Let us drool over XUL
At work we've been debating whether client side applications are more appropriate to use in the office environment than web-based systems. Now I for one *really* like the ease of use of web sites and feel that most applications can work quite well in this format. But it seems that I've had a hard time trying to get that across!
We've got major 3 offices around the world so having a web-based system really makes it easy in letting people access our systems. I mean who wants to try and support someone in a remote office with installing an application when you could just fire up a browser? But I do agree that some applications are just better in a "real" application form.
But there is huge potential for making use of XUL as your applications front end. One only needs to look at what has already been done with the Mozilla/Firefox browser to see what cross-platform applications can be created. With a little bit of give and take this might be an option?
As a developer I would much rather develop the backend systems than focus on the client side bits as I'm not very creative and it always feels like so much work in getting the application/site to look good. But with XUL the hardest part, designing the interface, is already done for you as you have access to tons of pre-defined GUI items. And what's more your application, if designed correctly, should work on Windows, Linux and Apple MacOS X provided they are running Firefox/Mozilla.
So here are some tutorials that I have found that I still need to go through. Hopefully I can get something working soon.
- http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/
- http://xulplanet.com/tutorials/xulapp/intro.html
- http://books.mozdev.org/html/index.html
And to finish it all let's throw in some AJAX stuff as well!