Roll Your Own Browser

davidwboswell writes "Oreillynet is running an article about how to create your own browser with Mozilla. This is a follow-up to a previous article that surveyed many of the alternate Mozilla browsers currently available including Chimera, Galeon, Phoenix and Aphrodite."

Comments

Security

[JohnHegarty]

It's there alot of security issues with that. I wouldn't use a browser from some guy called 'bob' that i never heard of, becuase he could be sending all my credit card details back to his server.

This is going to help the likes of the people who added all those "extras" to kazza.

Re:Security

[mnordstr]

Mozilla is not a web application. Slashdot is a web application...

Re:Security

[BrookHarty]

And worse comes to worst, you look at the freaking source yourself.

Do you think Grandma can also fix bugs in the source when she finds them? There are non-programmers out there. They need to have some level of trust, and "Bob's WebBrowser and Tackle Shop" is going to be the perfect excuse for paladin.

This is why Paladin is going to sell. Cant trust those nasty OpenSource programmers, afraid of viruses? Trust our "Microsoft Signed(TM)" programs. Gives you those nice warm fuzzies about buying things on the Internet. Feel secure about your "Trusted" OS.

Hell, Grandma and Joe Six pack will be first in line to buy a Secure and easy to use OS with all the M$ support included.

You arnt against Security are you? Damn terrorist.

-
A version of Links that does gfx - http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/l inks/

Re:Security

[Alsee]

It's there alot of security issues with that. I wouldn't use a browser from some guy called 'bob' that i never heard of, becuase he could be sending all my credit card details back to his server.

That goes for any EXE. If you download an run a game it could patch your browser to do exactly that.

Ironicly, since the browser is such an obvious place for a threat like that, in many cases it will be a safer than your typical download.

-

Re:Security

[Tony-A]

Funny, I feel safer with an unchecked download from some random hacker.
All the M$ support included *STILL* can't get rid of Code Red.

Hooray

[Adam9]

Oh yay, make it eve neasier for ISPs to have their own "customized" web browser. On second thought.. this would promote Mozilla. That's good, right?

Re:Hooray

[Rude Turnip]

It would promote the underlying technology, which is what counts in the end. However, it would now have the support of a large customer base.

What sounds more threatening to an online store owner...thousands of pissed-off AOL and Earthlink customers who can't navigate the site due to non-compliant coding, or thousands of geeks using some relatively unknown web browser?

my 0.2�

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is not 'rolling your own browser' the problem is. it's always the same browser. no matter how much i put around the mozilla gecko engine it still stinks because of the XUL crap it uses.

e.g right now we are discussing how we perfectly embedd galeon 2 into gnome 2.4 but the problem is that we still get XUL widgets shown which is really annoying. the best way to have gecko embedable is to have it split up e.g. gecko as own library that you can get as source, unpack, configure && make && make install. but this is more a dream that will probably never come true. it would be cool to have a native gecko library where we can say --enable-gtk2 and it gets native gtk widgets shown whenever it renders page. but the whole mozilla cruft we are dealing with right now makes it in no way embedable. it's like tieing an egg to a hen.

Re:my 0.2�

[Nicopa]

Crap. Current web standards *require* you render your own widgets. You are supposed to alter any aspect of them. So, designing a web browser today is really the same as designing a toolkit! You have element positioning, form widgets, styling.

Re:my 0.2�

[mnordstr]

Mozilla provides its own widgets, that's what makes it so great. As a developer it's really good to know that the widgets are and look the same on any platform. That's what makes Mozilla great for embedded applications!

Re:my 0.2�

[DrXym]

Form widgets are XUL because the CSS specs say can be stylized.

Re:my 0.2�

[Golias]

Tonight on DIY: How to make your own browser, using only Mozila!

Tomorrow on DIY: How to make a working automobile, starting with nothing but a brand new Nissan Maxima.

Friday on DIY: How to make a Pizza with nothing but a phone and $15.

