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Mozilla as GTK Widget
AT
writes "The new Mozilla Gecko display engine has been embedded into a GTK widget. This means that you
can embed webpages into your application, just like you might with an ActiveX
control under Windows. " Can I embed mozilla in mozilla yet?
gtk+ is the library on which several applications (GIMP, Gnome stuff etc) are based. This announcement applies to any window manager / OS that can run gtk+ stuff, and the Mozilla code. There's no reason why it shouldn't run even on Micros~1 Windows, for example.
ac.
This is the widget used for KFM, etc.. it can be embedded into any application. A good example of this is kdehelp, which also uses the KHtml widget
And also, the browser view of Konq is a Corba KOM/OP part in the CVS.
Check out the discussions on news.mozilla.org. Basically most of these problems are Linux only, and related to the integration between Mozilla and GTK. It is known, reasonably well understood, and being worked on.
Bonobo can do this.
Gee, wouldn't that make Gnome even MORE like Windows? Ah, but that's okay because Miguel sez so, I guess.
The NPL is incompatible with the GPL, it would seem. It seems to be close to a BSD-style license. At least it's still a pretty liberal license. The only major difference that I can see is that you are required to include the little "Mozilla Inside"-type notice in the source code. Am I wrong here?
This would include most slashdot posts. That is, if the moderators weren't complete morons themselves.
Anonymous Spanker
For that matter, why was the original post moderated as "informative"? I believe that slashdot is moderated by a crack team of elite drunken mongoloids to sew discontent among the GNU/slashdot community.
Rob, how could you have sold us out to Redmond. Don't you ralize how important the efforts of these geeks are to improve the world. Besides, the slashdot forums are vital to our nation's security. What is the commies infiltrate?
Anonymous Spanker
I'm a linux user, but I don't want to be dragged down to the level of a slashdot poster.
Too late, you already posted.
The way I see it, there are people who call anything X11 based bloat.
They would love to have you learn all 10000000000 features of an
office program from a 2Gb man page. They do not understand why you
need screenshots to figure out which button to push of which menu to
use. They think anything that makes your life easier and faster, while
cutting your learning curve into oblivion is bloat and excessive.
Then again, they do not understand why you need an office program
in the first place. To them, vi and TeX (talk about a learning curve) do the job.
While such trolls are more annoying than Jar Jar, they are fighting a losing
battle and I have a feeling they know it, which is why they scream louder and
louder. They are a dying breed, so ignore them.
GTK+ is distributed under a LGPL license. That is why commercial software can be built on top of it.
If GTK+ had a GPL license, then commercial software (or NPL for that effect) could not touch it.
Unfortunately QT has a license that restricts its utilisation for commercial use (enterprises have to pay TT) and only separated patchs are allowed by TT as source code modifications.
GNOME and KDE have both a GPL license, so they are protected from commercial greed. This is fine because GNOME and KDE are final products, not constructing libraries as GTK+, QT, Motif, etc...
ActiveX support for Mozilla is provided by a single module npmozctl.dll. Not only does this allow Mozilla to be an ActiveX control, it also allows ActiveX controls to be embedded in HTML.
This means in theory you could have a Mozilla control inside an IE control inside a Mozilla control.
I believe the npmozctl.dll can also be compiled in a special mode that lets it be used as a plugin with Communicator 4.x so you can even embed Mozilla and IE5 in 4.x!
Although it hasn't been addressed too closely yet, it's likely the ActiveX control will have LGPL-like rules. This means you will be able to embed it inside your app without making your app NPL too. However if you make changes to the control, you probably have to submit them back to Mozilla for inclusion.
Now think of someone trying to write an online-training package, an encylopedia app or anything else requiring formatted output and tell me how such a control isn't useful?
Why is linux used? The open source philosophy partly, another vast part is the fact linux will run on an "obsolete" system and prove that bigger does not necessarily mean better. By Linux moving to be so X11 oriented I think it is loosing some of its ideals, a 486 with X, enlightenment, and netscape? Sure... that would run. Many people use linux for its stability and efficiency, X11 is not all evil, but it does spit in the face of that ideal.
