Heads up. The last part to the series I’ve written, entitled “Why Mozilla Deserves Our Attention”, is up on InsideRIA now.

In case you missed the first two, here they are.

Just a heads up, I’m writing a series of articles dealing with Mozilla and RIAs over on InsideRIA entitled “Why Mozilla Deserves Our Attention”.
Go check it out!

I have been working on an authoring tool code-named TabPress. This is being built on XULRunner and is meant to be a relatively simple tool to create small learning objects delivered in a tab container.

I am experimenting with a different way of editing structured/complex content utilizing the editor and overloaded images. So far it’s working decently, but I need to conduct some more usability tests to flesh things out further.

Some quick points about the app:

• Uses XSLT for publishing
• Publishes content using YUI components
• Opt-in Creative Commons licensing
• Streamlined SWF insertion
• Streamlined MP3 player insertion

It’s in an alpha state without any user documentation at the moment. Feel free to play around with it though and see whats discoverable. Just wanted to get this early version out there and make sure it doesn’t end up as dark matter.

Updated!
Now at 0.3, there has been some bug fixes, enhancements with visual editing capabilities and support for themes when publishing.

TabPress 0.3 - Mac UB (20.4 MB)

TabPress 0.3 - Win (7.6 MB)

I’ve already received some encouraging feedback to my latest Mozpad post (I’ll be posting a followup soon). Further positive news is that I’ve made good, in a small way at least, on my pledge to devote some time to the Mozpad documentation project.

Having labored to get Prism to build using the Mozilla build system, I was struck by the lack of documentation on this topic for XULRunner developers in general. There’s a blog post by Songbird’s Ben Turner and there’s Dave Townsend’s McCoy project, which is a great practical example of how to do it. But nothing comprehensive on the documentation site.

So I decided to turn my original “Creating Custom Firefox Extensions with the Mozilla Build System” article into a franchise with “Creating XULRunner Apps with the Mozilla Build System”. The article has yet to be reviewed, and to quote Douglas Adams, “it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.” (Unfortunately I didn’t think to adorn it with a prominent “Don’t Panic” label, although this would certainly have been apt.)

Stay tuned for new additions to the series, including “Traditional Chinese Calligraphy with the Mozilla Build System”, “Mastering the Mental Game of Golf with the Mozilla Build System” and the much-anticipated “12 Days to a Flatter Stomach with the Mozilla Build System”.

Bookmark to:

• MozPad.org - the main project wiki.
• MozPad moon - the project news aggregator.
• mozilla.community.mozpad - community newsgroup
• MozPad Dashboard - summary of mozpad activity and links to related resources.
• The #mozpad IRC channel on irc.mozilla.org

Mike Shaver asked me about Mozpad the other day, and a few hours later Brian King posed the same question on his blog. Clearly it’s high time to take a step back and evaluate where we are and where we’re going.

The short answer is that not much has happened on the Mozpad front recently. To some degree this is just a case of things taking time. There is definitely ongoing interest in a XULRunner IDE, and ActiveState has brought this a whole whack closer to reality with their Open Komodo initiative. But the initial excitement and momentum has largely dissipated.

I was musing months ago that the group lacked a clear raison d’être. The problem isn’t so much a dearth of things to do, but the commitment and time investment that would be necessary to do them right. This isn’t just a case of setting up some discussion forums for technical support (Mozilla already has them) or an IRC chat room (Mozilla has several) or a great, user-editable documentation site (cause, well, you get the point). Turning XULRunner into a real product with branding, packaging, development tools and marketing is perhaps too big a task for a volunteer organization without any full-time participants. Once folks realized how hard it was going to be to achieve anything substantive without jeopardizing their other projects (including the ones that pay the rent), their initial enthusiasm cooled. I can’t claim to be an exception in this regard.

There are other issues as well. First of all, where are all those XULRunner projects we’ve heard so much about? When we started Mozpad, I was expecting a lot of that XUL dark matter to come out of hiding and express interest in what we were up to. This simply didn’t happen. We got a lot of love from Mozilla die hards who find the idea of an open, multiplatform application development framework appealing, but virtually none from companies that are actually using the technology. It has to be said that Robert O’Callahan’s speculation about “hundreds or even thousands” of stealth XUL projects was based on rather scant evidence. Or perhaps the main interest is in developing intranet applications using a web server and XUL, rather than desktop apps on top of XULRunner. Or, equally plausibly, people are using XULRunner but weren’t aware of Mozpad or were waiting to see concrete results before making their interest known.

