Journal: XUL/XPCOM+PHP vs. Applets+PHP

Hmm ... maybe it's time I started writing in this Slashdot journal thing of mine. I mean, god, it's only been three years or so since I've registered with Slashdot.

If anybody's actually reading this I guess a little biography's in order. I'm a 20 year old software engineering student living in Brisbane, Australia. I also work part time developing Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP web applications for a large-ish organization based over the south side. One more year to go in my degree. I was meant to be graduating at the end of this semester, but mother dearest decided that she wanted to run off to fuck some smooth talker during first semester. So y'know, I had to run around and find a job and a house to live in and stress - oh, god the stress! So I wound up pulling out of a unit - now I'm studying part time.

Anyhoo, not much to talk about at this stage. Spent most of this evening evaluation XUL/XPCOM with a PHP backend for an upcoming side project ... at this stage I'm thinking that a Java applet front end with a PHP backend would be better suited given the painful restrictions, difficulties and oddities of XUL. Well, really, the oddities of XPCOM.

Documentation is somewhat average for XUL/XPCOM - xulplanet.com is a great reference, but its lacking in places (it seems to gloss over how anal Mozilla/Firefox is about security permissions, and AFAIK doesn't mention anything about signed chrome applications - not that I care anyway, because I don't want my users to have to install/reinstall this application).

But then, Java sucks. XUL is much nicer for building user interfaces ... but then I guess with applets you get flexibility: custom components can be written as needed. XUL would probably need to rely on native components written for XPCOM ... but I really don't know enough about XPCOM to comment on that so hey. .NET isn't an option - the application needs to be accessible both from IE and Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape. *sighs* I hope I don't have to resort to good old HTML. Seriously, if I write this application using HTML I'm just going to use tables - fuck CSS, it's not going to be worth it given that it's an internal application.

Bah, I don't know. Technology sucks. If I had my way I'd write the entire thing in Python & GTK. Python ... god, I wish PHP was as nice as Python. Instead it's just a great big fucked up hack. PHP5 is a huge improvement, but it's still so ... yuck ... even when you take care to do things The Right Way (Templates/MVC/N-tier/etc./etc./etc./etc./etc./etc.!!!!!)
  You might disagree, but this is my journal so get fucked :)

I've got to go to bed. Work tomorrow. So tired. I'm off to dinner with Fee (my ex-gf/best buddy) tomorrow night. Aparrently she's scored vouchers for free combination dip at Montezuma's :o ... whatever the hell combination dip is.

Might go see Team America: World Police too - that looks awesome. Either that or we'll go to Gilhooley's :)

Night night ... zzz