Creating Applications with Mozilla

Author(s) : David Boswell, Brian King, Ian Oeschger, Pete Collins, Eric Murphy
Paperback : 480 pages
ISBN : 0596000529
Publisher : O'Reilly & Associates, Inc
Free License : Open Publication License (OPL)

Book excerpts :

Mozilla is not just a web browser. It is also a framework for building cross-platform applications using standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XML languages such as the XML-based User-interface Language (XUL), eXtensible Binding Language (XBL), and Resource Description Framework (RDF).

Gecko, Mozilla's rendering engine, is used as part of the framework, along with other technologies such as XPConnect and XPCOM, Mozilla's component model. The Mozilla development framework also uses programming languages such as JavaScript, C++, C, Python, and Interface Definition Language (IDL).

The Mozilla framework is used to create Netscape's Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape 6.x and 7.x), other browsers such as Galeon and Camino, and chat clients like ChatZilla and JabberZilla. Developers also use Mozilla to create development tools, browser enhancements, games, and other types of add-ons and applications.

This book explains how applications are created with Mozilla and provides step-by-step information that shows how to create your own programs using Mozilla's powerful cross-platform development framework. It also includes examples of different existing applications to demonstrate the possibilities of Mozilla development.

This book is primarily aimed at programmers (and would-be programmers) interested in exploring this brand-new platform -- the Mozilla development framework. However, you do not need to be a professional programmer to create your own cross-platform Mozilla-based applications.

All you need to get started is a basic understanding of a few technologies that are already familiar to most web developers: CSS, XML, and JavaScript. In fact, this is one of the great advantages to developing a Mozilla-based application: the learning curve isn't as steep as most alternatives, such as C, C++, or even Java.

Your applications will be cross-platform automatically (although you can create platform-specific applications as well) and easily installable over the Internet by anyone running Mozilla on their computer. What more could you ask for in a development platform?

This book assumes that the reader has some level of familiarity with JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. Reading this book in conjunction with other books that are devoted specifically to these topics may be useful if you are not already comfortable using these technologies. Concepts and technologies that are new to Mozilla or used with Mozilla in a new way are explained in detail throughout the book.

This book also assumes that the reader has access to a computer with Mozilla 1.0 or later installed on it, plus any text editor or word processor. Mozilla runs on almost any type of personal computer available today, so finding a compatible platform shouldn't be difficult. The full system requirements for any Mozilla release can be found on the mozilla.org site.

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