Customize Browser UI with Mozilla Chromeless

[Sabre]

Toms Article

Last week Mozilla announced Chromeless, a new experiment that allows web surfers to build their own browser user interface (UI) using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This is an entirely new approach in customization, granting full control of the layout and presentation on a level higher than creating mere themes.

"What if the parts of the browser that are most interesting to contributors were implemented in standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript?" Mozilla's Marcio Galli asked in a recent blog. "What kinds of wild-eyed experimentation would we see if a new conception of browser UI could be prototyped in about the same time it takes to write a web page? It’s questions like these that have motivated us to start a new Mozilla Labs experiment."

Currently in a pre-alpha state, the HTML-based Chromeless platform consists of inner browser elements that are iframes instead of the typical XML User Interface Language (XUL) elements. What's not included in the current build is a means for sandboxing among other things.

This is a GREAT idea, but I REALLY hope they have thought threw the security implications. I see they are talking about sandboxing and I really hope they implement this before going any further!

[complacent]

sounds like a disaster in the making, fo rlz.

i could see one or two devs looking to make their mark on the internet using this. then we're into the whole "ricer" gentoo-style of tweaks.. reeks of --omgoptimized flags.