Re:my 0.2�

[DrXym]

Perhaps you can but then it's the small matter of reimplementing form widgets for every platform / GUI you wish to run Mozilla. In theory this might be possible but you run into all kinds of mess when dealing with clipping, accessibility, printing, tying GUI events to Moz and vice versa. In other words the kind of hell that drove Mozilla to XUL widgets in the first place.

A better solution would be to hook the XUL form widgets up to the existing theme engine support in Mozilla. Then if GTK supplies a rendering engine (does it? I don't know) then it can render in the GTK style but not break the CSS standards support.

Re:my 0.2�

[be-fan]

Cross-platform similarity is only useful for a very limited range of applications. For the most part, its just annoying to users who want all their apps to look the same.

Re:my 0.2�

[roca]

I'd like to know how to render a widget UNDER a translucent PNG using GTK or Qt (or Win32 or Carbon, for that matter).

Re:my 0.2�

[orangesquid]

How come nobody *ever* mentions skipstone? It, in my opinion, is better than galeon because it lacks the gnome cruft (especially frustrating on machines where gnome isn't installed, and since galeon requires many pieces of it, you're eating up loads of disk space for just a browser)

Re:my 0.2�

[roca]

> A better solution would be to hook the XUL form
> widgets up to the existing theme engine support
> in Mozilla.

That is, in fact, exactly what we are doing. Sometime reasonably soon we should have all XUL and HTML widgets rendered using the platform theme.

On WinXP we already use the WinXP theme to render XUL widgets. There are some problems with GTK themes that are holding things up for GTK.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id= 142334
is the bug for turning on GTK theme support in XUL.

Re:my 0.2�

[be-fan]

Because consistancy is important in asthetics. I'd really hate to see what you're house looks like...

Re:my 0.2�

[be-fan]

I have a question. Do your curtains match your sheets? Do your pants match your shirt? Asthetics is important to a majority of the world's population. Consistancy is an important part of asthetics.

Re:my 0.2�

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, great for develoopers, a total nightmare for GUI designers, users, and usability experts.

*sigh* when will programers ever learn...

Re:my 0.2�

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Because consistancy is important in asthetics. I'd really hate to see what you're house looks like...

Not just that, but consistantly is very important in design and usability.

When grandma just gets the hang of all the widgets on OS-Whatever, then fires up Mozilla, only to be greated by a set of widgets she has never seen before, how do you think she's going to react? She probably won't understand it, and close it.

Re:my 0.2�

[jez_f]

If this were true then why does M$ insist on messing about with the UI every time there is an OS upgrade. Win 3.1 was consistant (though V different from Win 3) 9x/NT were consistant but different, so we had to get used to a new UI and then XP is all different again. To my knowlege /bin is still in the same place it allways has been. If you wrote a XUL app it would be the same accross all platforms so people will not get confused when you upgrade or change the backend. Anyway if you really want I am sure there is a mozilla skin that makes it look like IE. Personaly I think XUL has a lot of potential. I have only looked into it, but it is next on my list of skills to learn.

Re:my 0.2�

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

If this were true then why does M$ insist on messing about with the UI every time there is an OS upgrade.

It's MS. Since when has MS been the hallmark of anything good?

On the other had, look at Mac OS, The only dramatic change came about in OS X, which is an entirly new OS.
And if you've ever used OS X, you see that there is a big focus on consistancy in GUI between apps.

Re:my 0.2�

[rycamor]

I understand the desire to streamline, and get XUL out of the browser's own interface.

However, I also see the promise that XUL has for application developers. It's a dream for distributed applications, especially for corporate intranet stuff.

So, my question is: even if you remove XUL from the browser UI, as with Galeon, will the Gecko rendering engine still render XUL that I might want to load via HTTP?

If so, I see this as a Good Thing: we can have a hundred different browsers, but each will correctly render complex GUI widgets, which are a mess to handle with DHTML/Javascript, and each of which can be queried and updated at will. Sounds like a perfect answer to .NET on the client side.

Anyone with a little more knowledge who can clarify things here?