Moreover, I have to admit that I’ve cooled somewhat on the idea of XULRunner as a general purpose framework because I’m so excited about the potential of Prism. Since I believe rich web apps are the future, I’d rather spend whatever time I have for Mozilla platform work improving Prism rather than documenting XULRunner APIs and the like. And whereas Mozilla has stated unequivocally that a standalone XULRunner product is not a priority, Prism clearly is. I proposed Mozpad to a large degree because I felt that Mozilla had dropped the ball on the whole “future of apps” thing. Now I’ve got crow casserole heating in the oven as they pick up the ball and sprint for the goal line. (And with that let me pledge publicly: no more ball metaphors in 2007.)

(To be absolutely clear: none of this should be construed in any way as diminishing the heroic work that has been put into making XULRunner a viable platform and getting Firefox to run on top of libxul. Apart from anything else, Prism is a natural consequence of this extraordinary vision, which has been gestating for over three years.)

All this to say that a lot has changed since May, and I’m not sure that we need a Mozpad to further our goal of helping Mozilla to play a defining role in the future of applications. ActiveState has expressed interest in helping out with the development of a XULRunner IDE on top of Open Komodo. All the usual mechanisms are available for those who want to contribute ideas, bug reports and code to the Mozilla platform. Personally I’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on Prism. From my perspective, things are going great despite Mozpad’s lackluster second act.

It goes without saying that I’m extremely keen to hear what others have to say about this. While you’re tucking into your Christmas goose, please take a minute to give this some thought. Nothing would make me happier than an impassioned rant or two about why we desperately need Mozpad after all.

Bookmark to:

Some random snippets/observatiosn…

• Nat Torkington over at O’Reilly Radar want Mozilla to reverse its course on XULRunner. I’m confused. He seems to be implying that it should be dropped. shaver has already called him on it in the comments.
• What has happened to MozPad. The initial enthusiasm and burst of action has evaporated. I hold my hands up as guilty of letting the momentum drop … must follow up in the appropriate channels about this.
• If you missed my previous post about FOSDEM 2008, head on over to the Wiki to find out more. I’m wishing Gerv a speedy recovery in time.
• Is it just me, or are the prices at the Mozilla International Store outrageous?! € 68.06 for a messenger bag, which does not include shipping which appears to run and around another € 20 per kg. I’m sure the goods are good, but are they that good?
• Last night at a hair salon art studio(!) opening in Ljubljana, I was catching up with my friend Luka Frelih from Ljudmila. He is blown away by the speed of Firefox 3. So am I. Among the many interesting things he is working on, OpenStreetMap stood out.

Google’s new Android mobile platform chose Java for it’s application development language. But what’s lacking in developing a Java GUI app? Oh, but of course, something that Mozilla and Adobe have implemented already as part of their platforms, an XML based user interface language!

I made up the name of course, since I couldn’t find a name for it: AXUL.
The format looks a little like SWIXML without the Swing.

This reinforces the whole strategy of using a markup language to layout interfaces and custom widgets, taking advantage of a nice box layout mechanism. But one thing I don’t see is the ability to create new AXUL components by simply composing other AXUL components. (without a hosting Java class)

But why didn’t they choose HTML 5? Ha.

Just read the NYTimes write-up on Prism.

Interesting comments by Mark Finkle:

if the Web can’t do it, Prism can’t do it

and

We’re not asking Web apps to change at all.

So thats the big thing really. It’s an incremental nicety to classic web browsing. This is really not in competition to Adobe AIR at all.

It’s more in line with something like Mac OS X’s new Safari Web Clips. Yank an app out of the browser and run it by itself.

As a real-world example, imagine Google Analytics without browser chrome, and then look at the Google Analytics AIR app. Designing an experience more with the user in mind, than browser limitations. And this is using Open Internet protocols and APIs. Maybe that’s not as good as the Open Web though, not sure?

I was waiting for this to happen. Didn’t think it would happen this soon though.
The very first Prism app built with Flex.

Speaks to the pervasiveness of the Flash Player, since in the first batch of Prism apps out of the gate, one is built with Flex. It also speaks to the flexibility and strength of the Prism idea, especially since it’s already wooing prime Adobe AIR candidates: Flex developers.

A Flex app as a Prism app?! This doesn’t fall in lock step with the shining goal of the “open web” as defined by some folks.

But, man wouldn’t that be cool if Mozilla had their own user interface markup language? Oh, wait they do, XUL. Does something like this, and that Mozilla doesn’t even mention XUL with Prism mean that it’s pretty much lost the fight to Flex/MXML?