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by Lukas_Skywalker 2410 days ago
A bit of nostalgia: I created an application based on XULRunner at the end of high school. The project started out as a Firefox Extension, and since I wanted to create a standalone application, XULRunner was the obvious choice. I didn't know much programming, but it was, coupled with the excellent documentation on MDN, enough to get me started. What I remember best are the following few things:

- XULRunner had an included application update mechanism. You basically created a diff between two application versions and placed that on a server. XULRunner would automatically detect it and apply it. No configuration needed. This was huge.

- XULRunner obviously had a built-in browser. Using a few XML elements, you could embed a browser view.

- Porting from a Firefox extension to a standalone application was very easy. Add some boilerplate and you are done. Pretty much no need to change the application code.

- Since my application didn't include any native code, it was automatically cross platform. And it integrated beautifully into all platforms.

2 comments

Cool, I actually used XULRunner for a cross-platform application!

The tooling was great, and it did set the precedent for what we expect today.

What was the application for? Just curious
Music. You could search for music, and the application would search a few mp3 sites for the track and play it automatically. Also, if the built-in browser detected music files or links embedded in the page, a bar popped up from the bottom offering to play the music.