Apollo Takes Off
The following is a translation from the French of Paul Rouget’s provocative essay entitled “Apollo décolle“. Paul explores an issue that anyone involved with Mozilla would do well to think long and hard about: to what degree do we favor Firefox, a proven success story, over the Mozilla platform itself and its potential to revolutionize web application development. Unsurprisingly the piece hits on many of the same points as my recent “Future of Applications” essay.
Note that I don’t necessarily agree with everything that Paul says, and I plan to post some of my own commentary in a follow-up post. In the meantime, I hope that this translation will help to spark debate and discussion on these topics among the non-French speaking inhabitants of Mozilladom.
Serious Competition for Mozilla Technologies
Recently there there has been a lot of discussion about two new frameworks that compete with Mozilla: WPF and Apollo. Three important web players (Microsoft, Adobe and Mozilla) thus have their respective frameworks for RIA (Rich Internet Applications). AJAX is old hat, folks. There’s a new buzzword in town.
Word of the newly released alpha version of Apollo is on everyone’s lips. A real coup, then, for Adobe.
And naturally the XUL crowd are starting to gnash their teeth.
The Risk
The risk is that Apollo and/or WPF becomes a de facto standard and that Mozilla technologies (XUL and co) are forgotten just when they look to be gaining credibility.
Why are we faced with this risk?
Because these frameworks have real advantages over Mozilla.
- Multimedia
- And, most of all: authoring tools
…and of course they are supported by two heavyweights with a major league budget and team behind them.
Moreover, we can’t really say that they are starting from scratch since they already have significant developer communities: Adobe with Flash and Flex, and Microsoft with its .NET fans.
The Mozilla framework also has some advantages:
- Based on standards with strong ties to the web
- It’s been around the block, with existing applications and skillsets in place
- Open source technology
The arrival of these technologies represents a logical evolution for the web: the need for web applications gives rise to more advanced languages.
But, besides technological distinctions, there is a fundamental difference between WPF/Apollo and the Mozilla framework: their underlying goals.
Different Goals
It’s easy to feel frustrated when Adobe and Microsoft release technologies with objectives similar to what we’ve been doing for three years, and suddenly everyone is talking about a revolution. XUL hasn’t generated as much buzz because it has evolved more slowly. We’ve seen the difficult birth of the Mozilla framework take place over time without people realizing that not just XUL, but RIA in general, represent a new incarnation (or revolution?) of the web.
Seeing Microsoft and Adobe’s efforts to release a framework devoted to RIA, it’s natural to conclude that we’re witnessing the future of mainstream applications, the real Web 2.0. Meanwhile, Mozilla has had something similar up its sleeve for ages, but efforts to turn it into a solid, stable, complete and neatly packaged technology have actually been fairly limited. We could get angry watching these frameworks grow in importance while Mozilla progresses in fits and starts, never straying far from its mother’s (Firefox’s) nest.
Let’s not forget the objective of the Mozilla project: to maintain choice and innovation on the internet. And this is achieved first and foremost by developing an engine (Gecko) that strives to fully implement web standards in the form of a widely accessible and ergonomic application: Firefox. The Mozilla framework is just a side effect of the development of Firefox. A simple yet powerful mechanism was needed for extending Firefox. XUL was conceived as such: a language that makes it possible to design Firefox extensions.
We therefore shouldn’t be surprised that the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t consider XUL as a framework in its own right, but rather as something intrinsically tied to Firefox. But it turns out that XUL has a life beyond Firefox.
Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. Why isn’t Mozilla investing seriously in its framework, despite its millions?
What Is Mozilla Doing?
First of all, a simple answer: it has to cover its behind with respect to Firefox. IE7 has launched. Vista comes with IE7 preinstalled. If Mozilla loses its edge in the browser space, it will lose its raison d’être. The existence of the Mozilla Foundation is justified by Firefox’s weighty market presence. The effort to design a complete framework is, I think, too great when measured against its potential benefits. And so Firefox remains the priority.
