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If I remember correctly, it is much harder to use Firefox's components outside of Firefox than it is to do with Chromium/Blink. There is a reason why there is n

If I remember correctly, it is much harder to use Firefox's components outside of Firefox than it is to do with Chromium/Blink. There is a reason why there is no relevant Electron alternative based on Firefox/Gecko. On Android the situation is different but not on any other platform: https://mozac.org/ https://mozac.org/

HeckFeck 5y ago
Is/Has there been much interest in doing this at Mozilla? More people using their renderer is good for them in the long run.
- 0x_rs 5y ago
  Not since the days of XULRunner, which is ancient nowadays.
  - smazga 5y ago
    Conkeror (basically Nyxt on xulrunner…exactly what the upper comment is asking about) used to be my browser of choice. It was baffling to me when they deprecated xulrunner. Like, why? There was supposed to be an alternate way to do it (running with ‘firefox -app’ or something), but it was poorly documented and constantly breaking in new versions, so I eventually gave up.
    - donio 5y ago
      RIP conkeror, miss you dearly
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      I loved Conkeror, but I think this one might be even better, once I've gotten used to its quirks. I'm kinda stoked right now.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  Historically, Firefox has been the only moneymaker for Mozilla. It is possible they didn't want to make it easy to embed so anyone can create second FF on top of their work and compete without paying dues. Electron and single applications built fully on top of browser engine alone is relatively new, and possibily out of Mozilla's field of vision back then. But, that is speculation, and I have no proof whatsoever other than tangential conclusions from Mozilla's blunders in recent years.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    A much more realistic explanation would be that any software that isn't specifically designed in a decoupled way will be coupled at a million points and impossible to separate.
    - samatman 5y ago
      It's probably both. The only upside for Mozilla is that making Gecko available is the right thing to do. Which, for a nonprofit, matters, and I'm sure that having an Electron-equivalent is the kind of thing that would be considered cool by staff. But there is the downside that it makes it easier to build browsers which would compete with Firefox for the shrinking niche that is "doesn't run Chrome or Safari". I guess you could make a case that such browsers would take at least as much share from Chrome as Firefox, maybe more even; but you could make the other case as well. When you add the additional downside that it's probably many man-decades of work to do it at all, well, then it doesn't happen. Although the existence of GeckoView implies that Firefox and Gecko aren't as tightly coupled as they could be.
    - e3bc54b2 5y ago
      Isn't that the point? Making the engine decoupled and embeddable just wasn't on Mozilla's radar, and it suffered as a consequence. Chrome team was advcied very early in their development by none other than Android team to go for WebKit because it was easier to work with. Not Presto, not Gecko. So at least since back then, thud feature was at least somewhat on Apple's list of priorities. I'm not sure if it got carried over from KHTML, but if it did, they didn't break it intentionally. Back in IE horror days I remember using Avant Browser. It used IE to provide fancier features like tabs. I never remember Gecko anywhere in discussion for being a platform to build on top of, except for other Mozilla projects (FFOS, Thunderbird) that Mozilla dropped sooner or later.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  I think that Mozilla has a project for decoupling the browser components but I'm not sure if it will result in further projects. The name was something like project Stylus, but I can't find it now and I might be wrong about the name.
- kilian 5y ago
  They have Geckoview on Android but from what I've heard there was no interest in making that available for other platforms, and this was before they fired a ton of their technical staff. A shame really!
- avery42 5y ago
  Yes. There was an experimental project called Positron [0]: "a experimental, Electron-compatible runtime on top of Gecko". It was discontinued in 2017 [1]. AFAIK the only thing around nowadays is GeckoView [2] for Android. [0]: https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron [1]: https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ [2]: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    There were older experiments too. Gecko Runtime Environment and XULRunner at least.
- vfclists 5y ago
  Mozilla has never been truly sincere in their claimed desire to create a browser builder toolkit. Even their own developers were disappointed when they changed direction.

HeckFeck 5y ago

Is/Has there been much interest in doing this at Mozilla? More people using their renderer is good for them in the long run.

0x_rs 5y ago
Not since the days of XULRunner, which is ancient nowadays.
- smazga 5y ago
  Conkeror (basically Nyxt on xulrunner…exactly what the upper comment is asking about) used to be my browser of choice. It was baffling to me when they deprecated xulrunner. Like, why? There was supposed to be an alternate way to do it (running with ‘firefox -app’ or something), but it was poorly documented and constantly breaking in new versions, so I eventually gave up.
  - donio 5y ago
    RIP conkeror, miss you dearly
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    I loved Conkeror, but I think this one might be even better, once I've gotten used to its quirks. I'm kinda stoked right now.
e3bc54b2 5y ago
Historically, Firefox has been the only moneymaker for Mozilla. It is possible they didn't want to make it easy to embed so anyone can create second FF on top of their work and compete without paying dues. Electron and single applications built fully on top of browser engine alone is relatively new, and possibily out of Mozilla's field of vision back then. But, that is speculation, and I have no proof whatsoever other than tangential conclusions from Mozilla's blunders in recent years.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  A much more realistic explanation would be that any software that isn't specifically designed in a decoupled way will be coupled at a million points and impossible to separate.
  - samatman 5y ago
    It's probably both. The only upside for Mozilla is that making Gecko available is the right thing to do. Which, for a nonprofit, matters, and I'm sure that having an Electron-equivalent is the kind of thing that would be considered cool by staff. But there is the downside that it makes it easier to build browsers which would compete with Firefox for the shrinking niche that is "doesn't run Chrome or Safari". I guess you could make a case that such browsers would take at least as much share from Chrome as Firefox, maybe more even; but you could make the other case as well. When you add the additional downside that it's probably many man-decades of work to do it at all, well, then it doesn't happen. Although the existence of GeckoView implies that Firefox and Gecko aren't as tightly coupled as they could be.
  - e3bc54b2 5y ago
    Isn't that the point? Making the engine decoupled and embeddable just wasn't on Mozilla's radar, and it suffered as a consequence. Chrome team was advcied very early in their development by none other than Android team to go for WebKit because it was easier to work with. Not Presto, not Gecko. So at least since back then, thud feature was at least somewhat on Apple's list of priorities. I'm not sure if it got carried over from KHTML, but if it did, they didn't break it intentionally. Back in IE horror days I remember using Avant Browser. It used IE to provide fancier features like tabs. I never remember Gecko anywhere in discussion for being a platform to build on top of, except for other Mozilla projects (FFOS, Thunderbird) that Mozilla dropped sooner or later.
gostsamo 5y ago
I think that Mozilla has a project for decoupling the browser components but I'm not sure if it will result in further projects. The name was something like project Stylus, but I can't find it now and I might be wrong about the name.
kilian 5y ago
They have Geckoview on Android but from what I've heard there was no interest in making that available for other platforms, and this was before they fired a ton of their technical staff. A shame really!
avery42 5y ago
Yes. There was an experimental project called Positron [0]: "a experimental, Electron-compatible runtime on top of Gecko". It was discontinued in 2017 [1]. AFAIK the only thing around nowadays is GeckoView [2] for Android. [0]: https://github.com/mozilla/positron https://github.com/mozilla/positron [1]: https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ [2]: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/ https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  There were older experiments too. Gecko Runtime Environment and XULRunner at least.
vfclists 5y ago
Mozilla has never been truly sincere in their claimed desire to create a browser builder toolkit. Even their own developers were disappointed when they changed direction.