XUL:Priority List: Difference between revisions

#way of making panels which arrange to fit, much like a Windows icon view. This can more or less be done with display: block, assuming that this doesn't change in upcoming CSS specs, but a tag for this would be nice. XAML calls this a FlowPanel and is a key layout primitive. (MinhNguyen) Java's AWT also has FlowLayout as the defalt layout manager.

#in addition, an icon object that can be dragged around in its container without having to write dragging code. (NeilRashbrook) Or at least the ability to capture the mouse while it's pseudo-dragging, so that all events get targetted at a specific element, avoiding hacks like listening for mouseup on the window element and hoping the mouse isn't released outside of the window.

#a clipboard API or wrapper that is easier to use. Meaning, one can cut and paste common types with only one or two lines of code. (NeilRashbook) I've always wondered why the clipboard helper only copies strings to the clipboard, you can't easily get them back. [[XUL:Specs:TransferData]]

#good drag and drop APIs, available for local and remote content.

#a means for the application to know when the item has been dropped onto another application.

#a means to know when a drag is cancelled. This is needed to tear down drop markers inserted into a document. Currently, you need to set up a timer and check for the continued existance of the drag session.  

#make sure that the Firefox toolbar customization is part of the toolkit.

#the stack is great for some positioned content, but there is a need to be able to have an absolutely positioned item or two without the need of a container, for example so that it can be moved about on the screen. Extensions, I'd imagine, would use this quite a bit. (NeilRashbook) [http://cards.mozdev.org/ Cards] seems to manage fine with a stack, although there's a hack to prevent the stack from expanding when items are dragged down or to the right.

#popups that can be non-rectangular or transparent, and have or not have title bars.

#something that allows applications to cache data. Currently, we have the network cache, and xul persistence in the local store, but they aren't very configurable. Possibility a way to store XML documents or RDF data. Also, provide access to cookies within XUL. (NeilRashbook) Move document.cookie to nsIDOMDocument perhaps? (AxelHecht) vlad is going to post something about this, just want to note that we need a good privacy/security story here, if this is supposed to be used widely.  

#a tag or collection of tags for easy web services. The <serverpost> is a good start for doing HTTP Post, which I'm including in the web services category. We need these kind of things so it is easy to send content to a remote site without having to resort to XMLHTTPRequest scripting. (AxelHecht) I'm not very fond of the idea as is, it seems like you're moving application logic into XML markup. Programming in XML is rather rare and Webservices are a rather generic thing to me, I have no vision on how this would help. If I'm wrong, should this go through the WHATWG? (AxelHecht) I have been thinking again. I bet we have two scenarios for webservices. One is to include the result of a soap or xmlrpc request into the document directly, the other is to generate content via the result, that is, we rather want to include webservices as XML datasources than just have them somewhere else, right? (NeilDeakin) Yes, we want to support web services as datasources for use in templates/databinding. Also, 'How do I post a form in XUL?' is a frequent question so there needs to be an easy way of doing a post. Calling SOAP and so forth takes a lot of code when it should be easy to send entered data to a remote site.

#controls for selecting dates and times. Again see WebForms 2.0 for how we should do this.

#panels that can be docked on the sides on the window or in some form of container. By clicking on some button, they become floating. This would be useful for floating palettes.

#ability to capture a window or parts of a window into an image. This is useful for creating thumbnails. (ChrisThomas) Is roc's drawWindow the solution to this?

#need to get the ActiveX control to work well with XUL, for instance, allowing it to recognize components and display new dialogs. (NeilRashbook) Java with XUL too. (AxelHecht) Lots of the layout points look very similar and ask for some kind of non-block non-inline non-xul-box layout scheme, right?

#ensure that scrolling APIs for getting and changing the scroll position in elements are available and usable in remote content. Also useful would be to have a scrollToPosition type function for textboxes. [[XUL:Specs:Scrolling]]