jeudi 14 octobre 2004

Firefox extension development Every six or nine months for the last, ohh, four years, I've taken a stab at writing a Mozilla application. Each time I make a little more progress than the last. Each time I run into the same wall: XUL + RDF. Last weekend I started tinkering around again and decided that this time I'll go around the wall. Though I am still using a XUL template connected to a remote datasource, I'm being as simple as possible. Several things are better this time. First, the Firefox extension system, introduced after 0.8 and update after 0.9, is a lot simpler than the Mozilla chrome package system. No install.js, just an install.rdf description file. Much more crucially, though, there are better docs for the inscrutable datasource and template machinery, as shown by the Mozillazine knowledge base (and XULplanet's 30 template examples). 9:51:47 AM   comment []

XML in Python Jon Udell has been talking lately about XML in programming languages, particularly the E4X approach to put native XML datatypes into the core of ECMAscript. Yesterday he linked to Frederik Lundh's page discussing how it might look in Python. Frederik has done a few projects over the years with different ideas for XML in Python. As a result, his idea could generate some initiative, particularly if Jon's campaign for the overall idea continues. I love one of the questions and answers from Frederik's page: "Why bother? XML's just a fad anyway. (really?)" Hehehe. 9:46:02 AM   comment []