XULRunner is a discontinued,Deprecation Notice
/ref>XULRunner future and ownership: Announcement to XULRunner dev group
/ref> packaged version of the Mozilla platform to enable standalone desktop application development using

XUL XUL ( ), which stands for XML User Interface Language, is a user interface markup language developed by Mozilla. XUL is an XML dialect for writing graphical user interfaces, enabling developers to write user interface elements in a manner sim ...

, developed by

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...

. It replaced the ''Gecko Runtime Environment'', a stalled project with a similar purpose. The first stable developer preview of XULRunner was released in February 2006, based on the Mozilla 1.8 code base. Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner in July 2015. XULRunner was a "technology experiment", not a shipped product, meaning there were no official XULRunner releases, only stable builds based on the same code as a corresponding Firefox release.

Software architecture

XULRunner is a runtime that can be used to bootstrap multiple

XPCOM Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). It features multiple language bindings ...

applications that are equal in capabilities to Firefox and Thunderbird. XULRunner stores a variety of configuration data (bookmarks, cookies, contacts etc.) in internally managed

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the mo ...

databases, and even offer an add-on to manage SQLite databases.

Uses

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...

, Mozilla Thunderbird, Nightingale,

Songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 5000 ...

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

Uploadr, SeaMonkey, Conkeror, Sunbird, Miro,

Joost Joost () was an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa). During 2007–2008 Joost used peer-to-peer TV ( P2PTV) technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; i ...

, and TomTom Home 2.0 ran on XULRunner. Starting with version 3.0, Mozilla Firefox uses a "private" XULRunner, meaning the framework is installed locally in the application directory. Kiwix, an offline browser for

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

and

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

, used XULRunner until 2017. The Google AdWords Editor used XULRunner until 2010, as did Evergreen ILS, an open-source library automation system. The fourth version of the

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

series Simon the Sorcerer, '' Simon the Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens'', uses XULRunner. In addition, the XULRunner package provided 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 An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

(API) may have function with XULRunner installed and registered. Starting with Lotus Notes version 8.5.1, IBM deployed XULRunner to provide Notes client support for

XPages XPages is an IBM implementation of JavaServer Faces with a server side JavaScript runtime and the built-in NoSQL database IBM Domino. It allows data from IBM Notes and Relational Databases to be displayed to browser clients on all platforms. Th ...

applications.

Deprecation

In January 2014, dropping XULRunner support was discussed by Mozilla developers. In July 2015, Mozilla stopped supporting the development of XULrunner, and the community page has been taken down. As of the beginning of 2016, it had been dropped from the

package database A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

of most Linux distributions, including Gentoo, Debian, and Ubuntu. XULRunner can still be installed separately, and many XULRunner-dependent applications can be switched over fairly easily. Also developing and running XULRunner apps is still possible through Firefox as well as previous or custom builds of XULRunner. However, its disappearance has caused some dependent packages to be removed from

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References

External links

XULRunner wiki site

XULRunner Documentation

XULRunner Hall of Fame

XULRunner: What we are doing
(Mozilla plans for the 1.9 timeframe)
XULRunner source code

* https://web.archive.org/web/20160828115439/https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XULRunner {{DEFAULTSORT:Xulrunner Free software programmed in C++ Free system software * Mozilla Software that uses XUL Software using the Mozilla license Widget engines

Software architecture

Uses

Deprecation

See also

References

External links