I’m lowering the bar from the last time I posted my latest goal.

I couldn’t sleep last night so I got up and started playing around with XUL. It was fun. I’m moving GTK and wxWidgets a couple of notches down and shifting to Python then XUL+XHR. I went to bed around 6AM.

I was thinking about how much I accomplished for this month. I did two huge things. I started moving parts of my code and new parts to object oriented PHP. Also, I’m now playing with Asterisk’s manager (I know. I’m ancient. I have to catch up with AJAM).

Back to XUL. It’s pronounced as zool (rhymes with cool). It’s short for XML User Interface Language. It’s like Microsoft’s XAML (rhymes with camel) but almost limited to forms.

Its advantage over XAML is it’s cross-platform with XULRunner (Windows, OSX and Linux). It can also run on any Gecko-based browser [as of this post's writing]. XAML, on the other hand, runs only on Windows and that would suck because not all of my users don’t use Windows.

I figured that I wouldn’t really need the fancy graphics and 3D effects that XAML offers. Maybe someday when we get holographic displays.

I was going to end this post but I got tempted to make fun of Microsoft’s branding. In my honest opinion, XMLHttpRequest and XAML are one of the best things that MSFT came up with. But man, do they suck at branding! XHR is way cooler. XUL almost sounds like zune (that brand generated a lot of buzz)! They’re lucky enough I didn’t rearrange XAML to LAMX (rhymes with lame-ksssss).

Just like sex, a three-letter abbreviation is the cool thing to have nowadays. Oh well. Can’t blame them for trying to be different.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 16.37.34 and is filed under Geek Cred. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.