Furthermore, the framework is a critical component of Firefox. Developing and supporting the framework for applications other than the one for which it was designed would limit its developers’ freedom of action. To commit to such a platform would require concessions that these developers cannot make at present. And what’s more, for them the platform which needs to be promoted is technologies like the internet, HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS.
And, in my opinion, they would be better served by investing in projects like Lightning, Minimo and Thunderbird.
But things aren’t quite so clear cut. The framework exists, and it’s thanks to Firefox and Thunderbird that it has been developed. The Foundation isn’t naive, and Mozilla’s leaders are well aware of the growing interest in their platform. They know that many people are using it, if only for extensions. This is why Devmo was created, why Mark Finkle was hired to create the Fuel project (note Mark’s title: Platform Evangelist). It also explains the existence of XULPlanet, the support forums and IRC channels and, most of all, the XULRunner project. The latter is a fantastic tool which proves that a stable and eminently usable platform is available to companies today. Mozilla is not a pyramid with a woman at the top forbidding its developers from encouraging usage of its framework. Mozilla depends on a community which, for better or for worse, has published a framework that people use. The community makes sure that everything works, although it is true that there are no marketing mechanisms in place to promote the platform in its own right.
Ensuring the Competitiveness of the Mozilla Framework
It is definitely a shame that XUL has to wait in the wings while Adobe and Microsoft’s technologies take the stage. I think that their competition will actually motivate developers (official and contributors) to enrich the framework. But I believe that the critical point is the lack of authoring tools. This is clearly what will bring us down if nothing is done. A tool for managing XUL projects strikes me as essential. And as you know, it’s one of the projects that I hold dear.
Conclusion
The Mozilla Foundation won’t release a framework as a “product”. Officially, Mozilla will not support a platform separately from Firefox, simply because this is not its objective. But this doesn’t prevent the development community from producing a fleshed out and high quality platform. The proof is in the existence of various projects developed entirely using these technologies. (I’m referring to Joost, AllPeers and French projects such as Scenari Platform or NextCMS.) I believe in the utility of efforts like XulFr, and I believe that (like any open source project) community support is crucial. If you want a powerful platform that can stand up to the competition, contribute!
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I’m pretty sure XUL designed for Netscape not Firefox extensions… this blog post has a lot of BS
Comment by adel — 4/1/2007 @ 10:29 pm
Seriously, WTF are you talking about?
* XUL existed for years before Firefox!
* “We therefore shouldn’t be surprised that the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t consider XUL as a framework in its own right, but rather as something intrinsically tied to Firefox.”?? Again, WTF? What is XULRunner then?
This blog post is nonsense.
Comment by Confused — 4/2/2007 @ 1:03 pm
adel, Confused: That’s not the point. Of course, when XUL was created, the product was called Netscape and the Foundation didn’t exist. It doesn’t change anything to the fact that XUL was created to make the UI of a specific product (whatever it is called) extensible in a cross-platform manner. It was not created to provide a framework that any developer could use. It is only a side effect.
XULRunner does exist, but the amount of resources Mozilla invests in its development (one developer, part-time) is abysmal compared to Firefox. This article is about understanding why, and what could be done about it. That makes a lot of sense, at least to me.
Comment by Benoit — 4/2/2007 @ 1:59 pm
If Mozilla can’t or will not take on XUL and create a cross-platform open source application framework then someone else should.
I don’t know much about XULfr because it’s not multi-lingual.
Apparently Firefox is more popular in European countries than elsewhere, possibly because of it’s good multilingual support. Could this fact and the existence of XULfr be the seeds for a new European organisation with it’s primary reason for existence to build the XUL platform instead of just internet software?
All you need to do is migrate Ben Smedberg to Europe
Comment by pd — 4/2/2007 @ 2:50 pm
very interesting point of view, has never been conceived of this
btw cuprimine
Comment by varsnunda — 12/7/2007 @ 5:24 pm
very interesting point of view, has never been conceived of this
deposition
Comment by thyhoftohycle — 12/9/2007 @ 10:13 am