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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?
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.
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
.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.
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.
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
Comments like this really get me going. I am no Microsoft fan, but I am intelligent enough to recognize that, yes, Microsoft has done *some* nice things with Windows. Having a browser at your beck and call whenever you need one is a *feature*, not a hindrance.
People also seem to forget that SGI had a web-enabled desktop in IRIX before Microsoft was able to embed IE in Explorer. Perhaps it was Microsoft making Windows more like IRIX.
The simple fact is that it is natural evolution. If SGI hadn't done it first, Microsoft would have. If Microsoft hadn't, perhaps GNOME would have. No matter who did it "first", the point is, someone would have done it, and it's a benefit to mankind, regardless of its inventor.
There are *no* disadvantages to having a web browser embedded in your desktop (at least, not in GNOME--having Explorer crash when you view a Java page is not a Good Thing, but that's Microsoft's fault.) If you don't want to use it, don't navigate to an HTTP address. There, now you don't even know it's there. "Bloat" you say? Get more RAM. The 80s are gone, and so is the 640k limit. A 128M PC100 DIMM is currently ~$80 on PriceWatch, so there's no excuse for not having enough RAM to support the needs of modern software.
Saying adding a browser to GNOME is making is MORE like Windows is like saying that adding wheels to a wheelbarrow is making it MORE like a car, in some derrogatory sense. Bullsh*t. It rolls, now, and helps you get your work done faster. You can carry your boulders all day, for all I care, but I want to wheel mine, thank you. I have better things to do with the time I save.
Well, if Mozilla can act as a GTK+ container, I don't see any reason why you couldn't do that.
The Gecko inside IE screenshots were really cool... I wouldn't mind browsing that way, if it means I get the best engine available.
æeee!
From what I've read in the public.netscape.mozilla.gtk newsgroup, it looks like GtkMozilla is also soon going to be put into the main tree, possibly under /mozilla/webshell/embed/gtk. The ActiveX wrapper is in /mozilla/webshell/embed/ActiveX.
Offhand, I'd say that this GTK widget *will* allow embedding like the ActiveX control. After all, even if GTK itself changed in the future, what then? I should think all it would mean was some "tweaking" of the GtkMozilla code to work with the newer GTK. Likewise if the Mozilla code changed. Same goes for the ActiveX control, if Micro$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:
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.
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
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.