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Title

Mozilla and the Gecko Engine

Description

Almost 2 months ago, the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</a> project finally released a 1.0 version of its browser. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/mozilla.1/moz-1.html">Mozilla Milestone 1.0: the Review</a> on <a href="http://arstechnica.com/">Ars Technica</a> gives a good overview and review of the final product. Those who've downloaded builds of Mozilla over the years have doubtless found that Mozilla seems to suffer from an identity crisis. Sometimes it seems like a browser, sometimes it seems like a standards-compliant rendering engine, sometimes it feels like a development environment cum operating system. It includes support for a slew of technologies, like HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMAScript. It also supports XML, XHTML and its own interface specification language, XUL. <iq>The core of Mozilla is its rendering engine, dubbed "Gecko." Gecko is responsible for taking the markup sent from the server (typically HTML) and turning it into the end product displayed in the browser.</iq> It also has <i>full</i> support for PNGs, including alpha channel support. To see a page that looks quite nice, it simple to code and illustrates the power of combining all of these technologies, check out the <a href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/complexspiral/demo.html">Complex Spiral Demo</a>. Another great demo is the <a href="">Eagle Shadow Demo</a>, which demonstrates the power of alpha-PNGs combined with proper DOM and ECMAScript support. The great thing about this project is that the Gecko engine was designed as a separate component, separate from the browser, mail application, JavaScript debugger, etc. that makes the program. The basic rendering engine can be inserted into any application that wants it since it's under an open-source license. <bq>Overall, Gecko is an excellent rendering engine that does a great job implementing the W3C standards while simultaneously handling the less "compliant" content on the web. Several companies already recognize the excellence of Gecko, using it as the core for browsers such as Netscape 6/7 and Chimera (for the Macintosh).</bq> Note that the entire application is completely platform-independent and has been built for Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and varieties of Linux. This makes the renderer even more attractive. In fact, it seems that AOL will be using the Gecko core for their 8.0 version on Windows and the next version on Mac OS X (since AOL owns Netscape, which developed the lion's share of the Mozilla code). In the end, Ars Technica rates the Mozilla browser a 7 out of 10. The gecko engine they give a 9 out of 10, but the Navigator to which it's attached (the browser itself) is a bit balky and just feels slow. The standards support is better than Opera, but the rendering and interface are just much slower (perceptually and in testing). They recommend that <iq>[i]f you currently use IE, you won't lose too much apart from the professional polish by switching over to Mozilla.</iq> I'm not sure which professional polish they're alluding to in the Microsoft product, the security holes or the crashing (which, admittedly isn't as bad as it used to be). On any platform, I would still recommend Opera as a primary browser. It's the fastest and supports the standards extremely well. Mozilla supports the DOM model much better, but feels sluggish after getting used to Opera. Opera feels like a browser application more than a technology demo and shares a cross-platform renderer across all supported platforms (which includes all the platforms Mozilla supports and the QNX and Symbian operating systems as well).