Thanks.

Re:my 0.2�

[rycamor]

I'm with you all the way ;-). I personally think XUL is a great thing (shows great promise for distributed apps in general).

Mozilla performs just fine on my PII 600 (Win2K), my AMD 550 (Win98) and my Celeron 500 (Slackware). Phoenix (lite Mozilla) performs even better, beats IE hands down.

And I think the skinnable thing is a perfect way to have a little fun, and relieve the gray boredom of computing. My wife (not a computer geek) loves Mozilla. Everyone I know who is not a computer whiz still thinks Mozilla is great when I show them.

What kills me is this elitist "no fun" attitude I see programmers so often take: as if the interface always needs to be so dumbed down that it's just made for Granny, and there can _never_ be even the slightest deviation from the standardized desktop. Well, if it's only good for Granny, then it's no good to anyone else. People are complex. No one I know is "Granny". My mother is probably the most technophobic person I know, and even she can handle the concept that a button might look a little different. I personally think different things _should_ look different (a little line I stole from Larry Wall).

And anyway, if you want a browser for Granny, XUL is the perfect way to roll an ultra-simple layout, with big typeface, etc... Granny is hardly the one who is going to care if a widget takes an extra half second to pop up.

Re:my 0.2�

[Tony-A]

Because consistancy is important in asthetics. I'd really hate to see what you're house looks like...
Hmmmm. The kitchen looks like the bedroom looks like the bathroom??? Or is it kitchens look like kitchens, bedrooms look like bedrooms, and bathrooms look like bathrooms? Seems like aesthetics demands that form and function not be too far separated from each other.
The question is which consistancy is more important, the application across systems or the applications that are on a system.

How to name your browser

[tmark]

In a followup, Richard Stallman indicated that if you use Emacs or any of a laundry list of utilities in modifying said Mozilla, the resulting browser name must be prefixed with 'GNU'.

dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[Dr. Awktagon]

On OS X and Linux (and occasionaly FreeBSD) I've used: Mac Explorer, Chimera, OmniWeb, Mozilla, Konquerer, Lynx, and now playing with Phoenix..

If only they could share bookmarks, cookie preferences, and site passwords. Across machines! Securely! Is anybody working on this? Is LDAP the answer?

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[bytesmythe]

This is the same issue as the "roaming profile" problem.

It would seem that the easiest way to implement something like this would be to have a small (probably USB-based) device like one of those USB keyring "drives" that you use to store this kind of basic information. Then have a standard in which different systems (KDE, Gnome, Windows, browsers, email clients, etc.) will check for the device and try to load preferences from it.

Since you could encrypt the information on the device and require a password to access it, it would be fairly secure, plus you don't have to trust someone else's distributed network.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[Nicopa]

No, the ansert for that question is a little known protocol called ACAP, which is designed for remote profiles, profile sharing. e.g. In ACAP a client can register for dynamic updates, so all open applications dynamically change their settings at the same time!

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[Midnight Thunder]

And here is a link: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/acap/

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[GMontag]

Umm, in Netscape 7.0 under "Bookmarks" it has a menue item called "Imported IE Favorites" that contains all of the "Favorite Places" that I have bookmarked in my IE Browser on the same machine.

might want to try that, or even share the bookmark files/folders/directories of each machine across a network.

BTW, I found this N7.0 feature by accident, not trying to sound like some browser expert kuz I ain't.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[digidave]

Yeah, all we need is some kind of centralized login system to do this. It could hold all of our browser data, credit card number, etc to make browsing the web easier.

Now all we need to find is a company that wants to write software to control all online transactions, profide centralized login and store our private information.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[reaper20]

You're dreaming of Bug 124029.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[BroadbandBradley]

go and see ZillaVilla.com for information about roaming profiles and a list of bugs on Bugzilla that are related. Roaming profiles don't work YET, but hopefully will soon.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[plover]

Hey, we just had this discussion!

The resolution was syncml.org, a protocol and spec for universal syncing of data. I bet bookmarks are in there if you look hard enough.

