XULRunner

XULRunner
Developer(s) Mozilla Foundation and community
Initial release February 2006
Stable release
41.0.2 / October 15, 2015 (2015-10-15)
Preview release
41.0b9 / October 14, 2015 (2015-10-14)
Development status Discontinued
Written in C++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Runtime environment
License MPL
Website developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner

XULRunner is a run-time engine for XUL. It replaced the Gecko Runtime Environment, a stalled project with a similar purpose.[1]

The first stable developer preview of XULRunner was released in February 2006, based on the Mozilla 1.8 code base. It is developed by the Mozilla Foundation to provide a common back-end for XUL-based applications.

XULRunner is a "technology experiment", not a shipped product,[2] meaning there are no "official" XULRunner releases, only stable builds based on the same code as a corresponding Firefox release.

Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner in July 2015.[3][4]

Software architecture

XULRunner is a runtime that can be used to bootstrap multiple XUL + XPCOM applications that are as rich as 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

All XUL-based applications like Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Nightingale, Songbird, Flickr Uploadr, SeaMonkey, Conkeror, Sunbird, Miro, Joost, and TomTom Home 2.0 run on XULRunner. Starting with version 3.0, Mozilla Firefox uses a "private" XULRunner,[5] meaning the framework is installed locally in the application directory.

Kiwix, an offline browser for Wikipedia (now extended to Project Gutenberg etc.) uses XULRunner.

The fourth version of the video game series Simon the Sorcerer, Simon the Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens, uses XULRunner.

The eMusic website has a download application called eMusic Remote that uses XULRunner.

The Google AdWords Editor uses XULRunner,[6] as does the Evergreen ILS, a free and open-source library automation system.

In addition, the XULRunner package provides access to ActiveX Control functionality previously found in a (now defunct) third-party ActiveX Control built off the Mozilla source code. Applications using this application programming interface (API) may function with XULRunner installed and registered.

Starting with Lotus Notes version 8.5.1, IBM deployed XULRunner to provide Notes client support for XPages applications.

Deprecation

In January 2014, dropping XULRunner support was discussed by Mozilla developers.[7] In July 2015, Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner,[3][4] and the community page has been taken down.[8] As of the beginning of 2016, it had been dropped from the package database of most Linux distributions, including Gentoo,[9] Debian,[10][11] and Ubuntu.[12][13]

XULRunner can still be installed separately, and many XULRunner-dependent apps can be switched over fairly easily.[14] However, its disappearance has caused some dependent packages to be removed from package databases.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "GRE — Mozilla Developer Center". Developer.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
  2. ↑ Benjamin Smedberg. "Re: lifecycle policy for XULRunner apps?". Newsgroup: mozilla.dev.planning. Usenet: mailman.909.1309204932.4544.dev-planning@lists.mozilla.org.
  3. 1 2 Deprecation Notice
  4. 1 2 XULRunner future and ownership: Announcement to XULRunner dev group
  5. ↑ "XULRunner:Roadmap - MozillaWiki". Wiki.mozilla.org. 2009-12-01. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
  6. ↑ "xulrunner-adwords-editor — Project Hosting on Google Code". Code.google.com. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
  7. ↑ Terminating xulrunner?
  8. ↑ Obsolete and defunct XULRunner community site Archived November 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
  9. ↑ "403415 – (xulrunner) net-libs/xulrunner removal request".
  10. ↑ XULRunner decision on Debian
  11. ↑ XULRunner on Debian
  12. ↑ Ubuntu bug
  13. ↑ Ubuntu-devel discussion
  14. ↑ Mozilla will stop producing automated builds of XULRunner after the 41.0 cycle
  15. ↑ Kiwix not available on Debian
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