First Draft – June 30, 2004

In this multi-part series, I will explore what web applications are, and how the effective combination of XUL, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL can create a compelling and usable web application.

Overview:

• Part I: In the first part, I look at the past and present of web applications: what the earliest web applications were like, how they have evolved over time, and how they work.

• Part II: In the second part, I look at how a combination of XUL and JavaScript on the client side and PHP and MySQL on the server side can create a compelling and rich web application. I look at how the client and server sides can be bridged by using XML-RPC.

• Part III: In the third part, I lay out the code involved in creating a sample web application that utilizes the technologies discussed so far. The application that is created is a fortune cookie machine for the web. Users can retrieve a random cookie, they can add a cookie, and view a list of all the cookies that others have added.

View This Article in HTML format

Preview:

If you have a XUL-compatible (Mozilla-based) browser, you can see how a XUL + PHP application looks with this live example below:

Downloads:

Please feel free to download this entire article as a PDF file, and the accompanying packaged source code (which also contains this article as a PDF file). The PDF file looks better than the HTML version.

• PDF: Download this article as a PDF file

• Code + PDF: Download the complete source code and this article as a PDF, packaged together as a ZIP file

Requirements:

• Basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, how web applications work, and working knowledge of PHP

• PHP, MySQL on the server side; Mozilla on the client side

Category: XUL and PHP

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