303956 - Can't embed Deer Park's Gecko inside of other apps

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Vic Cekvenich]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b3) Gecko/20050712 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Firefox 1.5 

Quote "Darin Fisher (working on Mozilla/Firefox) pointed out that,
it's not possible to embed Firefox in another application. This is because
Firefox has Gecko built into it (all linked statically as one executable). This
was done to improve the performance of Firefox and to reduce the download size.

So, it means that Firefox cannot serve as a distribution mechanism for the Gecko
Runtime Environment, and that is somewhat unfortunate. Darin planned to try to
build a better GRE that Firefox can embed such that this is no longer a problem
in the future. Look for this to happen in the Firefox 1.5 timeframe."
as per
http://www.javadesktop.org/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=52&threadID=5102&messageID=33666#33666

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
JDIC
Actual Results:  
It can't embed

Expected Results:  
It should be embedable, like the "ornignal" Mozilla is.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

As filed, this is WONTFIX: see
http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2005-07-11/xulrunner-short-term-and-mid-term-roadmap/

Comment 2

[George Z.]

I don't have the skill set fixing this issue, just some justfications for voting
for this bugs. Embedding Mozilla (gecko engine) is quite a common scenario to
leverage Gecko engine outside Mozilla itself. There are many Java Browser
components embedding gecko engine, including JDIC (https://jdic.dev.java.net)
Browser component. Which works with Mozilla, but not with firefix. As firefox is
becoming more and more popular, this would be a frequent request as well.

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

Yes, and the solution is to use xulrunner instead of Firefox.  Eventually, post
Firefox 1.5, Firefox will be based on xulrunner, and then it will be possible to
embed the gecko shipped with Firefox.  But, that won't happen in the Firefox 1.5
timeframe.