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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?
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.
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
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?
The UI is certainly slow. But look at the rendering of pages--that is FAST. The reason for the UI slowness is because of some well-known bugs which the Mozilla team has been wrestling with for over 3 milestones now.
:-)
Basically, the problem is that incremental reflow causes the entire window to get repainted, often times more than once. You can probably imagine that this would slow it down. They are working on this, but it isn't easy... It is particularly a problem under Linux, with GTK (Windows doesn't notice it as much, from what I've heard). They need more GTK experts to help them.
So please, HELP MOZILLA!! And feel free to give it another try. Don't be scared. It's only a lizard.
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:
Widget: generic user interface component. e.g. button, text field, menu, etc. Windows calls them controls. The term originates with the original Xt toolkit, and Motif which is layered on top of Xt.
GTK: aka GTK+. The {Generic|GNU|GIMP} toolkit. A specific GUI toolkit that sits on top of X11. An alternative to Motif and Qt. Unlike Motif, it is not layered on Xt. Started as part of the GIMP project when Motif was dropped because of functionality/availability/licence concerns.