Single-file app with xulrunner - possible?

Question

I have tried to mess with xulrunner before, and now I'm trying once again :)

The "real" tutorial (Getting started with XULRunner - MDN) does, in fact, show that one is supposed to have application.ini and other files (possibly zipped as .xpi, which then requires --install-app ...), and then the call should be like:

xulrunner `pwd`/application.ini

... however, I'd like an easier way to start up - and hence, my hope for single-file XUL application approach :) (A good note here is that one also cannot use the zipped .xpi as an argument to xulrunner, see XULRunner question - DonationCoder.com)

 

The thing is, I am almost 100% certain that at some point in the past, I have used a simple single-file XUL application, as in (pseudocode):

xulrunner my-xul-app.extension

... but I cannot remember how it went :) So, was that possible with xulrunner, or only with firefox?

As far as I can remember, I used something like a 'my-xul-app.xul' file (as the single-file application), which would specify only, say, a window with a single button (that couldn't really do anything due to lack of javascript) - and I'd like to repeat the same thing now, to refresh my memory (unless I confused something from back then :))

 

First of all, I found HOWTO: Getting Started with Linux Standalone Apps using XUL - Ubuntu Forums (2007), and I modified the example.xul file used there as:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?>
<window
id = "myapp"
title = "SQLite Example"
height = "420"
minHeight = "420"
width = "640"
minWidth = "640"
screenX = "10"
screenY = "10"
sizemode = "normal"
xmlns = "http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul" >
<spacer style = "height: 4px; cursor: default;" />
</window>

and I'm trying to "run" this as recommended in link, with:

firefox -no-remote -chrome file:$PWD/example.xul

... and what happens is that Firefox opens, with window size being like 1x1 pixels; if you can find the handle, you can stretch the window, and read:

Remote XUL
This page uses an unsupported technology that is no longer available by default in Firefox.

Ouch :( Answers to this (like How do I fix the Remote XUL error I get when using Firefox 4.x and the Webmail Advanced Interface?) seem to be related to actual remote xul (and recommend a plugin to handle that); but what I want is simply to run a file locally?! Where did the "remote" part come from?

 

Also, seeing the firefox switch '-app' (Using Firefox 3 as a XUL runtime environment); although it refers to an application.ini, I tried this:

firefox -no-remote -app $PWD/example.xul

... and Firefox just started as usual.

Btw, I cannot see neither -app nor -chrome command line options in firefox --help ;)

 

But actually, I do not really want to use firefox as an engine - just the xulrunner; and I tried the Firefox approach because I thought it is more-less the same as xulrunner; turns out it isn't (even if you use application.ini: Why does 'firefox -App application.ini' and 'xulrunner application.ini' behave differentely? | Firefox Support Forum):

In any case, if I run just xulrunner (as I wanted to), I get:

$ xulrunner example.xul 
Error: App:Name not specified in application.ini

 

So, I can see everything points to "single source file" app not being possible with xulrunner - but I just wanted to make sure (in case I missed some obscure tutorial :) ). And if it isn't - does anyone remember if it was possible at a previous point in time?

 

PS:

$ firefox --version
Mozilla Firefox 7.0.1
$ xulrunner --version
Mozilla XULRunner 2.0 - 20110402003021
$ uname -r
2.6.38-11-generic
$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 11.04 \n \l

Answer 1

I don't believe you could ever create single-file XULRunner applications. The -chrome <...> parameter probably used to work, I guess the "Remote XUL" error comes from the fact that the URL is file://, not chrome://.

You could use something like the Live XUL Editor in the Developer Assistant (formerly Extension Developer's extension) to test XUL quickly.

The general idea I hear these days is that you should write HTML5 instead, whenever you can, since it is more actively developed, more well-known technology with less incompatible changes and better tooling...

Answer 2

Here is the answer I wrote for another related question, reproduced here because it may help someone who want to know how to package their XUL application.

It is too bad that xulrunner can not run a zipped .xpi or .xulapp directly, but it is possible to package most of your .js, .xul, .css and .png files into a jar and wrap everything up with a private copy of xulrunner, without having to run --install-app

These are the steps I went through to package our XUL application.

The first step is to put all your files (except application.ini, chrome.manifest, and prefs.js) into a .jar file like this (all of this was carried out under Windows, make appropriate adjustments for Linux and OSX)

zip -r d:\download\space\akenispace.jar * -i *.js *.css *.png *.xul *.dtd 

Then in d:\download\space, layout your files as follows:

D:\download\space\akenispace.jar
D:\download\space\application.ini
D:\download\space\chrome.manifest
D:\download\space\defaults
D:\download\space\defaults\preferences
D:\download\space\defaults\preferences\prefs.js

The content of the files are as follows

application.ini

[App]
Vendor=Akeni.Technologies
Name=Akeni.Space
Version=1.2.3
BuildID=20150125
Copyright=Copyright (c) 2015
ID=space@akeni.com

[Gecko]
MinVersion=1.8
MaxVersion=35

chrome.manifest

content     akenispace             jar:akenispace.jar!/chrome/content/
skin        akenispace    default  jar:akenispace.jar!/chrome/skin/
locale      akenispace    en-US    jar:akenispace.jar!/chrome/locale/en-US/
resource    akenispace             jar:akenispace.jar!/chrome/resource/

prefs.js

pref("toolkit.defaultChromeURI", "chrome://akenispace/content/space.xul");

Now you can put these files into your .wxs for WiX and produce an MSI file for Wndows.

Of course you need to include all the files for XULRunner as well.