If you do not want a learning curve, simple use Microsoft products. Linux is not the OS to not want to learn anything with, or at least it never has been before.
Maybe I am a dying breed. Maybe few people remain that enjoy learning and find satisfaction in it. Maybe the point of Linux is changing from a dork oriented OS to simply free point and click GUI.... I hope not.
Show me anything in the statement "free as in freedom, not price" that says free software should be inaccessible and user-hostile. In fact, I think exactly the opposite is true. If the only way to do your job quickly and easily is to chain yourself up with proprietary, closed-source software, then people will not only chain themselves up but pay for the privilege.
If Linux is about freedom at all, then "simply free point and click GUI" is not just an admirable goal, but a desirable one.
If you need a modern, compliant browser with support for Javascript, CSS1, (some) CSS2, DOM, RDF, PICS and XML then Mozilla is your only choice.
The Gnome and KDE HTML widgets might be good enough for online help and simple browsing but they don't hold a candle against Mozilla.
It's open source (more close to GPL than KDE is), cross-platform, fast, compliant and free. Add to this the fact that it runs as a widget and you can write some truely awesome applications. The Mozilla widget means for Linux (and other Unices) the same things as the Mozilla ActiveX control does on Win32 - scores of developers will harness the power of Mozilla to make some very cool apps.
In short, it is a killer app (and an IE-killer) so don't knock it!
And mousewheel support is in KDE2.0
mosfet@jorsm.com
My guess is that it got moderated down because someone wanted to "punish" the original poster, but didn't want to flame them (because then they're farther away from moderator status next time.)
It's just moderator abuse.
ROB: PLEASE change the moderating so that moderators can only demote once... it really would go a long way towards stopping this abuse.
(now THIS post is off-topic.)
- Someone decided that this was an itch they wanted to scratch, so they wrote it.
- Lots of applications need to display text in a window. Why shouldn't these applications also be able to handle HTML in a window? For that matter, why should they only display HTML when they can also win XML for relatively zero cost?
- For a help file, HTML is a lot more accessible than anything else out there. Linux needs documentation, and the surest way to not get it is to smack potential doc writers in the face and say "We're sorry, but unless you learn nroff your help is not welcome."
- And most importantly, useful feature parity with Windows. People are already using Windows HTML tool to author help files, and are using Internet Explorer for XML applications (though not on the accessible Web). It'd be a horrible shame if free software shrugged its collective shoulders and said unto the people who want to use Linux instead, "We're sorry, but your application is bloat to us. Continue making Microsoft rich."
I'm glad someone actually did this. I had the same idea a bit ago. Another idea I had was to embed a file manager into Mozilla for any platform. Then maybe we can "integrate" it into gnome. How about it?
Help me and my fellow clue depriveds. Is this specific to a window manager? What operating systems? help!
This is nice, but shouldn't this all be done in CORBA, or something similar (ie like how KOffice is doing it)? By using widgets you're pretty much limiting it to gtk apps. Using something along the lines of CORBA should allow just about ANY app to use it (whether it be GTK, KDE, etc).
I downloaded the M5 release and tried it out. First I tried building from source, which succeeded, but they when I tried to run it I had an assertion failure in ld.so ("DYNAMIC LINKER BUG", etc) so that was out. I then downloaded the binary. Somebody had said M5 was way faster than previous versions. Well, not for me. I found it to be extremely slow. As in sit back and wait for the button bar to repaint sort of thing. What is being done for the speed? I ask because if they embed this thing inside something else with its own layer of slowness ontop the speed would be intolerable.
Posted by Moritz Moeller - Herrmann:
Haha, listen to the ant-QT mafia finding excuses.
Of course it is NOT legal to link GPL applications to NPL or QPL licenced libraries/widgets! At least if you believe the anti-KDE stories circulating.
Of course nobody will care because it's open source after all and GPL isn't sacred.
