Creating Applications with Mozilla
by David Boswell, Brian King, Ian Oeschger, Pete Collins, Eric Murphy
Appendix B. Development Tools
This book describes how to create applications using Mozilla. Generally, all parts that go into an application (including XUL, CSS, XBL, and DTD files) need to be built by hand since no complete ready-made development tools or development applications are available that would make these manual processes easier.
Creating all these files by hand is a great way to familiarize yourself with the way Mozilla works, and becoming more familiar with the inner workings of a Mozilla application certainly helps you see how the various parts fit together. Once you are comfortable creating these files by hand, using the platform becomes much easier and Mozilla fulfills its promise as a rich application development framework.
Development tools are important, though, and platforms like Mozilla can't obtain the sort of developer base they deserve until tools that make application creation easier are available. Although some people want to learn everything there is to know about creating applications with Mozilla, many simply want to create something without a lot of fuss.
Mozilla does not yet have a full set of development tools, but currently several development projects help with part of the application creation process. These tools don't make up a full-featured development environment, but they are useful. They also point the way to an area in Mozilla development that has a bright future and is worth watching.
This appendix describes some of the new tools -- including ...
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