Re:dreaming of centralized cookies and bookmarks

[Tony-A]

I do NOT want my /. login and my credit card info to ever be stored in the same place.

Aphrodite

[kalidasa]

It's a shame development on Aphrodite has slowed to a crawl. Have you seen the Sullivan skin? It would really look good on my iBook.

Re:Aphrodite

[kalidasa]

That's largely because it dates back to the day when skins weren't properly integrated with Mozilla. The main differences now are in skins and menu, and the total recall engine.

Re:Aphrodite

[thales]

Aphrodite Development slowed down because of the constantly changing APIs while Mozilla was being developed. It was rewritten several times without adding any new features just to keep up with the APIs. Right now Aphrodite is on hold because the primary developer (Me) has picked up a free lance job in addition to his day job. 16 to 18 days don't leave much time for Aphrodite, and of course software you are being paid to work on takes precedance over free software like Aphrodite. I'm hoping to resume development on Aphrodite later this year when the project I'm working on ships.
Thales aka John Dobbins

Come back again...for a better Round

[buswolley]

This article seems to be one that can't be truly discussed until people mess around with the information the article gives.

Maybe in a few weeks /. should come back to this and then ask what people think.

or am I totally off-base?

mozilla.exe as explorer.exe

[zeepers]

Right now, both mozilla.exe and explorer.exe are using about 25mb of ram on my machine. Are there any projects in the works to use mozilla as explorer? All that would be needed would be a program launcher, taskbar, and system tray system, right?

Re:mozilla.exe as explorer.exe

[aao-brad]

Have you checked out the alternative shell scene? You can find cool alternatives for explorer all over. A mozilla-based shell would be interesting, though.

Check out Desktopian for more info.

Re:mozilla.exe as explorer.exe

[Suppafly]

I've honestly been predicting that a future version of AOL will do just this. AOL already overwrites several system .dll's when it installs, it wouldn't be unconceivable for them to replace explorer.exe in the future. Most aol users already think that aol is their operating system anyway, and with all the mozilla projects to add X feature that really should be a separate program into mozilla its entirely possible that in the future aol will try and slide something like this in.

Is excessive plurality really useful?

[hobbs]

Is it really useful to encourage more people to create more "forks" based on the gecko engine? I'm not against people playing around or doing whatever they want, but shouldn't we encourage people to consider working together more on some of these alternatives?

It's a thin line to avoid the balloon and bloat of Mozilla while providing functionality that many desire. Many projects are doing this, but each needs more developers to seal the leaks and fix the cracks.

Re:Is excessive plurality really useful?

[Arcturax]

At the least it will be fun watching M$ run around like crazy trying to mimic every innovation that comes along in 100 different browsers.

It also opens the possibility for more competition, open source style. Look at the Mac for example. On Mac OS X, Chimera is taking off like a rocket among Mac users on OS X because it is fast and beautiful looking since it uses native Aqua, unlike IE 5.2 for the Mac. I for one have switched off of IE 5.2 and onto Chimera for 99% of my browsing, only suffering IE on sites that Chimera can't handle properly yet, which isn't many.

In short, choice is good, more choice is better. Who cares what browsers people use, as long as they conform to standards and work the way they like?

Re:Is excessive plurality really useful?

[aengblom]

Is it really useful to encourage more people to create more "forks" based on the gecko engine? I'm not against people playing around or doing whatever they want, but shouldn't we encourage people to consider working together more on some of these alternatives?

Be warned: I know nothing.

Anyway, it seems that the Mozilla project is becoming pretty mature and adding/subtracting features is difficult and time consuming. Mostly because The Project is heavy on administration. I think Moz benefits greatly by encouraging many smaller high-risk ideas to be tried out away from the main project. When that idea is more refined, it should have a greater chance of sneaking back into the mothership.

No doubt the lobbying and politics within the much larger Moz project would hamper more radical, but possibly better evolutionary changes.

