XUL as XBL? Overlays?
Brett
While I know the content models are different, I am wondering in the
push for cross-browser and offline apps ala HTML5, whether XUL may
eventually be dropped in favor of HTML, while still allowing for the
syntax to resemble XUL (albeit in a different namespace, and possibly,
I would imagine, with problems referencing ID's with CSS by the
conventional '#' selector, for the reason, as I understand it, that
XML doesn't reserve attributes named "id" to work as type ID).
I see from the XBL 2.0 spec at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xbl/xbl2.html#the-content
(in section 2.5 "Content"), an example with <grid/> bearing
resemblance to XUL grids that this use was apparently anticipated, but
I wonder to what extent any eventual overhaul was planned.
I'm interested in future-proofing applications to the extent possible
now. The interesting project at http://code.google.com/p/xbl/ seems it
should even be possible to get started with this now, if a suitable
set of XUL-like XBL bindings could be made. I suppose XSL could be
employed as well, but I'd be interested to see it in XBL, especially
with its greater succinctness in expressing semantics. Any work on
this front, or other stumbling blocks to consider?
One aspect of XUL which would seem XBL could not handle in a cross-
site way (though it does make mention of multiple bindings) would be
overlays (ala Firefox's toolbar, statusbar, menubar), though with
HTML5 discussions seeming to add more concern for site features shared
across sites (e.g., shared workers), I think it'd be cool if overlays
could somehow make it into the mix as well. Any thoughts about that
(besides the obvious security issues)?
Thanks...