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, developed by

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

. 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 XUL +

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

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 ( "S-Q-L-ite", "sequel-ite") is a free and open-source relational 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 ...

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 curren ...

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source email client that also functions as a personal information manager with a Digital calendar, calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix (protocol), Matrix), ...

Nightingale The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale (''Luscinia megarhynchos''), is a small passerine bird which is best known for its powerful and beautiful song. It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, ...

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 5,00 ...

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, 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 previously a co ...

Uploadr, SeaMonkey, Conkeror, Sunbird, Miro, Joost, 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 free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

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 li ...

, 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 A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

series Simon the Sorcerer, '' Simon the Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens'', uses XULRunner. In addition, the XULRunner package provided access to

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

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 connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

(API) may have function with XULRunner installed and registered. Starting with

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly Lotus Notes then IBM Notes) is a proprietary collaborative software platform for Unix ( AIX), IBM i, Windows, Linux, and macOS, sold by HCLTech. The client application is called Notes while the server component is branded ...

version 8.5.1,

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

deployed XULRunner to provide Notes client support for XPages applications. XULJet was an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

framework for XULRunner.

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 of most Linux distributions, including Gentoo,

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

, 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 package databases. Despite this deprecation, the latest versions of Firefox and Thunderbird can still run XULRunner applications with the -app command line argument.

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 Public License Widget engines

Software architecture

Uses

Deprecation

See also

References

External links