Application runtime shared with Firefox that can be used to write cross platform desktop applications such as Firefox using web technologies & nodejs style JS modules system. Firebox applications are [npm][] packages with a bundled HTML document gets to require modules from the package and it's dependencies.
- Apps written in modern HTML5, CSS3, JS and WebGL.
- Support for [nodejs][] style module system and with most node APIs exposed via modules.
- Support for XUL+XPCOM+JSCTypes to overcome webplatform limitations when necessary.
- Easy to package and distribute apps.
- Available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
For now you are required to have a Firefox Nightly build to run firebox apps. Usage is little complicated for now but it's going to get better soon.
/Applications/FirefoxNightly.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -app /path/to/firebox/application.ini /path/to/app/During development you may want to use debugger. You can start debugger by passing additional arguments:
/Applications/FirefoxNightly.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -app /path/to/firebox/application.ini /path/to/app/ -debugger 6000Above comment will start debugger that will listen on port 6000. You can connect to it via Firefox WebIDE or via remote debugger by going to Tools > WebDeveloper > Connect....
As a first step you would need to setup a npm package for your application, by creating package.json file, which can be as simple as:
{
"name": "hello-firebox"
}Your application will need some UI which is defined in HTML/CSS/JS there for you would need to create index.html document. (If you'd prefer to have a different name for entry document, just add launchPath key to a package.json with a value that is a relative path to entry document with in your package).
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
You have access to require <script>document.write(typeof(require))</script>.
</body>
</html>