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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/07/2015 23:08, Chris Hofmann
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CA+zsDHDXF0236WbngK7yrBks5pBoxDdfnJuEgv1DSpcaP+q2bw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Robert Kaiser <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:kairo@kairo.at" target="_blank">kairo@kairo.at</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<br>
> I personally wonder how this fits at all into the three
pillars of Firefox development that were presented <br>
> recently, and where the direct user benefit is in "killing
XUL". That said, XUL was created as a transitional <br>
> technology because HTML wasn't ready for UI (and it still
isn't fully there yet, even though much further along)<br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Yes that's a good topic to get
conversation and investigation started. I might be missing
something but as far as I can see it does have a major
contribution to any of the 3 pillars, and in several places
maybe in direct conflict with plans around the 3 pillars.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Shipping features as Addons and
increasing our dependence on Addons is one example. If we
change the UI framework we would be needing to create a whole
new extension, packaging and installation system for addons
right at a time we would be becoming more reliant on addons,
and would also need to figure mechanism to transition current
addons to what ever this new addon system might be. We would
also need to be creating something that replaces overlays to
UI content areas either in HTML or create multiple ways of
doing this on each of the native platforms.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Work is ongoing on improving our add-on API system, "killing" XUL
there.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CA+zsDHDXF0236WbngK7yrBks5pBoxDdfnJuEgv1DSpcaP+q2bw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">We would also need to transition
localization systems and tools, and other things that XUL
provides for now. <br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I disagree with you that XUL as a UI language and layout module is
used for localization. It isn't. Our l10n infrastructure is used
from XUL, because we happen to use XUL for our UI, but the DTD and
properties files that store the actual l10n data, as well as the
XPCOM interfaces that provide access to them, are perfectly usable
from elsewhere (and we do use them from (X)HTML/JS in certain
cases).<br>
<br>
The list you provided in your other post:<br>
<br>
> Overlays, Themes, Addons, Packaging, Installation,
Localization, etc...<br>
<br>
is actually quite short, given the above. I don't know what you mean
by packaging and installation - our installer doesn't use XUL, I
believe, and the packaging into jar files (just with HTML/JS under
content/ instead of XUL/JS) could be kept if we wanted.<br>
<br>
And as David said, nobody is saying "let's just chuck it all out
tomorrow without thinking about how to build a browser without
them". But we are saying it's an area where we've invested less, and
not just less but an order of magnitude (or two or three) less than
in HTML, nor is it part of our core mission, and it is actively
impeding some of the work we're doing.<br>
<br>
Examples of issues I can remember off the top of my head:<br>
1) adding a single button to the toolbar of the main Firefox UI
slows down startup and new window openings (talos!) by a few
milliseconds spent in XUL layout / XBL construction alone.<br>
2) XBL bindings that get removed at "odd"/unexpected times cause
intermittent bugs<br>
3) XUL flexbox + "new" flexbox mix badly together<br>
4) panel and popup layout is "interesting" and causes serious bugs
(cf. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1029937">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1029937</a> )<br>
5) XBL interacting weirdly with new CSS features (cf.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1093260">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1093260</a>, quote from bz:
"Welcome to XBL sucking.")<br>
6) adopting "webby" toolkits like react/jquery/... (the Loop team is
in a better position to talk about this than I am)<br>
<br>
and the list goes on.<br>
<br>
The status quo is not acceptable, and I haven't even started on how
the technology gap hampers new contributors.<br>
<br>
~ Gijs<br>
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