Seaside XUL

by Pavel Krivanek

This talk will describe the Seaside extension framework named SeasideXUL that enables to create multi-platform desktop applications with the standard look and feel directly in Smalltalk and Seaside. For this purpose it generates the XML User Interface Language (XUL) supported mainly in the Mozilla technologies. The communication between server and client is realized mainly via Ajax. It will be explained how SeasideXUL applications differ from the standard Seaside projects and what difficulties it brings. The security problems and other general limitations of remote XUL applications will be discussed and the ways how SeasideXUL faces them will be shown. Then it will be demonstrated how SeasideXUL can be used for the Smalltalk IDE generation and the small Squeak images without Morphic or MVC but with the fully capable Smalltalk environment will be presented. In the end the plans for the next development and the compatibility with other Smalltalk implementations will be described.

Bio: Pavel Krivanek. Pavel Krivanek is the lead developer in Nidea s.r.o. and he works as the IT manager for a company that owns several hotels in the Czech Republic. He is active in the Squeak modularization effort as the creator on the KernelImage project and he is the initiator of Seaside extension projects like ShoreComponents and SeasideXUL. He writes popularization materials about Smalltalk and Seaside for the Czech local media.