XUL Solutions

Welcome to the XUL Solutions blog. This blog has the intention of documenting and publicizing much of my findings as a XUL developer, as I've gone through great pains to find much of this knowledge.
I'm a XUL developer working at Glaxstar, a company responsible for very important Firefox extensions such as del.icio.us, Paypal, Zoep, OwnArea and the Joga Companion. I'm rather new to the company, so I've had little to do with those products, but I've had my share of development in Firefox extensions, and I have learned a whole lot along the way.
The first thing I've learned is that finding answers to XUL problems online is like finding a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, while free falling from a jetliner. This comes as no surprise as this is a relatively new development technology, and open source is not exactly famous for its copious documentation. I guess everybody's too busy developing... but that's a little hypocritical, because I could very well be helping on that. Maybe some day I will.
You don't have to take my word on this. Here's a list of the different ways you can get answers to your XUL problems:

• IRC. There's a series of IRC channels in which you can hopefully chat with experienced developers and get your answers live. I don't use this for 2 reasons: I would be promoting a "geek hideout" means of communication, and conversations are not persisted in any way for others to search. It's very effective, though.
  
• Newsgroups. Another "geek hideout". You can flame me all you want, but some of us are happy living with just the World Wide Web and email. By giving such importance to relatively obscure means of communications Mozilla is leaving a lot of beginner and intermediate developers to their own luck. Newsgroups have a slower response time, but the do have certain persistence. There was also some effort in creating those in Google Groups, but they seem kind of abandoned. Shame.
• Mozilla Developer Center. This wiki is a pretty decent place to find answers. I end up on this site frequently when doing searches through Google. It has current documentation, and old solutions are labeled as such, but they still have a long way to go in terms of completeness. And that's why you'll usually find yourselves looking in the best/worst source for XUL information:
• XUL Planet. I love this site. I hate this site. Why? Because this site is simultaneously the most extensive and the oldest XUL reference online. You want to know all the attributes, properties, events, etc. for a particular XUL tag? You'll find it there, but some of those attributes, properties, events, etc. may not exist anymore. It's still (and as far as I know) the best place to find out about XUL, XBL and the XPCOM interfaces available in the Firefox (and eventually XULRunner) backend. This documentation is being transferred to the MDC - there's a more current version of the tutorial there -, but it's far for complete. XUL Planet is still a valuable, valuable resource. It's one of my Quick Searches, keyword xul. God bless Firefox.
• The Mozilla source. This is a very important source for answers. I will often just go to the chrome directory in my Firefox installation and start looking inside the JAR files. That's a very good way to see how things can be implemented, and how things can be modified. The actual source website can be useful for its search and linking capabilities. It will sometimes crash for no reason, but it's still an important tool.
• Other extensions. Don't know how to solve a problem? Look for an extension that already has! Just look around, it's likely someone else has faced the same difficulties as you and found an answer. Sadly, extensions are seldom documented, or even readable, but that shouldn't discourage you to try.
  
• Blogs, articles, etc. Never underestimate the power of Google (or Yahoo! or MSN Search or whatever). These are the most likely places to find tips, tricks, and complex solutions, as well as simplified explanations. This blog is now part of this last category.

I'll start posting some of the XUL knowledge I've acquired and I feel is not properly documented elsewhere. It's plenty. I think I have material for at least 10 initial posts. More will definitely come as I become more experienced on this platform and produce more software for Glaxstar and the world. But if you have any questions, feel free to post a comment here. I can't guarantee to know the answer, but every question is valuable, and most will merit new posts on this blog. Hopefully I will make life easier to many of you extension and XUL application developers.
And now... the solutions.

Labels: documentation, firefox, reference, xul