[whatwg] Suggestion for a Specification: XUL Basic

[Matthew Raymond]

Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> The parts of XUL that make sense for this work will indeed be merged into
> the Web Apps spec.

Interesting. This would probably be an appropriate solution. I'm 
concerned that we may be turning HTML into an HTML/XUL hybrid, though. 
Then again, would it really hurt to have part of XUL in HTML?

>>    box
>>    hbox
>>    vbox
> 
> These are presentational, and belong in CSS.

    You could make the argument against box, but hbox and vbox are two 
of the best supported XUL tags in existence. I suppose I could just drop 
them, though, since they're already in "Gatekeeper". It would provide 
room for groupbox and tree. ;)

>>    menu
>>    menubar
>>    menuitem
>>    menupopup
>>    menuseparator
>>    tab
>>    tabbox
>>    tabpanel
>>    tabpanels
>>    tabs
> 
> Context menus, drop down menus, and tabs (as seen on Web pages now) are
> needed, yes. I don't know that the XUL content model is the best though.

    Please elaborate. I'm still in the learning stage with XUL and would 
like to know its weaknesses as well as its strengths. (I actually plan 
to use XUL Basic for a game engine I'm working on.)

>>The second subset, "Gatekeeper", is designed to provide basic support
>>for forms that are similar in features to those you can currently create
>>using HTML. This subset allows the creation of simple XUL-based web
>>applications contained in their own dialogs or windows.
> 
> This is what Web Forms is supposed to be.

    Which is the who reason it a separate subset from "Keymaster". The 
idea is that "Gatekeeper" subset will be used for simple, XUL-based web 
apps or dialogs, while "Keymaster" subset can be used either with 
"Gatekeeper" or with XHTML. In this way, small web browsers need only 
implement "Keymaster" to get most of the functionality they need.

    The important thing to note, though, is that "Keymaster" is really 
useless on its own, so products without HTML support would need 
"Gatekeeper" to provide the necessary functionality.

    In other words, XUL Basic is target for both browsers and XUL motors.