As long as it's quick, I'd be a great way to display online help in an application. If it's done well, it'll be very popular.
XEmacs can be a widget in an application, too, but I've never actually seen anyone use it for that, presumably because of incredibly extreme bloat. (It's great as an app, but as a widget!?)
There are a couple of other really nice new gtk widgets: GtkSheet (a spreadsheet with inplace editing, widgets inside the sheet, etc.) and GtkPlot (a really nice plotting widget). You can see them right here
.I want a TeX engine on my desktop! Ok, maybe merge in the hypertext stuff..
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
CORBA is a specification that allows objects to communicate seamlessly in a distributed system. It's seems to me that it would be overly complicated (and with performance issues) using CORBA within the presentation logic. How would it work? I guess that the UI component would be some sort of "local" CORBA service. Surely that would mean passing UI client areas around as CORBA::Any's so that the component could draw itself correctly in its container.
Has anybody done this? Am I barking up the wrong tree? If so, how is it down, and what is the performance like?
Except for those of us who have wives and post - but I can't complain.
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
The "right" way to do this would be to make the gecko widget into a bonobo/baboon control that could be embedded in Gnome apps. I would assume that something similar could be done in the KDE world.
This widget approach is not really directly comparable (as I understand) to the IE CaptiveX control. There is not going to be the kind of insulation between mozilla changes and this widget that a true component environment would provide.
However, this could be a straw man kind of problem -- I haven't read the source.
Very cool regardless!
-- Slashdot sucks.
Its a good idea. Too bad the current tree has been pretty well horked for the last day or two, and like a bonehead I forgot to check the tinderbox status before I pulled it.
:)
On another note though, for those who don't watch the mozilla status daily, M6 is probably going to hit the ftp site tommorrow they're saying...
Its already been pulled into a new branch, and I think the general trouble (particularly with Linux builds) in the tree are on the main branch leading to M7.
Hmmmm... maybe I'll pull the M6 branch and check this out.
Yeah, I guess you're right, every server needs a web browser to view a man page or helpfile. I'll throw out 'less' once Netscape 5 comes out.
It's thin... for a webbrowser. But who needs five or ten megs of code soaking up another ten megs of ram just to view a helpfile? Even if it is only two megs of ram, it is still two completely wasted megs of ram.
It's neat, but I hope it comes with an off switch.
It would be nice to have the option of which bloated HTML/XML engine to use for displaying your help files.
I opt for 'less'. I'll save a few megabytes of ram and just parse it all in my head.
I love the idea regardless, I just fear that this may push the system requirements up for very simple applications... I guess it's the way of the future though.
What are you talking about? For normal operation, Windows 9X/NT requires a shell to be running that implements a certain COM interface; MS supplies IE4 as the default shell and there are few alternatives. No such requirement exists for X; so I don't see why you think that we are suddenly going to be forced into loading web browsers we don't use.
I agree. I always browse at -1, but being ridiculously offtopic (or even substantially tasteless) is one thing, while obscenity of this level probably deserves to get completely bumped. I like the thought of letting only moderators see them. Rob???
IAAL,BIANLY
"pretty well"? It's darn great!
-- LaTeX, The Best There Is
Maybe this category could cause a special rating of -2 ? This page looks obscene.
some have mentioned using this for html help files. That's nice. email and newsreaders with html? even nicer. But the full potential of gtkmozilla is using it in css authoring tools. A simple html 3.2 widget isn't enough. You need a browser component that's meant for the real world if you want to design for the web
---
helpbrowser news://news.mozilla.org/374B247B.D508670D%40netsca pe.com?part=1.2 and simplebrowser news://news.mozilla.org/374B247B.D508670D%40netsca pe.com?part=1.3
---
this is gecko. Now this is one step closer for real-world web ability in linux apps such as web authoring tools (like homesite or hot dog), multimedia hypertext presentations using dynamic html, your own custom non-netscape browsers that renders websites the same way as Netscape, etc
---
GNOME will be using the GtkMozilla widget, embedded as a Bonobo object (work progresses as we speak). All will be well. And the licenses aren't a problem, with the way the widget is embedded rather than linked.
