Web Browsers And Packages

Release: 2008-05-11
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Mozilla Gecko Web Browsers including Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Gecko 1.8, an open-source, Layout Level web content rendering engine provides Gecko, the layout engine, and SpiderMonkey, the scripting engine. These engines provide robust cutting-edge web-standards support for web browsers and a solid platform for cross-platform applications. Gecko has support for:

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 4.01;
HTML 5 'Subset';
Web Forms 2.0's autocomplete attribute;
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 with Namespaces & XML-Stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI);
eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0, 1.1 (without Ruby Annotation) and Basic 1.0;
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2 to express math and sciences expressions on the web;
Most of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 for ultimate 2-dimensional vector image display (Gecko 1.8+);
RSS and Atom news feed support (Gecko 1.7+);
XML Events for current and future script event handling (Gecko 1.8+);
canvas element (Gecko 1.8+)
eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 1 & eXtensible Path Language (XPath) 1 allows the ability to convert document structure into other document structures;
XML Base (xml:base) attribute to help with relative links;
(Simple) eXtensible Linking Language (XLink) 1 provides linking between general XML documents;
eXtensible Pointing Language (XPointer) Framework, Element Scheme, Xmlns (namespaces) Scheme for pointing to parts of XML documents (Gecko 1.4+);
Gecko's own eXtensible User Interface Language (XUL) & eXtensible Binding Language (XBL) provides a rich platform for building Web Applications.
Limited XML Document Type Definition support only to process Entities in the Subset, chrome: and program dtd folder;
Cascade StyleSheets (CSS) level 1, most of Visual & Interactive and Paged level 2.1, a little of level 3 (including Namespace Module, opacity (Gecko 1.7) and as of 1.8, -moz- version of CSS3 Columns) and its own -moz- properties including -moz-border-radius and -moz-box-sizing provide a realistic way to add presentation and layout to your document structures;
Document Object Model (DOM) level 1 (HTML, XML), most of level 2 (HTML, XML, Views, Stylesheets, CSS, CSS2, Events, MouseEvents, HTMLEvents, Range and some Traversal, UIEvents and MutationEvents) and a little of level 3 (XPath, fragment of Load & Save) & JavaScript 1.5 expose the document for advanced user interaction;
JavaScript 1.6 including ECMAScript for XML (E4X) extends user interaction for handling the extra power of XML (Gecko 1.8+), JavaScript 1.7 added in Gecko 1.8.1;
For image support we have GIF89a, JPEG, PNG, Icons (.ico, .png, ...), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM (X Bitmap) and as of Gecko 1.8, SVG 1.1
In Gecko 1.8 to compliment cookies, HTML 5's DOM Storage (sessionStorage and localStorage) allow local database performance and capacity with SQLite to store information beyond the abilities of cookies

provides a powerful platform for experiencing the World Wide Web.

Mozilla, an open-source project started by Netscape/AOL with an application suite of web browser, mail & news client, HTML Editing, etc, embodied a working web suite based on the power of Gecko. Netscape/AOL rebranded a copy of the open-source suite to provide an improvement over the now closed classic version 4 web browser suite.

Taking over the reigns, Mozilla Foundation and now also Mozilla Corporation (a subsidiary), have developed an improved form of the web browser as Mozilla Firefox. Read more about Firefox starting with my page about the web browser.
They have also improved the email client as Mozilla Thunderbird. Read more about Thunderbird starting with my page about the email program.

AOL have now officially ended the Netscape project at version 9 for MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux; all based on Mozilla Firefox 2. Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey will succeed Modern Netscape

The Mozilla Application Suite now replaced and improved by the SeaMonkey Council as SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey features most of the improvements that are in the latest Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.

A trend of web browsers and other types of applications are around, basing their content processing on Gecko. Such applications include Flock, Camino (Mac OS X Web Browser), Epiphany and Galeon (GNOME Web Browsers), k-Meleon (Web Browser for MS Windows), Mozilla Sunbird (Calendar built with Gecko technology), Nvu (HTML Composer built with Gecko Technology, sponsored by Linspire), ActiveState's Komodo IDE 4 and Komodo Edit 4.
Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Flock are available for most platforms.

Features that need to be added to Gecko:

From CSS3:
- Multiple Background Images,
From Web Forms 2:
- <input type="email">,
- required and pattern attributes for <input>,
- required, pattern and maxlength attributes for <textarea></textarea>.

Gecko almost passes the Acid 2 Test which tests Cascade Stylesheet (CSS) support. The upcoming Gecko 1.9 does pass the test. More about the Acid 2 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).
Gecko 1.8.1.14 also clocks 53 out of 100 from the Acid 3 Test which tests DOM, scripting, HTML, SVG and various other technologies for Web 2.0. Firefox 3 Beta 5 clocks 73 out of 100. More about the Acid 3 Test from the Web Standards Project (WASP).

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Web Browsers And Packages

Mozilla Gecko Web Browsers including Mozilla Firefox

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