That it is a brower and not Linux is quite important. Few want to try out a new OS for couple tweaks, but a 10 MB browser doesn't strike me as very hard.

Re:Is excessive plurality really useful?

[ajs]

Yes.

No wait, let me think about it <pause for a beat> YES!

You want to have as many of these projects as you can, and then over the next few years most will be shaken out. Even now, Mozilla is feeling the pressure to work on performance. Why? Because Galeon, Konqeror, Phoenix and lynx (:) are all faster on UNIX and UNIX-like systems. This forces Mozilla to evaluate its place. Do they want to drop the browser as a reference effort and just focus on the "browser-building toolkit"? If not, they need to compete on the performance level or on some other level (e.g. bring the mailer and the browser closer together and make that interaction something worth the slow-down, which it is not right now).

Mozilla is a great browser, and if Galeon weren't an even better one, I'd use it. Everyone wins because of this competition, just as everyone wins because KDE and GNOME have both worked so had to be at least as featureful and usable as eachother.

Re:Is excessive plurality really useful?

[Ian Bicking]

I think a lot of browsers are emphasizing UI elements more than Technology. I use Galeon more for its UI than its speed -- the tabbing works Just Right, and overall it pleases me.

You can't take all the UI innovation and just put it all in one Super Browser. That will suck -- UI is about what you leave out, not just what you include. No one really knows what The Goal is for all these -- there is no clear vision of what The Most Usable browser will look like. So we have lots of people experimenting with different ideas.

Re:Is excessive plurality really useful?

[blibbleblobble]

"Is it really useful to encourage more people to create more "forks" based on the gecko engine?"

Example: on TheOpenCD (CD of GNU applications for windows) this was discussed: do we include Mozilla?

Obvious answer: yes of course. Mix of NPL, MPL, GPL, so we could distribute it.

Later answer: no. The mozilla team consider it a technology-demo for tecchies only, and do not want to support lusers trying to use it. Their answer: "please don't distribute it without putting your own branding on, or use a derivative [netscape, k-meleon, beonix...]"

So a slashdot article to show people how to create such derivatives, with links to a book? Great.

why is that...

[g0st]

why is it that all alternative browers sound like topless dancer names? opereta, phoenix, aphrodite..

Re:why is that...

[BlueGecko]

Well, at least on my OS X system, it might have something to do with the fact that if you type "top" in the terminal, Mozilla is always listed as having really big numbers...

Re:why is that...

[Dan Crash]

Would you rather use a browser called Fred? :)

galeon != xul

[distributed.karma]

Go check the Galeon manifesto. It does not use XUL. In fact one of the reasons Galeon was started is because they don't like the bloat of XUL.

Re:galeon != xul

[Cardinal]

if you enable 'ask for cookie permission' then you get a XUL dialog popped up etc.. its still not perfect as we would like.

I don't know what parallel dimension you downloaded galeon from, but when I get a cookie prompt, it comes to me in a GTK dialog.

Additionally, the widgets used by gecko for rendering forms are native, and Mozilla can be configured to use a number of different toolkits for them.

One XUL dialog that is still in galeon, however, is the 'accept SSL certificate' dialog, so yes, galeon doesn't have a replacement for everything.

Proxy server?

[__aawsxp7741]

I could imagine cookies being managed by a proxy server. If you install it locally, at least you could share them among various browsers on one platform. Privacy proxies (e.g. privoxy) already have a lot of the required functionality. You'd just have to implement an interface that alerts you when a cookie is set which your policy doesn't cover. Maybe biscuit does this properly?

Of course, there's the problem of different users on a machine. Is it possible to run a proxy that only a single user has access to?

Bookmarks could easily be managed through a small web app. There's a few things like this, check freshmeat.

Free online book

[slothdog]

Also related is that O'Reilly has released "Creating Applications With Mozilla" under the OPL, and can be found in its entirety here: http://books.mozdev.org/

(Apologies if this has been mentioned before; I did a quick search and didn't see it.)

Re:Free online book

[Micah]

And it's a great book! I'm spending this week inhaling it and practicing the stuff.

