Mozilla Artefacts

Things for Mozilla People

For impatient people, here are all the things Mozilla that I've produced that are publically available.

Talking and Hand-Waving

Here's a talk on Application Opportunities with XUL that I gave at the Mozilla 2004 Developer Day. Evidently the talk was also video'd (whoops) but I haven't seen a URL for that yet.

Mozilla-Specific Software

I've produced numerous bits of sample software in articles I've written; most of them qualify as a potential extension of some kind. I'm more interested in opening doors for others than launching rockets, so I'll probably conquer the world with these after I've run out of doors.

At Linux Magazine, a simple control panel for starting and stopping servers that work both via the Web and locally (in press).
At Linux Journal, a simple GUI for displaying Linux processes hierarchically. The article is here, and a patch addressing some typos is here.
At DevX, this prototype of a Mozilla-based generic spreadsheet, called NetSheet. Beware; requires Mozilla 1.2, or an upgrade to use 1.4+ file access objects.

Mozilla-Friendly Web Techniques

Mozilla Web pages can do more than Internet Explorer pages.

Intermixing of XHTML, SVG and MathML standards for the purposes of word games. See Page 4.
Why Stick to Dynamic HTML? Dynamic SVG is the starting point for a palette of operations required for a number of diagramming tools used in software engineering
Use of XUL as an applet technology. Why hasn't this been done before?
Use of XUL as a better solution for DHTML Hierarchical Menus (in press). DHTML menus may be evil, but they can be a lot easier to implement with XUL than with (X)HTML.

There are probably lots more; my garage is stuffed with odds and ends that I've lost, alas.

Documentation

I've written lots of things; the best bibliography is Google. See in particular:

Mozilla books.
Various publications.

The Dreaded Dynamic HTML Slider

I wrote this DHTML widget one lazy afternoon ages ago, and no matter how hard I try, it won't go away. People keep e-mailing me about it and saying "why can't it do X"? Well, because it was conceived as a simple learning tool only. I really should dust it off and push it to version 1.0, but now that Netscape 4.x has subsided, it should get more than that. It should get modern CSS support and so on. It has collected 20 fairly obscure defect/enhancement requests, so be warned.

The original article and downloadable source code is here.
Trivially patched version is here. This is a complete replacement for one file only.

I don't own it; you can email DevX and appeal to them to release it to Open Source if you like. I've never bothered with that course of action, because I'm currently re-implementing it in XBL/XUL.

Please don't emailing me about the DHTML version unless you want to fund its maintenance and development, or contribute code. I get emails about it all the time, even though Netscape 4.x is pretty close to dead. Note that I'm happy to maintain, patch or fix it for a very modest outlay.

- Nigel McFarlane