The goal of XULRunner is to provide a solution for deploying XUL applications (primarily Firefox and Thunderbird), as well as providing an embedding mechanism. The following features are either already implemented or planned:
Gecko Features
- XPCOM
- Networking
- Gecko rendering engine
- DOM editing and transaction support (no UI)
- Cryptography
- XBL (XBL2 planned)
- XUL
- SVG
- XSLT
- XML Extras (
XMLHttpRequest,DOMParser, etc.) - Web Services (SOAP)
- Auto-update support (not yet complete)
- Type ahead find toolbar
- History implementation (the places implementation in the 1.9 cycle)
- Accessibility support
- IPC services for communication between gecko-based apps (not yet complete)
- Storage/sqlite interfaces
User Interface Features
The following user interface is supplied by XULRunner, and may be overridden by embedders under certain circumstances:
- APIs and user interface for installing, uninstalling, and upgrading XUL applications. See the wikimo:XUL:Installation Story.
- Extension Manager
- File picker (uses native OS filepicker as appropriate)
- Find toolbar
- Helper app dialog/UI
- Security UI (maintenance of SSL keychains, etc)
Embedding APIs
The following embedding APIs are provided by XULRunner:
- Cross-platform embedding (XRE_InitEmbedding)
- JavaXPCOM embedding
- gtkmozembed (Linux only)
- ActiveX control (Windows only) (not yet complete) Obsolete since Gecko 7.0
- NSView-based-widget (Mac OS X only) (not yet complete)
The "Maybe" List
The following features have been discussed and may be included if developer time permits and code size is controlled:
- LDAP support
- Spellchecking support (with or without dictionaries provided) see bug 285977
- Core support for profile roaming (with application-specific extensibility)
- PyXPCOM embedding (not yet complete) - but it does work, if you compile a custom build that includes the PyXPCOM bindings and there is a working python available. ActiveState uses PyXPCOM in their products.
What's out
XULRunner will not supply:
- Bookmarks or History UI (must be managed by the application/embedder)
- XForms (XForms will be available as an extension)