Luxor - XML UI Language (XUL) Toolkit

Luxor is a free, open-source XML UI Language (XUL) toolkit in released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) that lets you build UIs using XML and includes an ultra-light weight, multi-threaded web server, a portal engine, a template engine (Velocity), a scripting interpreter (Python) and more.

XUL stands for XML UI Language and was pioneered by Mozilla. XUL is superior to API-based UI toolkits such as Swing or WinForms because it clearly separates the user interface into four parts:

• content (structure and description of UI elements),
• appearance (look & feel, skin, themes),
• behavior (scripting) and
• locale (localization information for internationalization)

Content is best described in XUL as the following short example illustrates.

XUL version:

<menuitem action="newApplication" label="New Application..."
   mnemonic="A" accel="control A" icon="newApplication" />

Java version:

JMenuItem mi = new JMenuItem( "New Application..." );
mi.addActionListener( cmdNewApplication );
mi.setMnemonic( 'A' );
mi.setAccelearator( KeyStroke.getKeystroke( "control A" ) );
mi.setIcon( new ImageIcon( "images/newApplication.gif" ) );

XUL makes UI building easier because it is far simpler than hard-wiring it in Java. XUL also frees you from the Swing toolkit lock-in because you can create a new rendering engine using a different UI toolkit such as KDE, Gnome, or WinForms.

To find out more about Luxor check out the talk slides:

• Luxor: The "Linux Kernel" for Desktop Apps: Uniting XUL, SVG, HTML, Velocity, Web Start, XSL/T, Python and more
• XUL: Beyond HTML and Swing: Building Rich, Cross-Platform, Zero-Admin Desktop Apps On Open Standards Today
• And many more at the Open XUL Alliance Events page

To see how all the pieces fit together and why they exist and how you can benefit, check out the Luxor Tech Talk, December 2001, where Gerald Bauer (Luxor Project Leader) answers Jeff Duska (President of the Upstate New York Java Users Group)'s questions about Luxor.

To find out more about XUL here are some links to get started:

• Open XUL Alliance at http://xul.sourceforge.net - Creating A Rich Internet For Everyone
• The Richmond Post at http://xul.sourceforge.net/post - Chronicle of the XUL Revolution - Breaking News and Links, Links, Links
• XUL Planet at http://www.xulplanet.com - Tutorials, Tag Reference, Cheat Sheet and More About Mozilla XUL
• XUL Bookshelf at http://xul.sourceforge.net/books.html