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XUL vs Web 2.0 or Web 2.0 extends XUL?

Some time ago, XUL had its moments of fame and was almost reaching a hype status. It seems that it failed to keep that status and its becoming irrelevant as time passes. This makes me wonder about the reasons why’s that happening.

Firstly, XUL is hard to program and understand. Using XML is itself a pain since it takes 300 more lines to do what you did before with 10. But it is a needed pain. Secondly, only Mozilla’s browsers have implemented it. Could it be that if IE had implemented it, it would have more success?

But these aren’t the only reasons standing beyond XUL’s disgrace. We also have the emerging Web 2.0 that derived from AJAX and model-driven design patterns. Actually, XUL is a graphic interface specification aimed at the web, but AJAX along with MDC has proved of being able to do something very similiar.

So, the question being: will XUL make part of the new Web 2.0 or it will slowly die? I think XUL is a great framework for a better Rich Internet Plataform, but it fails when it comes to what developers want: programability.


1 Response to “XUL vs Web 2.0 or Web 2.0 extends XUL?”

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  1. Carlos Rodrigues
    Published at October 18th, 2005 at 2:14 am

    XUL is also implemented by IBM on some of their products, and other vendors too. However, those implementations don’t have the exact same objectives than XUL-over-gecko, and don’t actually interoperate at all.

    XUL is an excellent technology, but the AJAX hype is pushing it to irrelevance indeed, which is a shame, since XUL and AJAX complement each other: AJAX is strong on the looks-like-web webapps, and XUL is strong on the looks-like-client-side webapps.