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XBL Form Controls Plan

Benefits of doing XBL Form Controls:

  • Form controls will match the browser skin
  • Performance increase
  • Footprint reduction
  • More maintainable code

Work breakdown:

We are currently not planning to rewrite the following form controls:
  • textfields
  • textareas
  • legends
We are planning to implement the following controls in XBL:
  • Select
    The SELECT element has two modes of operation, which are in effect separate widget implementations:

    • Dropdown
      A select with size=1 is drawn as a dropdown list. Per our meeting on 9/19/01, we decided that the best way to implement this would be a popup with an outliner.
    • Listbox
      A select with size > 1 is drawn as a listbox. This would also likely be implemented using outliner.

    Estimated time required: This work is dependent on implementing a content model view for outliner. Once that is finished, 10 days of work would be needed to implement the visual appearance and events.

  • Button
    The button element would be a simple mapping to a XUL button.

    Estimated time required: 2 days

  • Checkbox
    The checkbox element would be implemented using XUL checkboxes.

    Estimated time required: 2 days

  • Radio button
    The radio button element would be implemented using XUL radiobuttons.

    Estimated time required: 2 days

Document written by Brian Ryner