On Wednesday 2014-10-15 09:24 -0400, Boris Zbarsky wrote: > "XUL" covers a variety of somewhat-unrelated features, including at least: > > 1) The XUL box model. > 2) The built-in XUL elements (with C++ implementations). <tree> for > example. > 3) The overlay system. > 4) XBL and the bindings provided by default. > 5) Localization via DTDs > > I probably missed some; please tell me what they are. > > I would dearly like #1 to go away in favor of flexbox. This might > be possible to do without changing anything else, maybe, albeit with > some UI layout breakage in some consumers because the models are not > quite identical. If that's not possible, it might be a good idea to > migrate away from flexbox manually (by using those display types > instead of -moz-box and company in your stylesheets for XUL > hbox/vbox/etc elements). flexbox is all done, pretty much, so there > is a viable path forward here that just needs resources. This would > clearly not affect scripts, except to the extent that the slightly > different layout model forces changes to the DOM used. > > I'm slightly less concerned about #2, though it would be good to > replace those with web components if/when possible. > > I haven't thought much about #3; it's somewhat in its own little > world and has no web tech equivalent.
We should also distinguish between doing the work to make things go away, and putting effort into improving them. For the former, we have to compare the amount of overhead (over time) these features add to the amount of work (once) it would take them to go away. But what started this thread was the latter -- adding new features to XUL. Part of the problem with adding features to XUL is that there is not an effective community around this technology. We don't have code reviewers who are domain experts in it, and thus code reviews end up falling to people with general knowledge of all of layout, who are already overloaded with other work that contributes much more to Mozilla's mission. Don't, however, take that as a suggestion that we're looking for volunteers. I think at this point it's too late; we've had 11 years since Netscape stopped improving this technology for volunteers to show up to lead its development. Yes, we have occasional contributors show up to add a feature that they want. But we don't have anyone who's leading its development or who has a good reason to do so. The Web has beaten XUL, and it's part of our mission to make the Web beat XUL, and other things like it; the Web is open, standardized, and cross-vendor. XUL isn't going away anytime soon because we have too many dependencies on it. Getting rid of it is a long-term goal, not a short-term one. What we're saying now is that we're not going to invest effort into mentoring and reviewing additions of features to XUL -- effort that we could otherwise spend improving the Web. -David -- 𝄞 L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/ 𝄂 𝄢 Mozilla https://www.mozilla.org/ 𝄂 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)
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