The truth is that at this point I've pretty much lost hope. A year (or two or three) ago I hoped that XUL would emerge as the full-app equivalent for XHTML. Just as I can now code a web page and have it work seamlessly in five or six different browsers (as long as it doesn't go too crazy with browser-specific stuff) I hoped that I would be able to create a XUL interface and have it work in all of those browsers and also on standard open source desktops.
Unfortunately, the Open XUL alliance has done nothing to advance that goal. Rather, it has made it less likely by rebranding "XUL" as any XML interface language. Any marketing guru will tell you that you never want to confuse your market that way. (remember Microsoft's .NET debacle?)
In 2003 my vision was that by the end of 2004 there would be a clear movement towards a unified, standardized XUL that would trounce Microsoft's Winforms GUI. Instead, Microsoft will have a unified XAML and the open source world will have its current chaos. The open source world had the XUL idea back in the late 1990s but has waited six years for Microsoft to "standardize" it. Now the world will see XAML as a Microsoft innovation which will be copied by the open source world. (I am confident that we will be forced to standardize to compete)
I'll never understand why we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Paul Prescod
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