I submitted it as a story to Slashdot and it was rejected. :/ This book is a lot more important than most of the other recent stories on here. Mozilla has WAY more power than you ever dreamed, and this book tells you how to use it. Highly recommended.

Re:Free online book

[Jethro]

Mozilla has WAY more power than you ever dreamed

I believe you mean "Mozilla is more powerful than you could ever imagine!"

Anti-FSF FUD

[Rupert]

I think the FSF is fighting a losing battle with the whole GNU/Linux thing, but the reasons they are fighting it are a lot more valid than you imply.

The Linux kernel is called Linux. It doesn't matter that it was edited in emacs and compiled with gcc. It's Linux.

GNU/Linux refers to distributions. If you package Linux and GNU, in such a way that there is no option not to install the GNU part, it's a GNU/Linux distribution. There may be GNU/Linux/X distributions (maybe Lindows is a GNU/Linux/X/Wine distribution), but I am not aware of any Linux distributions that allow you the option of not installing GNU.

Re:Anti-FSF FUD

[Rupert]

You mean the kernel for the Linux operating system?

The name of the OS is what's being debated. When I say the Linux kernel I think it's pretty clear which kernel I'm talking about.

You refer to Linux as an operating system (distribution)

I referred to a hypothetical Linux distribution that always installed the Linux kernel but gave you the option of whether or not you installed GNU. I don't believe one exists.

RMS would like us to say the GNU kernel is called Linux.

My impression is that RMS would like people to refer to GNU/Linux or GNU/HURD as appropriate when referring to the OS, and Linux or HURD when referring to the kernel. I also think he is making too big a deal out of it.

How is this different from IE?

[NineNine]

I've done this several times with IE. All you gotta do is drop the COM object into a VB project. You can literally have your "own" browser in about 30 seconds. How's this any different? If anything, making your own browser with IE seems a hell of a lot easier than using Mozilla. In VB, you can do the whole thing visually, and add code behind the objects and events.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[snake_dad]

One word: cross-platform! And open-source! Two words! Cross-platform and open-source! Free! Three words.. Who's next? :)

Re:How is this different from IE?

[kalidasa]

All you gotta do is drop the COM object into a VB project. You can literally have your "own" browser in about 30 seconds. How's this any different?

Try doing that in any non-Microsoft operating system. THAT'S what's different. You can get Gecko for nearly anything.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[be-fan]

Oh, mister fancy-smancy visual man. Just cuz its visual doesn't make it easier.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Or even a $100, Standard Edition one.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[slug359]

Actually exactly the same is true for the Gecko engine, there is a COM object for it, you drop it into your VB/Delphi project and use it in 30 seconds.

It also uses _exactly_ the same properties, methods and events, so you just change the name of the gecko control to the name of your IE control, and it works, I've done it.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[stratjakt]

Or even any dev environment you like that has COM support.

and the webbrowser control has been there since vb4.0, so even if you wanted to do it in vb, you wouldn't have to shell for .net.

though you'd never convice this crowd.

yay mozilla! you're one step closer to being IE!

Re:How is this different from IE?

[Micah]

Anyone know if that could work with Kylix on Linux?

Re:How is this different from IE?

[kalidasa]

Non-MS OS's isn't a realistic concern for user products (as opposed to server products). Whether you develop for consumers or even internally for corporations, multiple OS's on the desktop is a moot point. Browsers aren't used on servers.

What do you call OS X? And last time I checked,there were a few million OS X user machines.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[RevAaron]

But why bother? If you're using IE or Gecko as a COM object in such a manner, you're tying it exclusively to Windows. At that point, why not just use IE, which (to me) seems faster and less memory-hungry than gecko on the same machine?

Re:How is this different from IE?

[WNight]

Because Gecko doesn't come with a set of compromised-level exploits every month. Because Gecko renders standards compliant HTML properly. And, just because Gecko isn't a bloated, OS-tied, piece of crap like IE. Oh, and because using Gecko lets you keep the exact rendering engine on any other platforms you may port to.

