Mozilla XULRunner

Mozilla XULRunner is a cool, open-source software that you can download for free. It's made by Mozilla, the same folks behind the super popular Mozilla Firefox web browser and other handy tools like Mozilla Thunderbird for emails and the SeaMonkey all-in-one Internet application suite.

What is XULRunner?

XULRunner works as a runtime environment that developers can use to easily set up XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model) and create XUL-based web applications. It’s got some neat features that help with installing, upgrading, and uninstalling these apps without any hassle.

Tools for Developers

This software also comes with the libxul library, which lets developers mix in Mozilla technologies into their own products. Plus, there’s a Software Development Kit (SDK) available for building XUL-based extensions (those fun add-ons) and applications.

Using XULRunner

You can run Mozilla XULRunner straight from a console or terminal. After you download the right binary package for your computer, just unpack it. Then, open your Terminal app and navigate to where you’ve extracted it (like cd /home/softpedia/xulrunner) and type in ./xulrunner. Easy peasy!

Command Options

This command will show you how to use the program along with available command-line options. You can specify an app-file (which is like an application initialization file), add specific options for your app, or even print out the GRE version string on stdout.

More Resources

If you're curious about how to use Mozilla XULRunner to develop add-ons or start new software projects, check out this link. You’ll find tons of helpful details about user profiles and versioning there!

Supported Systems

The great news? Just like all of Mozilla's apps—Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey—XULRunner works on all major operating systems! This includes every GNU/Linux distribution as well as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms too!