Looks like my idea of Super Add-Ons might be possible with Firefox 3!
It appears its all experimental right now, but hey I’m not to proud to gobble up table scraps!
Some shortcomings to note right away:
Let’s see what we can’t do.
I’ve been working on this project inspired by Mozpad named XAPGen:
XULRunner Application Project and Package Generator
XAPGen is a project to provide tools to help automate the generation of XULRunner projects and packaging for distribution.
The project does not focus solely on one automation/build technology, but welcomes contributions and techniques using various technologies. This is to help XULRunner application development to be approachable to a wider audience coming from different backgrounds.
I’m really close to releasing an early version for wider testing, but am waiting to get my MacBook Pro back from getting a faulty display replaced to at least do some testing on Windows and Linux. 
The version I am working on right now uses Apache Ant.
I wanted to get out a heads up about this though before the Mozpad meeting. Here is an example of how simple it is to get started with a XULRunner app with XAPGen Ant:
Generate a project just by passing in an app name:
Package up your new app right away:
You now have packages for Mac, Windows, and Linux:
There are a couple great posts spawned by a post by Simon Morris on java.net. He talks about three flavors of RIA “religions”, Browserism, Neo-Desktopism, and Pragmatic Neo-Desktopism.
Shaking the gratuitous buzzwords and fictional religious names off, I think there is a lot of relevant material here for Mozpad.
Caught all this by way of Ryan’s post. Ryan makes an excellent point:
The browser is not going to replace desktop applications, it just won’t happen. So instead of focusing so much energy on trying to pull that off, the “Browserists†should engage with the “Neo-Desktopists†and come up with a very web-centric solution for deploying desktop applications.
This idea is what was behind my idea to merge the deployment, distribution, and update mechanisms that exist with Firefox Add-Ons, with XULRunner apps.
So is Mozilla a Browserist, and Mozpad a Neo-Desktopist? You decide, here are the definitions:
Browserism is the belief that the web browser (or comparable page-centric markup-orientated HTTP-bound middleware platform) is the future of end user facing software; a belief solely based on observation that the web is currently the predominant tool for accessing the internet. The goal of Browserism is to slowly evolve a common web platform to include the functionality traditional desktop applications have supported since the rise of the Micro Computer in the early Eighties. Browserists get very excited by user interfaces approximating desktop applications circa 1984 (”wow, you can drag the map!”) or functionality which reminds them of a Commodore 64 (”gee whiz, I can save data onto the computer’s disk itself!”)
Neo-Desktopism is the belief that the web browser as an end user facing application platform is ultimately an evolutionary cul-de-sac. The goal of Neo-Desktopism is to evolve traditional desktop application technologies (for Java, this would be Swing and AWT primarily, although also includes the JRE itself) to a point where they can float free of a physical local client installation, deploying on demand just like web pages. Neo-Desktopities get very excited when their Java WebStart applications actually start on a friend’s laptop first time, without having to spend ten minutes fiddling with their Java installation while gawking at an impossibly long stack trace.
Pragmatic Neo-Desktopism is the belief that the web browser as an end user facing application platform is ultimately an evolutionary cul-de-sac, but we’d all get fired if we admitted that to our bosses. Pragmatic Neo-Desktopities desperately want to write proper Neo-Dekstop software, but are conscious of the fact that the fashion amongst Dilbert-esque managers is for all software to launch from a URL. So they simply embed heavyweight technologies inside a web page, which, while acting totally without sympathy to the host environment, at least keeps the Dilbert-esque managers happy.
The folks at Virtual Ubiquity are building a very ambitous web-enabled word-processing application called Buzzword. The appliction is being built on Flex and targeting Flash Player 9 and Apollo.
The cool thing about this is that they are able to use the exact same development efforts to target the desktop and the browser-based application without having to worry about hackish solutions to appease the various selection of browsers.
They highlight some of the aspects of Apollo that they find value in, with creating Buzzword:
On the browser screen, just below the title bar, there are generally two or three strips of toolbars. While this real estate represents important functionality for general browser use, for a web app like ours that aims for elegance, simplicity and attention to the task at hand, it is “cruft,  And to us, less cruft is more usability
Brent Simmons strikes again with a really insightful post on why the whole “desktop vs web” debate is already dead. He uses the term “hybrid apps”, which is similar to an Internet Desktop App, but a more general categorization.
In the browser or out of the browser? Make that decision on an “app-by-app basis”. Look at the requirements of the project/product. No need to make blanket decisions. But there is always the considerations of you and/or your teams skill-sets. I think this is where runtimes like Apollo and XULRunner shine.
Of course though, highlighting some of the values of living outside of the browser are appropriate:
None of my browsers can provide the user interface that Twitterrific provides
Anyone who wants to do everything in just one desktop app, the browser, can—provided they don’t mind giving up protected memory and all that modern goodness.
Big news for the Apollo runtime. Adobe announced Adobe Media Player, an IDA that will bring content management, Media RSS support, and double-click-FLV support to Flash Video and the desktop.
I like Read/Write Web’s headline “Adobe Feeds Apollo Ecosystem With New Internet Video Player”. I think Mozilla could follow that example a little and start looking at feeding the XULRunner ecosystem with some apps. And what better candidate then Firefox 3?
New XULRunner app by eMusic. It’s called the eMusic Download Manager. Very cool example of tailoring an experience for an online app with an IDA to overcome browser limitations. One of the main goals is described here:
Our goal is to rid ourselves of years of issues with downloading and to give you an experience that should help you rock-on without having to worry about how to download.
I’ve been working on defining what an Internet Desktop Application is. In that effort I’ve created a living page to try and define what an IDA is. In it I try to list the best qualities of both browser-based applications, and desktop applications. I will be referring to this definition as I evaluate many things on this weblog.
I don’t believe there is any runtime or environment that currently meets all of these qualities. But as long as some come close, compromise in the right areas, and are heading in a good general direction, we will be able to do some interesting work!
An excellent post here by Dave Thomas on PragDave, one of OG Pragmatic Programmers.
He really drives home the point of server-side applications needing to be client-independent, not assuming the client is a browser, and spitting out just HTML.
Favorite antagonistic quote:
Recently, folks have been trying to circumvent this simplicity by making browser-based applications more interactive using technologies such as Ajax. To my mind, this is just a stop-gap until we throw the browser away altogether—Ajax is just lipstick on a pig