DevChannel Article on Rapid Application Development Tools Discusses the Mozilla PlatformFriday February 13th, 2004The final part of DevChannel's series of articles about rapid application development tools features a short section on Mozilla. "Not only does the browser provide the best HTML rendering engine available," author Michael "STIBS" Stibaneit explains, "it offers a complete foundation to create cross-platform applications." He goes on to give a brief outline of XUL and how it can be scripted using JavaScript, later introducing XBL. The XULMaker project, which aims to create a visual XUL application builder, is given a nod. Thanks to sime for the link. So will XULMaker become a Visual Studio for creating XUL-based applications? Mozilla is NOT a RAD dev tool by any stretch of imagination. There is nothing out there where I can define a connection to a database, drop a table onto a form and voila, I got an app. XULMaker ain't it. Until such times when a tool like that exists, it is laughable to talk about Mozilla as a RAD tool. The thing about mozilla/xul/xpcom is that they are *so* easily extended that it's really only a matter of time until you will probably be able to do exactly what you describe. The entire architecture is the most intuitive and best designed (as well as the most poorly documented) I've ever used. It opens the door to a lot of people who have modest experience with front-end web development using javascript/xml/css. It allows them to use full on platform-independent and native widgets as well as to interact with natively compiled (super-fast) xpcom interfaces. I think all this will probably get even easier once the GRE comes into common use. I agree with you that an easy to use database binding would make things friendlier, but like I said before, there's no reason why you or I could not write one and release it to the community. |