Gecko likes developers (a bit of industry history)
Found one old post, nostalgia :)
Christian McIntosh
Recently, the next-generation browser Gecko, proposed by Netscape Communications, is becoming increasingly popular among developers. Many companies are seriously thinking about embedding this mechanism in their software. To date, more than 10,000 developers have downloaded Gecko from the mozilla.org Web site, where Netscape is posting open source software.
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Gecko, the first Netscape software product distributed through the mozilla.org site, is a significant improvement in Communicator 5.0. The new application can act as a browser for devices that are inferior in complexity to a full-featured PC, for example, handheld phones, personal digital assistants, set-top boxes, etc.
While representatives of Netscape prefer not to focus on the specific features of Gecko, but nevertheless they have already managed to boast of compactness and high performance of their offspring. According to the director of marketing for the Netscape Communicator project, Chris Saito, the size of the final version of the code, which will appear in late 1999, will not exceed 2 MB.
The Gecko software uses a step-by-step mechanism for generating Web pages that are displayed on the screen, which allows you to determine the structure of the page and complies with the standards of the W3C Consortium. The new product supports the specifications of an extended user interface language (extensible user interface language, XUL) that provides a high degree of portability. Using XUL technology, which is based on existing Web standards (for example, HTML and JavaScript), you can design a cross-platform interface that includes toolbars, buttons, and icons. “After the interface has been formed, its further modernization and adaptation to changing current needs will not cause any particular difficulties,” Saito said.
Impulse for developers
However, Netscape decided not to limit itself to the free distribution of Gecko in open source. Netscape representatives are actively urging developers to embed Gecko support into their applications. However, industry leaders are in no hurry to master new tools, despite the fact that Gecko supports all the most popular open standards: HTML 4.0, JavaScript and XML. Nevertheless, the list of companies using the features of Gecko and other extensions of the Communicator 5.0 package is constantly growing. In this list today you can find companies such as Bradbury Software, CiTEC, Cyberworld, Imagicast (formerly Telescan), NeoPlanet and Sausage Software.
NeoPlanet, whose specialization is browser-based user interfaces, has integrated the Gecko page-building engine into the beta version of the NeoPlanet 5.0 software package.
NeoPlanet so highly appreciated the capabilities of Netscape’s development that a group of leading developers publishes their own changes to the Gecko code on mozilla.org every day. The authors of the new modules hope that this will help speed up the release of sustainable, multifunctional and autonomous components of Gecko.
In addition, NeoPlanet developers are involved in the creation of ActiveX controls, which will allow third-party firms to integrate Gecko components in the same way that they are integrating Internet Explorer controls into their software products.
Enthusiasts and skeptics
The company Imagicast, which produces interactive video terminals for retail outlets, noted the good user interface and multi-browser Gecko.
“We have to get access to information located on the central hub online, and the Gecko mechanism is the best suited for solving this problem,” said Tom Sharples, technical director of the company. - In addition, Imagicast uses Gecko to handle specialized fonts optimized for display on television monitors. New software supports a number of additional features, such as nested style sheets. Most alternative embedded browsers cannot boast of such capabilities. ”
Bradbury Software has integrated Gecko into its nested style sheet editor for Windows TopStyle. The TopStyle product, which is currently in beta testing, provides a preliminary step-by-step view of the results both in the Netscape Gecko environment and under Internet Explorer.
In addition to the fast and compact browser Gecko, Netscape has introduced an updated version of Communicator 4.6. Communicator 4.6 software occupies 15 MB of disk space and provides better performance than version 4.51.
06/21/1999
Like this :)
Christian McIntosh
Recently, the next-generation browser Gecko, proposed by Netscape Communications, is becoming increasingly popular among developers. Many companies are seriously thinking about embedding this mechanism in their software. To date, more than 10,000 developers have downloaded Gecko from the mozilla.org Web site, where Netscape is posting open source software.
')
Gecko, the first Netscape software product distributed through the mozilla.org site, is a significant improvement in Communicator 5.0. The new application can act as a browser for devices that are inferior in complexity to a full-featured PC, for example, handheld phones, personal digital assistants, set-top boxes, etc.
While representatives of Netscape prefer not to focus on the specific features of Gecko, but nevertheless they have already managed to boast of compactness and high performance of their offspring. According to the director of marketing for the Netscape Communicator project, Chris Saito, the size of the final version of the code, which will appear in late 1999, will not exceed 2 MB.
The Gecko software uses a step-by-step mechanism for generating Web pages that are displayed on the screen, which allows you to determine the structure of the page and complies with the standards of the W3C Consortium. The new product supports the specifications of an extended user interface language (extensible user interface language, XUL) that provides a high degree of portability. Using XUL technology, which is based on existing Web standards (for example, HTML and JavaScript), you can design a cross-platform interface that includes toolbars, buttons, and icons. “After the interface has been formed, its further modernization and adaptation to changing current needs will not cause any particular difficulties,” Saito said.
Impulse for developers
However, Netscape decided not to limit itself to the free distribution of Gecko in open source. Netscape representatives are actively urging developers to embed Gecko support into their applications. However, industry leaders are in no hurry to master new tools, despite the fact that Gecko supports all the most popular open standards: HTML 4.0, JavaScript and XML. Nevertheless, the list of companies using the features of Gecko and other extensions of the Communicator 5.0 package is constantly growing. In this list today you can find companies such as Bradbury Software, CiTEC, Cyberworld, Imagicast (formerly Telescan), NeoPlanet and Sausage Software.
NeoPlanet, whose specialization is browser-based user interfaces, has integrated the Gecko page-building engine into the beta version of the NeoPlanet 5.0 software package.
NeoPlanet so highly appreciated the capabilities of Netscape’s development that a group of leading developers publishes their own changes to the Gecko code on mozilla.org every day. The authors of the new modules hope that this will help speed up the release of sustainable, multifunctional and autonomous components of Gecko.
In addition, NeoPlanet developers are involved in the creation of ActiveX controls, which will allow third-party firms to integrate Gecko components in the same way that they are integrating Internet Explorer controls into their software products.
Enthusiasts and skeptics
The company Imagicast, which produces interactive video terminals for retail outlets, noted the good user interface and multi-browser Gecko.
“We have to get access to information located on the central hub online, and the Gecko mechanism is the best suited for solving this problem,” said Tom Sharples, technical director of the company. - In addition, Imagicast uses Gecko to handle specialized fonts optimized for display on television monitors. New software supports a number of additional features, such as nested style sheets. Most alternative embedded browsers cannot boast of such capabilities. ”
Bradbury Software has integrated Gecko into its nested style sheet editor for Windows TopStyle. The TopStyle product, which is currently in beta testing, provides a preliminary step-by-step view of the results both in the Netscape Gecko environment and under Internet Explorer.
In addition to the fast and compact browser Gecko, Netscape has introduced an updated version of Communicator 4.6. Communicator 4.6 software occupies 15 MB of disk space and provides better performance than version 4.51.
06/21/1999
Like this :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/28858/
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