--
Ian Peters
Actually with Chrome, Mozilla can take any interface you want. All that you have to do is click on a hyperlink, wait ten seconds and your interface will be updated. Its a very easy way to add new buttons and such. You can add a button and a function in 15 minutes (the function with Mozilla modularity) for all platforms. Its been said that to add a single button to a single platform takes an engineer roughly an entire day. So, I suppose if you really want that 'go' button you can add it.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
An embeded web browser IS a bad thing! Especially if you don't want to use it. Why would a 486 Linux fileserver (for example) need to have all that bloat. You could say don't start X, but that is beside the point. The web browser SHOULD be seperate and be able to be turned off if you don't want it.
Lets just do some quick logical thought. You are saying that in certain implementations it is a GOOD thing to have a program sitting in memory that you don't need. Am I confused or are you just INSANE?
It is utter bullshit to say that you should have to get more RAM for a embedded program that you don't need. Why is it that we should upgrade computers every other year to accomidate the software that does little more than add more bulk into memory. The last time I checked on one of my Win98 systems, that was idling, with only two processes running 'Explorer and Systray' it was still eating 60 megs of memory! Win95 would idle at 15 megs. Yes, Einstein, this is the browser that you have at your beck and call. And since IE 4.0 memory leaked like mad, this was another GOOD thing. How do you fix a program that is leaking like mad that is embedded into the OS and that you can't kill. The only answer is reboot. If this were Linux it would mean kill X.
I agree with you on the point that it is a good thing if you want it. But there is no reason that you can't have it having embedded functionality yet still vulnerable to be killed.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Maybe Rob's anti-KDE actions are becoming a bit more blunt, but I really don't see how this is news. KDE has had a HTML widget since pre 1.0 days (someone's even hacked up java support forit too). For that matter even Gnome has had a HTML widget somewhere, right? Hmm.
The revolution will be mocked
...some of the moderators are stupid "C" bigots, lazy (and stupid) to learn how to use modern languages. Flaimbate? The article discusses a GUI toolkit. Written in C. What is a silly idea IMO. What's so strange in this opinion?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I agree. This comment is just as useful as most slashdot comments (ie, not at all)...at least this one are funny. Let us read them!
Well, if Mozilla can act as a GTK+ container, I don't see any reason why you couldn't do that.
The Gecko inside IE screenshots were really cool... I wouldn't mind browsing that way, if it means I get the best engine available.
æeee!
From what I've read in the public.netscape.mozilla.gtk newsgroup, it looks like GtkMozilla is also soon going to be put into the main tree, possibly under /mozilla/webshell/embed/gtk. The ActiveX wrapper is in /mozilla/webshell/embed/ActiveX.
Offhand, I'd say that this GTK widget *will* allow embedding like the ActiveX control. After all, even if GTK itself changed in the future, what then? I should think all it would mean was some "tweaking" of the GtkMozilla code to work with the newer GTK. Likewise if the Mozilla code changed. Same goes for the ActiveX control, if Micro$oft one day decided (heaven forbid) to change the ActiveX standards slightly. In fact, I wonder if this isn't already coming--I understand they are working on COM+ as we speak.
Incidently, I also know that the GNOME Project has been trying for some time to find a way of embedding browser-like functionality into things like the file manager and the help system... And so far, all they have really are things like the Express browser, which is not very far beyond the planning stage.
My hope is that GtkMozilla will finally bridge this gap... I wonder, does anybody know if the NPL/MPL would allow this? I am assuming it would, if they are already going to allow people to embed the ActiveX control in their programs. But does anyone here more knowledgeable about licenses than me want to confirm this?
