XULRunner
Developer(s) | Mozilla Foundation and community |
---|---|
Initial release | February 2006 |
Final release | 41.0.2
/ October 15, 2015 |
Written in | Runtime environment |
License | MPL |
Website | developer |
XULRunner is a discontinued,[1][2] packaged version of the Mozilla platform to enable standalone desktop application development using XUL, developed by Mozilla. It replaced the Gecko Runtime Environment, a stalled project with a similar purpose.[3] The first stable developer preview of XULRunner was released in February 2006, based on the Mozilla 1.8 code base. Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner in July 2015.[1][2]
XULRunner was a "technology experiment", not a shipped product,[4] meaning there were no official XULRunner releases, only stable builds based on the same code as a corresponding Firefox release.
Software architecture
XULRunner is a runtime that can be used to bootstrap multiple XUL + XPCOM applications that are equal in capabilities to Firefox and Thunderbird.
XULRunner stores a variety of configuration data (bookmarks, cookies, contacts etc.) in internally managed SQLite databases, and even offer an add-on to manage SQLite databases.
Uses
Kiwix, an offline browser for Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg, used XULRunner until 2017.
The
, an open-source library automation system.The fourth version of the video game series Simon the Sorcerer, Simon the Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens, uses XULRunner.
In addition, the XULRunner package provided access to
Starting with
applications.Deprecation
In January 2014, dropping XULRunner support was discussed by Mozilla developers.[8] In July 2015, Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner,[1][2] and the community page has been taken down.[9] As of the beginning of 2016, it had been dropped from the package database of most Linux distributions, including Gentoo,[10] Debian,[11][12] and Ubuntu.[13][14]
XULRunner can still be installed separately, and many XULRunner-dependent applications can be switched over fairly easily. Also developing and running XULRunner apps is still possible through Firefox as well as previous or custom builds of XULRunner.
See also
- Mozilla application framework (XPFE)
- Mozilla Prism
- Gecko (software)
- HTML Application
- Adobe Integrated Runtime(AIR)
- Chromium Embedded Framework
- Electron (software framework)
References
- ^ a b c Deprecation Notice
- ^ a b c XULRunner future and ownership: Announcement to XULRunner dev group
- ^ "GRE — Mozilla Developer Center". Developer.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on 2012-07-14. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
- Usenet: [email protected].
- ^ "XULRunner:Roadmap - MozillaWiki". Wiki.mozilla.org. 2009-12-01. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
- ^ "xulrunner-adwords-editor — Project Hosting on Google Code". Retrieved 2011-02-28.
- ^ "Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting". code.google.com. Retrieved 2018-08-26.
- ^ Terminating xulrunner?
- ^ Obsolete and defunct XULRunner community site Archived November 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "403415 – (xulrunner) net-libs/xulrunner removal request".
- ^ XULRunner decision on Debian
- ^ XULRunner on Debian
- ^ Ubuntu bug
- ^ "Ubuntu-devel discussion". Archived from the original on 2021-05-07. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
- ^ Mozilla will stop producing automated builds of XULRunner after the 41.0 cycle
- ^ "Kiwix not available on Debian". Archived from the original on 2016-02-15. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
External links
- XULRunner wiki site
- XULRunner Documentation Archived 2016-02-10 at the Wayback Machine
- XULRunner Hall of Fame Archived 2015-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
- XULRunner: What we are doing (Mozilla plans for the 1.9 timeframe)
- XULRunner source code
- Brian King 2005 Media
- Brian King 2005 Presentations Slides Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine
- https://web.archive.org/web/20160828115439/https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XULRunner