ozilla is not just a browser. Mozilla provides a framework that allows developers to create cross-platform applications by utilizing its accessible components, including JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and Mozilla’s XUL (XML-based User-interface Language), as well as the Gecko rendering engine, XBL (eXtensible Binding Language), and XPCOM (Mozilla’s component model). Imagine the innovative applications you can create, such as a text editor, chat client, or MP3 player, by using a combination of easy-to-understand technologies.
Working through the book, the first several chapters serve as an introduction to the Mozilla development environment and impart the knowledge necessary to quickly learn to create simple programs. After obtaining the initial satisfaction of developing your own applications, you’ll be ready to branch into topics on modular development and other advanced subjects. In order for you to be able to build more complex applications, the second half of the book explores UI enhancements, localization, datasources, and remote distribution.
Chapter 2 discusses simple XUL examples and concepts, making Mozilla work for you, displaying XUL files as Chrome, creating a package, and launching the application.
Download the PDF of Chapter 2: “Getting Started”
Chapter 7 teaches you what XBL is, and explores the anatomy of a binding and how to add behaviors, XBL and the DOM, inheritance, event handling, and resources for bindings.
Download the PDF of Chapter 7: “Extending the UI with XBL”
Reproduced from Creating Applications with Mozilla by permission of O’Reilly & Associates. ISBN 0596000529, copyright 2003. All rights reserved.
