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Embedding Mozilla in Mac OS X Cocoa Apps

Posted by pudge on from the mmmmm-ozilla dept.

JimCricket writes "Art & Logic has published a new article: Embedding Mozilla in Mac OS X Cocoa Apps . The author presents a detailed step-by-step guide for Mac OS X developers that want to use Mozilla within their applications."

9 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Why not WebKit/KHTML? by foyle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would you embed Mozilla, which is acknowledged to be bloated even by its supporters, instead of Apple's WebKit (based on KHTML, used in Safari)?

    WebKit Docs

  2. embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't even wanna know why you'd want to embed the whole frickin' browser in anything, rather than just the renderer. And if you're going to embed the renderer, then just use the system one in WebCore, based on the KHTML renderer.

    1. Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko? by Quixotic+Raindrop · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, one reason _not_ to use WebCore is that it doesn't handle quite a number of websites using authentication now, which tells me that their authent package is broken (or, simply behind). IIRC, Safari uses webcore, and has tremendous difficulty (even yet) with e-commerce and online banking sites. Mozilla/Mac OS X is able to connect to these sites, and I assume would be a better choice for secure connections (whether Gecko or Mozilla itself).

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
    2. Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko? by germuska · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Quixotic Raindrop wrote:
      Safari uses webcore, and has tremendous difficulty (even yet) with e-commerce and online banking sites.

      I use Safari all day every day, including for online banking and plenty of ecommerce, and I don't have any consistent problems.

      Furthermore, using the CocoaDev One Line Browser, I was able to login to my bank site and view my pending bill payments (https) as well as login to a site which uses HTTP basic auth without writing a single line of extra code.

      What are these problems you report with Safari and authentication?
    3. Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko? by germuska · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I certainly didn't mean to suggest that Safari was incapable of bugginess.

      In your case, do you have the security preference "accept cookies" set to "only from sites you navigate to"? I've found that that setting doesn't play well with single-sign-on type systems where you (sometimes invisibly) bounce around from the initial server you visit to an auth server and back.

      Then again, I have also found that Safari has some problem with regular cookies set by the SnipSnap blog/wiki application (ultimately set by the Jetty servlet container).

      I still think it's pretty cool that WebCore itself can do all those basic browser functions, including (i forgot to mention) consulting the OS X Keychain for my saved password for the basic auth site I tested.

  3. Re:the point is this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    most of the "kruft" that has "bloated" gecko is in fact the kind of support code that's slowly being added by apple to kthml to get it to support the *REAL* web.

    Huh? No, Gecko is over 1 million lines of code, more than 10 times the size of KHTML. Most of that is stuff like their own string and basic container classes. (Why do people feel compelled to write THEIR OWN fundamental library classes? It boggles.)

    but just around the corner there are *hundreds* of other sites, already workin in gecko mind you, that kthml is going to have to hack around

    Hundreds? Doubtful.

    its horribly naive to think that in 1 years time when khtml comes close to approaching where gecko is *now* (not to mention where gecko will be in 12 months) that khtml will still be as light and clean as it is now

    Except that KHTML is already superior to Gecko NOW. You seem to have missed that little tidbit.

  4. Silly unless you want to make your own browser.. by Steveftoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For most programmers, we are just looking for a way to embed a small HTML rendering system so that we can display documentation, help, or someother hyperlinked document. Quickly too, so that we can easily get back to making a quality application. Gecko is a huge project and if you want to use it as the basis for an application more power to ya.

    However, Apple has the edge here with WebCore, you can now make a generic web browser without a single line of C/C++/ObjC code. Using only project builder, Interface Builder and WebCore, you can create a custom browser. It won't have many options, but it's quick and easy. Takes like 10 minutes to get working if you have all the tools installed.

  5. Camino by mbbac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's kind of the whole point of the Camino Project. Why reinvent the wheel?

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    mbbac

  6. Re:One would want cross-platform solutions by Arandir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ummm, this article is about embedding Mozilla in a Cocoa application. So you need an entry-level Mac to begin with in order to use it.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned