Revisiting how we build Firefox

[Mike Conley]

I'd like to draw everybody's attention to a blog post that Enn just
wrote, where he does some comparisons / analysis of XUL flexbox and CSS
flexbox performance.

https://enndeakin.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/comparing-flexible-box-layouts/

Some pretty interesting numbers in there.

I think running these kinds of light-weight experiments *while* we plan
is how we should proceed, in order to validate (or refute) our assumptions.

On 10/07/2015 5:50 PM, David Rajchenbach-Teller wrote:
> On 10/07/15 23:42, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> I personally wonder how this fits at all into the three pillars of
>> Firefox development that were presented recently, and where the direct
>> user benefit is in "killing XUL". That said, XUL was created as a
>> transitional technology because HTML wasn't ready for UI (and it still
>> isn't fully there yet, even though much further along) and I'm convinced
>> that slowly and step by step we need to move to HTML, even if I think
>> that talking of the end goal of getting rid of XUL itself is premature
>> at this point.
> 
> Well, it's a "great-or-dead" thing. Unless we are willing to commit the
> resources to fix and maintain XUL, we should try and get rid of it.
> 
> Of course, this doesn't mean that we should do it immediately. For the
> moment, the only workable strategy we have discussed is that whenever we
> rewrite some part of the UI, we should aim to do it in HTML where
> possible instead of XUL.
> 
> Cheers,
>  David
>