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Learn how to use Mozilla to add custom made GUI's to scripts or other processes you want to have a point and click interface.
Best of all, with Mozilla and its XML User-interface Language (XUL, pronounced "zool," like the villain in Ghostbusters) a graphical user interface (GUI) controller is simple to build. If you've got a bit of HTML or XML experience, and have done a little bit of JavaScript or Perl coding, you can go far with very little instruction.
Let's build a GUI to control a MySQL server that requires very high uptime. Whenever possible, the GUI reuses existing tools and scripts, yet bundles them together with checkboxes and other "widgets" to provide an all-in-one solution.
Mozilla Platform Applications
On Microsoft Windows, system administrators and even end-users are accustomed to whipping together a quick Visual Basic (VB) script when a GUI is needed. But historically there's been little available on Linux, unless you count Tcl/Tk. Enter Mozilla. Mozilla is an XML processing engine that can create a GUI out of a plain document. Mozilla is similar to VB in simplicity, but is more modern and more standard. There's extensive support for scripting languages, and Mozilla even comes with its own set of handy user interface objects.
The Mozilla engine and its associated files is called the Mozilla Platform, and the Mozilla Browser (whether Netscape, Firebird, Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite, or otherwise) is an example of an application built on that platform. Thunderbird, the Mozilla email application, and ActiveState's Komodo, are other examples.
This article uses the Mozilla Application Suite (the standard install of Mozilla), not the Firefox/Firebird or Thunderbird tools. Full tutorial from Linux Magazine
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