United We Stand(alone)
One of the more frequent comments I’ve heard about AllPeers is that being a Firefox extension is a two-edged sword. Rafe Needleman published an article recently on CNet, for example, which praises our vision but expresses concern about us limiting ourselves to Firefox users.
In fact, we’ve discussed a standalone version of AllPeers based on XULRunner since we started developing our extension. What’s interesting is that my stance on this has changed somewhat since the product has matured and I’ve become a regular AllPeers user. Yes, we could make a version of AllPeers that installs as its own executable, but considering how tightly we integrate with Firefox’s browser features, how much sense would this really make? Wouldn’t we simply end up building our own web browser user interface on top of XULRunner?
In my view, the real problem isn’t that AllPeers runs on top of Firefox. There’s no reason that users of other browsers can’t install Firefox just to use AllPeers, if they like, and use it alongside their browser of choice. There is the issue of having to download Firefox and then AllPeers, instead of downloading/installing everything at once. There is also a potential psychological issue since users might balk at installing a “second browser” even if this is not technically very different from installing a separate AllPeers client. One option that would at least partially resolve these concerns would be to offer a Firefox/AllPeers bundle for people who don’t already have Firefox.
Over the longer term, the goal should be to split AllPeers more from Firefox. I had an opportunity to discuss this face-to-face with Mr. XULRunner himself, Benjamin Smedberg, while at EuroOSCON last week. He suggested creating a “headless” version of AllPeers based on XULRunner. This would contain all the nuts-and-bolts that make AllPeers tick (sharing, downloading, etc.), but the only user interface would be the (in)famous tray icon. The interface as we know it today would still be accessible from Firefox. This means that you could easily shut down Firefox without shutting down AllPeers and vice versa. It would also mean (and this is a tantalizing possibility) that it would be much more straightforward to create alternate user interfaces for AllPeers, perhaps hosted inside other browsers, since all the heavy lifting would happen inside the AllPeers process and wouldn’t have to be ported.
I’m in love with this idea, but the bad news is that it might not be possible for quite a while since it might require Firefox 3.0 (which will be based on Gecko 1.9), and this is scheduled for release next summer. I’m planning to look into possibilities for making this happen sooner.
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I like the idea, but people can wait. I think you should first concentrate on making AllPeers even more mature.
Comment by Vincent — 9/27/2006 @ 11:39 am
I would have to agree. I think that you guys at All Peers are leaders. I’m not talking just in P2P file sharing, but the use of “Firefox” as a platform. I have seen a few XULRunner based apps. But I love the idea of the “headless” version that you mentioned. I think you overcame a huge hurdle by getting the tray icon to work (minus the “slightly minor” issue with Firefox 1.5.0.7).
Personally, I can’t wait till Firefox 3 to see something like this. I would love to know what you find in regards to the possibilites of making this happen sooner.
Comment by Dan — 9/27/2006 @ 4:18 pm
i concur with Vincent: kick-ass extension first, kick-ass app-port second.
Comment by J — 9/28/2006 @ 8:03 pm
Another application that has just announced an upgrade to its extensions capabilities is OpenOffice.org. Integrating AllPeers into OpenOffice might offer some cool possibilities too, that could be explained to possible end-users as a “virtual shared server” useful for a small business or freelance/offsite office workers. Hopefully they’d see how much of an improvement it is over sending your spreadsheets, word processor docs and presentations back and forth via email!
Comment by Benjamin — 10/6/2006 @ 10:53 pm
[…] main issue I see with XUL Templates is that we may want at some point to move AllPeers to its own process, leaving only a thin UI layer in Firefox. This implies that our future template engine will have to […]
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