From: Rando Christensen Date: 2004-08-09T19:32:26+09:00 Subject: Re: Free(real Free) GUI toolkits Mark Hubbart wrote: > > I think I speak for more users than myself when I say that FireFox and > Thunderbird are *not* Mac apps. Yes, they do pretty good, but they need > to go a a bit further before they will be able to compete with the > other mac web browsers, IMHO. My main gripe is that, even after the > major changes they made to make it more mac-like, they still behave > strangely. There a only a couple places left where there are major > deviations from the usual mac app, but there are many items that behave > almost, but not quite, like what you would expect. I think that this is > especially a problem for more advanced users, since they are more likely > to notice the differences. > Honestly, if you ask me, the biggest problem with firefox/thunderbird is speed. The interfaces for firefox and thunderbird are pretty sluggish, and scrolling under firefox has a really strange feel to it, like it's really really lagged. However, the original point was valid. Mozilla's XUL interface has come a long way, and while it still needs a ton of optimization and a few more behavioral tweaks on OSX, it really has worked out quite well otherwise as a cross-platform GUI toolkit. It has a native feel on linux and windows and a very close to native feel on OSX. Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite able to be used as a standalone gui toolkit (Though, it could very well be. After all, thunderbird does use it), but I really haven't done much reading on the subject. -- Rando Christensen