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Asked: 2026-05-26T10:34:05+00:00

I have tried to mess with xulrunner before, and now I’m trying once again

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I have tried to mess with xulrunner before, and now I’m trying once again 🙂

The “real” tutorial (Getting started with XULRunner – MDN) does, in fact, show that one is supposed to have application.ini and other files (possibly zipped as .xpi, which then requires --install-app ...), and then the call should be like: 

xulrunner `pwd`/application.ini

… however, I’d like an easier way to start up – and hence, my hope for single-file XUL application approach 🙂 (A good note here is that one also cannot use the zipped .xpi as an argument to xulrunner, see XULRunner question – DonationCoder.com)

 

The thing is, I am almost 100% certain that at some point in the past, I have used a simple single-file XUL application, as in (pseudocode): 

xulrunner my-xul-app.extension

… but I cannot remember how it went 🙂 So, was that possible with xulrunner, or only with firefox?

As far as I can remember, I used something like a ‘my-xul-app.xul’ file (as the single-file application), which would specify only, say, a window with a single button (that couldn’t really do anything due to lack of javascript) – and I’d like to repeat the same thing now, to refresh my memory (unless I confused something from back then 🙂)

 

First of all, I found HOWTO: Getting Started with Linux Standalone Apps using XUL – Ubuntu Forums (2007), and I modified the example.xul file used there as: 

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?>
<window
id = "myapp"
title = "SQLite Example"
height = "420"
minHeight = "420"
width = "640"
minWidth = "640"
screenX = "10"
screenY = "10"
sizemode = "normal"
xmlns = "http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul" >
<spacer style = "height: 4px; cursor: default;" />
</window>

and I’m trying to “run” this as recommended in link, with: 

firefox -no-remote -chrome file:$PWD/example.xul

… and what happens is that Firefox opens, with window size being like 1×1 pixels; if you can find the handle, you can stretch the window, and read:

Remote XUL
This page uses an unsupported technology that is no longer available by default in Firefox.

Ouch 🙁 Answers to this (like How do I fix the Remote XUL error I get when using Firefox 4.x and the Webmail Advanced Interface?) seem to be related to actual remote xul (and recommend a plugin to handle that); but what I want is simply to run a file locally?! Where did the “remote” part come from?

 

Also, seeing the firefox switch ‘-app‘ (Using Firefox 3 as a XUL runtime environment); although it refers to an application.ini, I tried this: 

firefox -no-remote -app $PWD/example.xul

… and Firefox just started as usual.

Btw, I cannot see neither -app nor -chrome command line options in firefox --help 😉

 

But actually, I do not really want to use firefox as an engine – just the xulrunner; and I tried the Firefox approach because I thought it is more-less the same as xulrunner; turns out it isn’t (even if you use application.ini: Why does ‘firefox -App application.ini’ and ‘xulrunner application.ini’ behave differentely? | Firefox Support Forum):

In any case, if I run just xulrunner (as I wanted to), I get: 

$ xulrunner example.xul 
Error: App:Name not specified in application.ini

 

So, I can see everything points to “single source file” app not being possible with xulrunner – but I just wanted to make sure (in case I missed some obscure tutorial 🙂 ). And if it isn’t – does anyone remember if it was possible at a previous point in time?

 

PS: 

$ firefox --version
Mozilla Firefox 7.0.1
$ xulrunner --version
Mozilla XULRunner 2.0 - 20110402003021
$ uname -r
2.6.38-11-generic
$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 11.04 \n \l
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I don’t believe you could ever create single-file XULRunner applications. The -chrome <...> parameter probably used to work, I guess the “Remote XUL” error comes from the fact that the URL is file://, not chrome://.

    You could use something like the Live XUL Editor in the Developer Assistant (formerly Extension Developer’s extension) to test XUL quickly.

    The general idea I hear these days is that you should write HTML5 instead, whenever you can, since it is more actively developed, more well-known technology with less incompatible changes and better tooling…

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