Hello im Daniel!

[dhx]

Well, for five years I'm developing remote XUL applications here in
Austria and I know how difficult it can be sometimes to work around
all the limitations with the remote approach. Therefore I really hope
this group will be a great success!
Recently I added a XUL part to my homepage:
http://www.dhx.at/projects/xul

at the moment there are some remote unfinished xul examples mostly
related to remote tree based views - and in connection with CakePHP.
At the moment it's all in german - but if you have questions just ask.

Very useful related to trees is also:
http://www.captain.at/howto-xul-drag-drop-tree.php

I was also able to get it running in remote mode... just had no time
to make it available. But if someone is interested...
I'm looking forward to read more in this group!
Daniel

[Uwe (Peter) Feldtmann]

Welcome aboard Daniel.

I too am hoping that this discussion group starts to get some interest
even though the members appear to be reluctant to come forward and
actually say something. Not sure why. Anyone care to respond?

I have been working on a remote XUL client (extension and xulrunner
app) that supports the basic functionality of desktop apps yet sources
all layout and code from a remote server. The server itself can be on
the web or in an intranet environment. The experiments to-date have
been very promising yet I'm not a XUL programmer and have been
struggling with the finer points.

What I'd like to propose is that we all get together and compare
notes, exchange code and build a universal client that we and others
can build on.

Anyway that's my hope.

Uwe.

[dhx]

Well that sounds like a really promising approach. I have thought
about something like that for some time now, but came to realize that
I do not have enough time to keep it in sync with the latest gecko
releases on my own. But with a reasonable amount of developers working
on this it sounds feasible.

What I work with in the moment is an xulrunner app where the site my
app is located at is included in the prefs.js file:

user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p0.granted",
"UniversalXPConnect");
user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p0.id", "http://
yourapp.yoursite.com");
user_pref("capability.principal.codebase.p0.subjectName", "");

But that approach has some limitations, it does not allow HTTPAuth
based logins for example.

How far is your demo doing at the moment?

[Uwe (Peter) Feldtmann]

Hi Daniel

The approach I've taken it to have a small extension (can also run
under xulrunner standalone) that connects to a remote web server to
call up a xul login window (language can be selected here). Login is
done by a xhttprequest.post request and successful login then loads a
new main form containing menus (generated from db remotely),
statusbar and support for dialogs, tabs and forms. All menu entries
result in new tabs that load xul from the remote server. There is
nothing specific to any app in the extension and the backend server is
written in python. Database back end is postgres.

Currently working:in extension and xulrunner app -
multi-language
- remote (almost no strings in client)
login
- verify user remotely, progress to main window on success.
main window
- remembers placement and size
- stored remotely
menus
main tabs - new, select, close
- all forms show in tabs
- multiple tabs can contain the same class of form on different
records).

form tabs - defined in xul
field lookup - table independent
field transfer - table independent too/from server

Still lots to do but all the above is quite seamless.

I have two demo servers
- one is a multi-lingual test case where nothing much works other
than language switching
- on is a single language version with more functionality

The demo client is a 10k extension that works with either server.

Uwe.

[dhx]

Hi Uwe,
sounds interesting without having a look at the demo I have some
questions:

- how do you handle the multilingual text, is it in different dtd's or
do you put the strings into the database and generate the localized
xul files?
- is the login form included in the extension or generated on the
server?
- do you load the remote content by dynamically populating the DOM
Tree or by using iframes?
- you write that the main window is stored remotely, do you mean
position and size are sent to the server and stored there or that the
content of the main window comes from the server side?

Would be interesting to have a look at the demo.
Daniel

On 27 Apr., 06:00, "Uwe (Peter) Feldtmann" <u...@microshare.com.au>
wrote:

[Uwe (Peter) Feldtmann]

Hi again

On May 2, 7:00 am, dhx <haag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> - how do you handle the multilingual text, is it in different dtd's or
> do you put the strings into the database and generate the localized
> xul files?

I am sending the xul pre-translated from the server. The translation
phase is handled by the server during rendering. No dtd's, no
javascript.

> - is the login form included in the extension or generated on the
> server?

All forms are generated at the server. The extension only has a base
window that loads content from the server.

> - do you load the remote content by dynamically populating the DOM
> Tree or by using iframes?

A bit of both. Most menu selections result in a new tab which loads
an iframe.
Communication between the iframe content and the controlling window in
the extension is kept to a minimum and sent as events. All other data
transfer is via json.

> - you write that the main window is stored remotely, do you mean
> position and size are sent to the server and stored there or that the
> content of the main window comes from the server side?

The position and size are sent to the server whenever changed.
This info is embedded in the main xul window by the server when the
user logs back in.

>
> Would be interesting to have a look at the demo.

send me an email (uwe at microshare dot net) and I'll point you to the
extension and demo.

> Daniel