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Gnome, Mozilla and the Challenge of Longhorn

Submitted by mccaffer on Wed, 2004-04-07 05:36. Gnome 2.x

With lots of talk recently about mono/java/python, it seems like a response to Longhorn and XAML is brewing. People at mozilla are talking about how to create an alliance against the hegemon. Co-operation with gnome is discussed on mozillazine. I do hope that gnome can use the XUL language or something like it so that gui programming is easy for us mere mortals. Lets not re-invent the wheel reproducing XAML when we've already got XUL!

Re: Gnome, Mozilla and the Challenge of Longhorn

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2004-04-07 23:24.

The reason that XAML & XUL are so important is that it fills a very obvious and widespread need. The requirement is to bridge the gap between desktop applications and web based applications.

You can tell this is a real itch that needs scratching because of the plethora of products that have suddenly appeared that are intent on filling this niche.

Mozilla has XUL, MS will eventually release XAML, Macromedia is developing Flex and others like XWT (which is a java thing)

XUL is ahead of the game at the moment. It's taken time to mature, but its certainly usable now. It's cross platform in a way that few of the competing environements are.

XAML is still largely vapourware from what I can tell. If it succeeds in dominating the market it will almost certainly lock in Internet Explorer as the dominant browser for the next decade. Of course everyone will need to upgrade to Longhorn for it, and this could be an obstacle for it's adoption.

Flex is interesting in that it's leveraged by the ubiquity of the flash plugin. However it's native integration is probably limited (ala flash) and the server is so ridiculously expensive. It's chances of success are low unless the other technologies become sidelined by limited platform support.

Hoever the future is very uncertain. Unlike HTML which achieved remarkable early adoption through mosaic and netscape. There are now numerous technologies each being tied to specific platforms or products.

I think that because of the corporate interests involved only one solution will have traction in the market. This seems no different to www vs gopher vs WAIS from the early nineties. XUL is defintely losing the hype battle though.

XAML is winning largely on hype at the moment, but then so did WWW. The greatest challenge for XUL is to place itself in the mind of consumers as a viable useful cross platform solution. It could certainly boost it's profile with a plugin for IE and more network based example apps. Otherwise it might go the way of gopher.

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