Embedding Mozilla in Mac OS X Cocoa Apps

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."

Comments

Why not WebKit/KHTML?

[foyle]

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

Re:Why not WebKit/KHTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

Been a while since you checked out Safari, huh? iht.com, which was a pain in the ass for a long time, has been working for weeks now, since the late betas.

Re:Why not WebKit/KHTML?

[Senjaz]

The only reason I can think of is for visual HTML editors. They could embed both frameworks for previewing pages without having to load a separate browser.

embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[Tumbleweed]

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.

Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[Quixotic Raindrop]

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).

Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[nitehorse]

Of course WebCore is JavaScript-enabled.

Or haven't you heard of JavaScriptCore? It's a part of WebCore.

Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[megabulk3000]

Sure, check this article for instructions on how to make a one-line-of-code web browser in Cocoa using WebCore (and the comment at the bottom of the article which tells how to make a no-line-of-code browser!)

Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[germuska]

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?

Re:embed _Mozilla_, or Gecko?

[germuska]

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.

READ THE ARTICLE

[Anonymous Coward]

the answer to your "question" is in the FIRST SENTANCE of the article.

Re:the point is this...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Silly unless you want to make your own browser..

[Steveftoth]

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.

Re:the point is this...

[madamimadam]

You seem to be forgetting the VITAL point that Apple REFUSES to release a new version of Safari, and therefore the WebKit, if it is at ALL slower that the previous version. This is a definate fact that Apple hangs on to dearly and could be why there are still a few places that they need touching. As per WWDC, sometimes coders kind of cheat by optimising another part of the code so that their new code does not slow down the browser but as long as the end result is that the new build runs at least as fast as the previous build, Apple will release it. If it is at all slower than the previous build, Apple refuses to let it out of the closet.

One would want cross-platform solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari ain't the bee's knees as far as I'm concerned, although I'm using it right now. It's got lots of advantages, sure, but it's still not handling as many pages as Mozilla for OSX. Mozilla 1.4 is fast and stable, and runs on almost everything. Safari is fast and stable and you need to be running OSX to use it.

Explorer is the world-wide de facto standard right now; it's a bad browser with a lot of propritary drek in it, and much more coming down the line, including possibly a subscription service. Why not embed Mozilla in everything? Since it's cross-platform, open source, and pretty good?

How would you rather do your online banking five years from now?

A) With Windows, which charges you $1,000 a month just for the right to use Explorer?

B) With Safari, which comes with a $25,000 entry-level iMac?

C) With Mozilla, which is free, and which will run on almost anything?

Mozilla isn't the be all and end all of browsers, but it's cross-platform, open-source, and runs all right. Nothing to sneeze at.

Re:One would want cross-platform solutions

[Arandir]

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.

Vaguely related note: Embedding SDL in Cocoa Apps

[follower-fillet]

I noticed recently that there's work going on to embed SDL in Cocoa Apps, here's a link to some sample code:

"Mac OS X Cocoa Integration Patch and Sample Code"

http://www.libsdl.org/pipermail/sdl/2003-July/05 54 35.html

In theory, with this in place I believe it should also be possible to embed SDL in Mac OS X wxWindows apps, once the 'GetHandle' functionality is implemented there.

Camino

[mbbac]

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