But, other than all of those reasons you mean.

Re:How is this different from IE?

[WNight]

IE not crap? Go to google and search for "IE Exploit". Many of those are huge holes which allow you to read and write local files.

The only comparable hole in Mozilla was patched before 1.0 and was done quickly once discovered, unlike Microsoft's "We'll fix it when we get to it" attitude.

Actually, handled by anyone else, IE might not be bad. It's MS that sucks. Relying on their software hurts. I suspect that by now, IE's code is as spaghetti-ish as Netscape's was before they killed it and wrote Mozilla, but because of MS's internal politics it'll never get re-written, it'll just have more and more cruft glued onto it resulting in more interesting bugs.

If they ever get Palladium working they'll have to face that the biggest threat to user security (which isn't their main focus, security *from* users is...) is IE and they'll probably start only rendering web pages signed by trusted coders or something to avoid fixing it. Chuckle.

Still doesn't fix the "frontpage problem"

[Vengie]

I hate to be the one to point this out -- I am a big mozilla fan (3 Cheers for optimoz!!) but the real problems lie in the crappy html output of Microsoft Frontpage. Besides...has anyone seen volano chat (http://www.volano.com) in _any browser other than ie_ work properly? (Chatrooms dont scroll, etc) In fact, volanochat didnt even work properly on IE for OSX until Jaguar. *sigh*

We need a mozilla-esque frontpage replacement. GNU/Dreamweaver anyone? ;)

Re:Still doesn't fix the "frontpage problem"

[stratjakt]

So it's frontpages fault that mozilla can't display the html it generates?

Maybe the mozilla team could get off their high horses and work with the rest of the world.

Is something a standard because W3 or the Mozilla guys say so? Or because 90% of browsers on peoples machines say so? Like it or not, you have to face facts sometimes.

Making mozilla compatible with real life websites is its best hope for the future.

Re:Still doesn't fix the "frontpage problem"

[bogie]

"So it's frontpages fault that mozilla can't display the html it generates?"

In a word, Yes.

If Mozilla were to code for every quirk that is IE specific, they would be recreating IE, and who wants to do that? You also even if you wanted to can't do this on a crossplatform level, because IE isn't a truely crossplatform browser.

"Making mozilla compatible with real life websites is its best hope for the future"

Somehow I think Mozilla is doing just fine. Warping an Internet browser to fit Microsoft's vision of the web is what IE is for, you'll excuse Mozilla if they don't want to contribute to a Microsoft only web.

It sounds to me like you should just stick to using IE, you'll be a lot happier.

Re:Still doesn't fix the "frontpage problem"

[bunratty]

Is something a standard because W3... say so?

Yes! You've got it!

Many people make a big deal that these standards are called "recommendations," but this is semantic quibbling. It's like saying that you don't believe in the theory of relativity because it's only a "theory."

What's Microsoft up to? Roll your own IE.

[Embedded Geek]

I'm working on a Win CE project these days and have found it a pretty interesting environment to work in (and, yes, I'm a long time MS basher so I find that tough to say that). The fact is that, at least in the CE world, Internet Explorer is modular.

Platform builder comes with an application called "IESample" which is basically a frame you can tweek to roll your own version of IE. With a few hours of work, I found it pretty easy to modify the beast to match some custom requirements we had to change the page being viewed when an outside stimulus was activated. You can take a look here to see the IE interfaces exposed.

Again, this is entirely in the CE world. I can not speak to embedded XP or the desktop.

PS - Several months ago, I was in a week long CE training class. I was amazed that on the day I learned about rolling a version of IE, I clicked on the TV and saw it in the news. An MS exec was testifying in front of congress (the senate?) about how IE was not modular in any way shape or form. Then one of the committee members brought up CE. A shame the news didn't report the exec's reaction...

Just use LWP::UserAgent

[Fastball]

All anybody needs are the headers anyway. Right?

Will you fight O'Reilly?

