developer community/ not much developer support, so it can be a frustrating learning experience.

If this is a large application, or an application that you might be adding other developers too, you may wish to consider choosing a more supported development platform.