Why isn't XUL more popular?

[Jon Perez]

Daniel Kirsch wrote:

> Jon Perez wrote:
> 
> Of course, that's the DOM API. JavaScript only implements it. But what's 
> painfull about programming DOM? Once you get it (and easily extended it 
> thanks to Mozilla's proper implementation), it's pretty logical and 
> powerfull.

I find DOM to be unnecessarily verbose.  It looks very much like a
bloated design-by-a-committee rather than a lean, mean spec designed by a
few sharp minds.  It takes way too many calls to do something simple
and the proper calls to use are non-obvious to a beginner.  It is really
not that hard to imagine having a simpler API for manipulating XML.

I have been doing extensive DOM work using Javascript for many years
now and while I'm quite deep into DOM (For example, I have developed a
technique to dynamically load/modify any part of a webpage from a remote
data source without reloading the entire page.  A much tougher task than
you might think owing to Javascript/DOM API deficiencies and hence the need
for 'voodoo' techniques), I must say I have never grown to love this API.

Among the many XML-manipulation libraries available for Python are two
or three DOM implentations.  Despite my long experience with DOM under
Javascript, I shun the DOM ones and instead use Fredrik Lundh's way more
pythonic(*) ElementTree... waaaay easier to deal with.  Too bad it or a
similar API is not available for doing DHTML. :-(


(*) 'pythonic' is roughly translated as meaning quick to learn (one
sitting), easy to use (e.g. small, easy-to-remember API) and powerful
at the same time.