Luxor Glossary

Box - A box holds a bunch of UI elements (aka widgets) that it lays out usually from top-to-bottom (vertically) or from left-to-right (horizontally). A box is similar to a Swing JPanel. Luxor, however, discriminates between low-level, close-to-the-metal boxes and high-level, user-centric forms.

Chrome - An app's XUL files usually packed up in a jar.

Form - A form holds user input controls to collect user data. A form is similar to a Swing JPanel, but offers input validation, XML data import/export and more and it discriminates between low-level UI elements (aka widgets) and high-level user input controls.

Luxor - Open-Source XML User Interface Language (XUL) Toolkit (More Info at http://luxor-xul.sourceforge.net)

Mozilla - Open-Source, cross-plattform, industry-strength, household browser supporting web standards (CSS1, CSS2, HTML, XML, and more) and plug-ins. (More Info at http://www.mozilla.org )

Portal - Multiple portlets plus some sprinkled static XHTML fragments make up a complete web page also known as portal.

Portlet - Portlets (also known as HTML pagelets or HTML controls) are basically like servlets, but return HTML snippets instead of complete HTML pages.

Python - Pyhton is Luxor's scripting language of choice. Luxor includes Jyhton, an open-source 100% Java Python interpreter. Pyhton is as easy to use and learn as JavaScript/VBScript (if not easier) but doesn't leave you hanging once you venture beyond one-liners. Python, for example, supports dynamic typing, includes built-in data structures such as lists or dictionaries, supports programming-in-the-large through modules, classes, exceptions and more. (More Info at http://www.python.org and http://www.jython.org )

Resource Anchor - An empty class packed up with your app's resources (such as icons, templates, properties, etc.) in a jar to let you locate the jar without a file name.

Vamp - short for Venus Application Publisher; Vamp is tool suite that helps you package, sign and publish Web Start/JNLP apps. Vamp is built on top of Luxor. (More Info at http://www.vamphq.com )

Velocity - An open-source, embeddable, multi-purpose, template engine. Velocity, an Apache Jakarta project, offers a simple yet powerful scripting language (known as Velocity Template Language) as an alternative to Java Server Pages. (More Info at http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity )

Web Start - Web Start allows you to start full-featured desktop apps with a single click from your Web browser. (More Info at http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart )

XUL - short for XML User Interface Language; the corner stone for building rich, cross-platform, zero-admin desktop apps on open standards today