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I really wish Mozilla would work on making their Gecko engine (or whatever backend they use now) more usable to external developers. WebKit always seems very ea

I really wish Mozilla would work on making their Gecko engine (or whatever backend they use now) more usable to external developers. WebKit always seems very easy for developers to integrate into their apps. Whether you think it's a good or bad move, Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier. It's a shame it must use Chromium and V8. In fairness Mozilla used to have XUL [1] until it was stopped [2], presumably because not enough people were using it? 1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL 2. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Doesn.E2.80.99t_Firefox_use_XUL_internally.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Doesn.E2.80.99t_F...

mavsman 8y ago
Amen to this. There was the open source project that was essentially a Gecko version of Electron but of course it was very alpha and eventually was deprecated and abandoned. Perhaps the gold standard of Electron would allow you to choose the engine and then build a native/browser app based on that.
pseudalopex 8y ago
> Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier For people who have web development experience, yes.
- derefr 8y ago
  It's made building cross-platform desktop applications that are just wrappers for existing web-apps down-right trivial (and no web-dev experience required there.) And that case applies more often than you'd think. For example, the Spotify app, the Slack app†, the various Facebook Messenger "clients", etc. † the Slack app is built with http://macgapproject.github.io/ http://macgapproject.github.io/, but it's pretty much the same thing.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    That's true in a way, but it requires basically no non-web dev experience either. It's a different kind of "building".
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    I don't understand why the slack app exists. Why would I want to run another browser for a chat application?
    - rntksi 8y ago
      I've noticed most people in my organisation hate the idea of having work chat in a browser tab. They really liked having a separate app.
      - tatami 8y ago
        It doesn't help that the Windows default (not sure about Macintosh) is to group icons in the task bar, so your separate Browser window for chat makes you two-click to switch between browsing and chat.
        skrebbel 8y ago
        > (not sure about Macintosh) The macOS default is to have no taskbar at all, just a bunch of icons without text or context.
    - willtim 8y ago
      I use it because my window manager manages windows better than any browser manages tabs.
MrRadar 8y ago
I was going to say that Servo was going to include an implementation of the Chromium Embedding Framework API but apparently that feature has been dropped for lack of use: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.servo/5MHDnfMya3s https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.servo/5M...
arsa 8y ago
They used to support it, but it was killed to prioritize firefox development (and couple of years later they stopped developing mozilla suite). https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... otoh Webkit was originally developed as part of iOS, so embedding was required
- saurik 8y ago
  WebKit was a fork from KDE and was used to build Safari before iOS existed.
  - arsa 8y ago
    right, KHTML is still a valid option under linux to build apps. But that's getting so much less (no?) attention from web developers I bet the ipad prototype from early 2000s actually ran some version of osx&safari
pitaj 8y ago
You might be interested in GeckoView [1] [1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView
austincheney 8y ago
It would be nice if there were a Node flavor that used SpiderMonkey as a choice to V8. Until that happens most of us are forced to use Chrome related technology no matter how much more we may prefer Mozilla tech.
- maxyme 8y ago
  The problem with that is to make a node.js compatible engine you need to write and maintain a compatibility layer that mirrors the V8 API which I can completely understand a Dev team not wanting to undergo.

mavsman 8y ago

Amen to this. There was the open source project that was essentially a Gecko version of Electron but of course it was very alpha and eventually was deprecated and abandoned. Perhaps the gold standard of Electron would allow you to choose the engine and then build a native/browser app based on that.

pseudalopex 8y ago

> Electron has made building cross platform desktop applications a lot easier For people who have web development experience, yes.

derefr 8y ago
It's made building cross-platform desktop applications that are just wrappers for existing web-apps down-right trivial (and no web-dev experience required there.) And that case applies more often than you'd think. For example, the Spotify app, the Slack app†, the various Facebook Messenger "clients", etc. † the Slack app is built with http://macgapproject.github.io/ http://macgapproject.github.io/, but it's pretty much the same thing.
- pseudalopex 8y ago
  That's true in a way, but it requires basically no non-web dev experience either. It's a different kind of "building".
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  I don't understand why the slack app exists. Why would I want to run another browser for a chat application?
  - rntksi 8y ago
    I've noticed most people in my organisation hate the idea of having work chat in a browser tab. They really liked having a separate app.
    - tatami 8y ago
      It doesn't help that the Windows default (not sure about Macintosh) is to group icons in the task bar, so your separate Browser window for chat makes you two-click to switch between browsing and chat.
      - skrebbel 8y ago
        > (not sure about Macintosh) The macOS default is to have no taskbar at all, just a bunch of icons without text or context.
  - willtim 8y ago
    I use it because my window manager manages windows better than any browser manages tabs.

MrRadar 8y ago

I was going to say that Servo was going to include an implementation of the Chromium Embedding Framework API but apparently that feature has been dropped for lack of use: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.servo/5MHDnfMya3s https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.servo/5M...

arsa 8y ago

They used to support it, but it was killed to prioritize firefox development (and couple of years later they stopped developing mozilla suite). https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... otoh Webkit was originally developed as part of iOS, so embedding was required

saurik 8y ago
WebKit was a fork from KDE and was used to build Safari before iOS existed.
- arsa 8y ago
  right, KHTML is still a valid option under linux to build apps. But that's getting so much less (no?) attention from web developers I bet the ipad prototype from early 2000s actually ran some version of osx&safari

pitaj 8y ago

You might be interested in GeckoView [1] [1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView

austincheney 8y ago

It would be nice if there were a Node flavor that used SpiderMonkey as a choice to V8. Until that happens most of us are forced to use Chrome related technology no matter how much more we may prefer Mozilla tech.

maxyme 8y ago
The problem with that is to make a node.js compatible engine you need to write and maintain a compatibility layer that mirrors the V8 API which I can completely understand a Dev team not wanting to undergo.