Back to XUL: Introduction and Preparation
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XUL is an XML variant that can be used to create application user interfaces. It can also be used as an element in creating entire applications. This article, the first in a series, introduces you to the idea and helps you get your system ready to start creating.
If you didn’t read the first mini-series I wrote introducing the XUL, it is a W3C compliant subset of XML that can be used to create functional, attractive application user interfaces. For a fuller understanding of the language and its implementation and associated technologies I would recommend taking a quick skim through the previous articles, especially if you have no previous experience of working with XML or any of its derivatives, although this is not strictly necessary as at least a basic explanation of everything you need to do will be given during the course of this series.
While the first set of articles gave an introduction to some of the most common elements and practices, this set is aimed at giving you the experience of building a fully-working interface and following the end-to-end process of developing and testing an application.
I am hoping that this will give you a better understanding of not only the fundamental building blocks of the language itself, but also of the techniques used to tie everything together into something that works. It should also answer some of the questions that those of you that did read the previous articles were asking at the time.
What we are going to do over the course of these examples is build an application that will run within Mozilla and act as a text editor geared towards the creation of XUL files. It will do everything a very basic text editor could do (create text files, save text files, and open text files), but it will also provide a toolbar featuring buttons that will add common interface elements to the page when clicked.
Next: Creating applications with XUL >>
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