Xulfr team is a privileged observer of the use of the Mozilla platform in
France. Most of us work professionally with Mozilla technologies. I thought it
might be a good idea to write a little report about what has happened in France
over the last few years as far as XUL is concerned.
A few words about Xulfr
3 years ago, Laurent
Jouanneau (from Disruptive Innovations, Daniel Glazman's
colleague) created a web site dedicated to Mozilla technologies: xulfr.org. One year later, I joined him. In
the beginning, it was a wiki website, then the Xulplanet tutorial translation
was added, followed by a discussion board (over 800 members at present) with a
jobs section, a mailing list, a snippets collection, a planet to aggregate
Mozilla-related blogs in French, ... Today, we get about 250,000 page views
monthly (the traffic has doubled since 2005). We organize
company
interviews, a lot of public speeches (at least 6 per year) and "Xul
Parties". Since January 2007, we are officially a registered non-profit
organization.
My own experience
I've been working as a Mozilla freelance developer since 2005. I worked with
several companies on XUL/XpCom based projects. I met many people and companies
interested in Mozilla technologies.
In the beginning, we saw a considerable demand for extension development and
Firefox customizations. Many people were asking me for training courses and
participation in Firefox-related XUL & JS projects. XUL was essentially
known as a language for developing Firefox/Thunderbird addons.
As time passed, the documentation improved (thanks MDC!), and the quality of
developed addons increased. Writing an extension became easier. XulRunner
became more and more known. As a result, companies got interested in XUL
desktop applications development and looked for help about XulRunner.
Today, XUL is a well-known language and XulRunner is known as a decent piece of
software. There is a lot of documentation available and many people develop
their own addons and desktop applications. Developers are relatively
independent.
When I meet companies, it is essentially for
sharing my knowledge and for advanced projects that make use of C++ XPCom
components and plugins.
As you can see, the interest in XUL as a language has been ignited by Firefox
extensions development. And as developers learned XUL, they also became more
aware of the Mozilla platform as a whole, and its use in desktop application
development.
Sharing our experience
French people love Mozilla technologies, and so we meet often. Xulfr
organized Xulfr parties, as well as talks about Mozilla technologies at every
French Open Source related meetings (France, Switzerland). Among many other, a
few well-known example include:
- Libre software meeting 2006: Five independent speeches
about Mozilla framework and XUL based products;
- Solutions Linux 2007: We invited 8 companies to talk with
us about Mozilla Framework. The meeting hosted about 200 people and lasted for
4 hours.
More and more people ask me to give training courses and dedicated magazines
ask me (and others) to write articles about XUL development in practice. Except
from that, I work with two schools giving XUL&co lessons.
XUL dark matter ... a few highlights
A significant part of XUL projects are developed inhouse. Other projects are
mainly carried out by Disruptive Innovations (Daniel Glazman
and Laurent Jouanneau), and by me. But there are more and more developers who
become proficient with Mozilla technologies. We can observe their activity
through the Xulfr community (IRC, forums, meetings).
So, many companies use Mozilla technologies, and the examples include:
- Renault F1 - A famous race car
manufacturer (intranet back-end): Firefox extension, XBL, XUL, chrome,
xpcom;
- LeMonde.fr - One of the main newspaper
websites (back-end software:
Le Sept): Firefox, XBL, XUL, chrome, xpcom;
- IdealX - OpenSource
service company (Subscription management for one of the main political parties:
IDXAsso): remote XUL, XBL;
- Linbox - OpenSource service
company (Kiosk browser): Firefox, XBL, XUL, C++, chrome, xpcom;
- OpenWengo - VOIP software
extension: Firefox extension, XBL, XUL, C++, chrome, xpcom;
- 3liz - OpenSource service
company (Map editor): XulRunner & Firefox, XBL, XUL, C++, SVG, chrome,
xpcom;
- Zoomorama -
(authoring tools): XulRunner, XBL, XUL, C++, plugin, SVG, chrome,
xpcom;
- IRCAM - Music research
institute (audio segmentation software): XulRunner, XBL, XUL, SVG, C++
chrome, xpcom;
- Yoono - (Sharing bookmarks
experience): Firefox extension, XBL, XUL, chrome, xpcom;
- Nextweb - (NextCMS, a
rich CMS): Firefox extension, XBL, XUL, chrome, xpcom;
- Courtanet -
(underwriter software); Firefox & XulRunner, XBL, XUL,
chrome;
- Scenari-Platform:
mainly developed by Kelis - a computer-aided publishing chains, used by
severals companies (Private assurance agency, book editor, etc.) and public
agencies (Universities, SNCF - French National Railways Company, INA - national
library of television archives, etc): XulRunner, XUL, C++, chrome, patches,
xpcom;
- Gendarmerie (police army force): La Gendarmerie is a big administration.
They have about 105,000 Firefox and Thunderbird users. They make impressive
work in order to adapt the Mozilla software to their network infrastructure
(through addons and remote XUL pages) and to the security obligations (protocol
extensions): Firefox, XBL, XUL, C++, chrome, xpcom, patch;
- NeufTelecom - Second French ISP
(Firefox customizations and addons for a Linux embedded system, see http://easyneuf.org):
PyXPCom, XBL, XUL, chrome;
- Gestranet - IS
management: remote XUL, XBL;
- LinterWeb - Wikipedia
on CD: XulRunner;
- ... and more.
There are also many non-commercial projects. Many discussions led in the XulFr
forums are about these home developed projects (such as on-line games addons
for example).
As you can see, French companies are XUL-hungry. I think a dedicated localized
website helps a lot, likewise, the presence of a company such as Disruptive
Innovations, specialized in Mozilla technologies, has been a great asset.
Moreover, we are lucky to have in France a vibrant Mozilla
community and ecosystem. Let me just mention the Geckozone portal as one of the most prominent
examples. No to forget many French books (not translations) that have been
published on Mozilla software and XUL.
What about other European countries? I know there's AllPeers in Prague, Joost
and TomTom in Netherlands. I know a project in Germany,
IDA, an e-learning
authoring tool. I would love to know more about XUL activities in Europe. If
you know any other European Mozilla technologies related project, please let me
know!
-- thanks Stanisław Małolepszy for helping me with writing this
post.