One of the most amusing things I've seen out of Mozilla was the screenshot of Gecko running as an ActiveX control in IE. Probably the only way IE is ever going to render Box Acid worth a damn.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I think what it comes down to is there needs to be a way to differentiate between the levels of "bad" in a post. I personally view at -1, because occasionally there is something amusing, and usually its not that bad. But there needs to be -2, -3, etc, so that we can distinguish between "offtopic but funny" and "lame, unnecessary, and just plain dumb". As it is now, the two get lumped into one category. If we could have people moderated even lower, then we could still see the -1's if we wanted, but the truly useless and/or vulgar and/or offensive posts would go to -2 and beyond. Those who feel like reading -2 and below can if they want.
I guess I just don't like having 5 levels of "good", but only 1 level of "bad". Its not always that clear cut.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
a score of -2 should only be visible to moderators. That way, if something was unfairly scored down that far, a moderator could fix it, but otherwise, the 99% of the time that it DESERVED a -2, nobody would ever see it again.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
If this widget is nothing more than a wrapper for gecko, meaning that you can replace gecko with something else, then it should be fine. It just can't be packaged together with gecko.
If it's bound too tightly with gecko, then it will probably need to be released under the NPL.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Well, in fact, my box at home is a 486DX2-66, with 32 MB RAM and I am running X, E & Netscape on it. Works for me, although I am considering one of the new lightweight WM's with Gnome support instead of E.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Can we have a Complete Moron score category or something similar? Some posts are a bit off-topic, but this is outright stupidity.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
An Active X component is really just a library. You must specifically reference an Active X component in the code of the calling program. There is no standalone entry point that allows execution of an Active X component (no main() ).
I can _possibly_ see an Active X Gecko component being released under an LGPL. I suspect, though, that the Gecko Active X component is the Gecko code with the required Active X entry points added. If the internal Gecko code is already GPL, I don't think you can release such a component under LGPL.
FWIW, I think a Gecko component is one of the coolest ideas I've heard in a while.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Dying breed? I don't think so, but then again, I don't care. Look, "making your life easier and faster" and "cutting your learning curve" are all nice and dandy, but those are the same things that have made the net a slow swamp of clueless people clogging the wires with "multimedia" and "active content" and whatever you want to call that stuff.
Now, this is not necessarily evil. It was unavoidable, and yes I think that is very nice that most of my family can email me now, and my secretary don't have to cope with clumsy and noisy typewriters anymore. But you should try to understand why some of us sometimes loose our patience when trying to explain to some AOLer the deep concept of "current working directory", or close our eyes and sigh every time someone releases a new kind of "streaming multimedia gadget" or whatever.
And now, just to avoid been marked as offtopic: this GTK widget is a heaven-sent answer for a project I'm cooking right now. Actually, since the thing not only renders HTML, but XML, and has that cool XUL thing for building UIs, I'm starting to think that this could entirely change the way I build applications for X. One thing is for sure: this stuff is not only for showing help files. You'll see.
And I can't wait for this thing to reach beta...
As the NPL is not compatible with the GPL, is
this allowable? I wondered about this a while back
and decided that it is not.
IBM has a plugin for TeX/LaTeX for IE and Netscape(WIN, IRIX, Solaris, Linux, AIX) that seems to work pretty well.r /
http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplore
Could anyone tell me how this message is offtopic? (It is currently moderated down.)
Apparently this widget is distributed under the NPL. That's ok with me, but it does make me curious. For example, could I use this widget to embed Mozilla in a GPL'd program?
Gecko is just a bunch of shared libraries. If you already have mozilla or netscape-5.0 running, using Gecko as a help browser for a solitaire game wouldn't cost you any extra memory nor diskspace. In fact, having all those little solitaire-like games include their own simple help viewer would really give unnecessary bloat.
Should make writing mail clients that deal with text/enriched or HTML easier...maybe we'll get some good functionality out of this
I think the author made a mistake, he probably meant to use MPL and not NPL. As NPL gives special rights to netscape.
Basic
Other then the "wow that's kinda cool" factor, why would anyone want this?
Hmmm, a solitare game with a web browser for viewing help files... that is REAL necessary!
Bloatware at its finest.