[GuyMannDude]

Yeah, well I'd like to see you go on the O'Reilly Factor and make that case against Bill O'Reilly yourself! He'll eat you alive! It's one thing to rant here on slashdot but when you're face to face with one of the most hard-hitting no-hold-barred talk show hosts on TV today, you'll find yourself at a loss for words!

Oh wait...

GMD

Re:ah yes, altering the aspects ...

[Nicopa]

Don't shift the point. Both Mozilla and Explorer do things with their form control widgets that are imposible to do with the Windows provided ones. So both need to implement their own toolkits.

Re:Mozilla Love

[Suppafly]

kill mozilla like they did to java

Kill mozilla like they killed netscape the first time.

To the rescue!

[Dirtside]

"...many of the alternate Mozilla browsers currently available including Chimera, Galeon, Phoenix and Aphrodite."

Does this sound like a team of superheroes to anyone else?

Re:What's Microsoft up to? Roll your own IE.

[BrookHarty]

I remember when M$ visual basic came with the stuff to create your own webbrowser, 75K compiled, and you had a basic html browser, no table support, but it did render basic formated text.
When I'm stuck using IE only sites, I use an IE enhancer, Crazy Browser, provides tabs, and other security features that I turn off (cookie/popups/etc), but its free and fills the missing functions.

Actually, there is a Linux OS that's not GNU/Linux

[smcv]

From the FAQ for "Revol", a distribution of Linux suitable for use on a Psion Revo (a.k.a. Diamond Mako) electronic organiser:

• Shouldnt this be called GNU/Linux?

  Actually, no. The argument for GNU/Linux is that most linux systems are a modified version of the GNU system which has been around for longer than linux has. However, Revol uses embedded versions of the standard parts of the operating system normally provided by GNU tools (uclibc instead of glibc, busybox instead of the GNU fileutils etc). So Revol is a non-GNU linux system.

lizard featured on the cover of the oreilly book

[solferino]

the lizard featured on the cover of the oreilly book advertised off to the side of this article is a frill-necked lizard

native to that land of weird and wonderful animals, terra australis

and this lizard is one little terror australis - have a look at some of the pictures on this page

Let me tell you something...

[cr0sh]

At my day job I code in VB - and I have played with XUL in Mozilla. The one nice thing Mozilla/XUL has over IE/VB is that the dev environment is the browser - really, you only need Mozilla, a text editor (I prefer NEdit, but vi will work fine too) - and that's it! I don't have to buy some insanely costly VB IDE system in order to code up my application (and really, when you couple XUL with PHP on Apache, and add MySQL for the backend - you are talking web applications). It's cheap! It's Free! It's Open! What the hell more could I ask for? To be anally raped by Bill?

Joe Six Pack

[Vengie]

.....Paladin? I hope joe six pack refers to abdominal muscles and not beer, because if you're that stupid, you better be cute.

Re:Actually, there is a Linux OS that's not GNU/Li

[Rupert]

There you go then. I can't speak for RMS, but that sounds OK to me.

Follow the Abi example

[psicE]

My two favorite open source projects are Mozilla and AbiWord. Both use cross-platform graphics libraries. The difference is in how they're executed.

AbiWord uses wrappers to compile its XP libraries into native widgets, for platforms as diverse as Win32, GTK/GNOME, QNX, and BeOS. Mozilla, instead, uses those same libraries, but uses XUL widgets; they look the same on any platform, but completely inconsistent with the platform they're on.

Moz should follow Abi's example. Eschew in-browser themes, and just use a wrapper to convert at compile-time to native widgets.

Scissors, Paper, Stone

[Tony-A]

That kind of game, there is no ONE right answer.

Re:Look to Windows for an Answer

[Tony-A]

Gotta disagree.
The key is to cobble together a usefully different functional custom web browser with minimal effort. The fundamentals must be in place or you wind up with a big mess.
For the slow "market share" death that mature markets seem to develop, what about all the wierd basic 4-function calculators? The market's mature when you choose a browser based on the color of its icon.