Gecko (software)

Gecko is a free rendering engine written in C++ and originally developed by Netscape. Its development is currently managed by the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation.

Gecko is a platform for cross-platform applications, that is, it allows you to run applications on its engine that use technologies such as XUL, XBL, PNG, HTTP, POP3, SMTP, RDS, CSS on virtually any operating system.

Gecko was previously known by the names Raptor and NGLayout.

History

Development of the layout engine now known as Gecko was started by Netscape in 1997, after it purchased the DigitalStyle company. The existing rendering engine in Netscape, originally written for Netscape Navigator 1.0 and improved over the years, was widely considered inferior to that used in Microsoft Internet Explorer. It was slow, did not comply well with W3C standards, had limited support for dynamic HTML, and lacked features such as incremental reflow (when the layout engine reorders elements on the screen as new data is downloaded and added to the layout). page). The new layout engine was developed in parallel over time, with the intention of being integrated into Netscape Communicator when it was stable and complete. At least one major Netscape revision was expected to be released with it, before the old layout engine was discontinued.

After the launch of the Mozilla project in early 1998, the new layout engine code was released under an open source license. Originally introduced as Raptor the name had to be changed to NGLayout (Next Generation Layout), due to Trademark issues. Netscape renamed it NGLayout Gecko. Although the Mozilla Organization (the forerunner of the Mozilla Foundation) initially continued to use the NGLayout name (Gecko was a Netscape trademark), over time, the Gecko brand took hold.

In October 1998, Netscape announced that its next browser would use Gecko (still called NGLayout at the time) instead of the old layout engine, which required large parts of the application to be rewritten. While this decision was popular with supporters of web standards, it was largely unpopular with Netscape developers, who were unhappy with the six months given for the rewrite. It also meant that most of the work done for Netscape Communicator 5.0 (including the development of the Mariner, improvements on the old engine design) had to be abandoned. Netscape 6, the first version of Netscape to incorporate Gecko, was released in November 2000 (the Netscape 5 name was never used).

As Gecko development continued, other applications and embedders began to make use of it. America Online at this time the parent company of Netscape, eventually approved it for use on CompuServe 7.0 and AOL for Mac OS X (these products had previously incorporated Internet Explorer). However, with the exception of a few betas, Gecko was never used on AOL's main Microsoft Windows client.

On July 15, 2003, AOL fired the remaining Gecko developers and the Mozilla Foundation (formed on the same day) became the main server for Gecko development. Today, Gecko is developed by employees of the Mozilla Foundation, employees of companies that contribute to the Mozilla project, and by volunteers.

Standards support

Gecko was designed to support free Internet standards. Some of the standards that Gecko supports are:

• HTML5
• CSS Level 3
• JavaScript (ECMAScript ES6 or higher, currently ECMAScript 2021 ES12), implemented in SpiderMonkey
• DOM Level 4
• XML 1.0
• XHTML 1.0
• XSLT and XPath, implemented in TransforMiiX
• MathML
• XForms (through an official extension)
• RDF

Gecko also supports SVG.

Software where Gecko is used

Operating Systems:

• Firefox OS
• B2G OS (BootToGecko OS)

Browsers:

• Road (for Mac OS X)
• Epiphany (for GNOME) to version 2.26.3
• Firefox
• Waterfox
• Flock
• K-Meleon (for Windows)
• IceWeasel
• GNU IceCat
• Fennec
• Pale Moon
• Maxthon (although using the Trident engine incorporates support for Gecko).
• Minimo
• Netscape Navigator 6.0 and above
• Pampa Browser

Email clients:

• Thunderbird
• Icedove
• Postbox

Internet Suites:

• Mozilla Application Suite
• SeaMonkey

Others:

• BlueGriffon
• Nvu
• Songbird
• Mozilla Sunbird
• Mozilla Labs Snowl

Use

Gecko is mainly used in web browsers, the best known being Firefox. Other programs, such as Picasa for GNU/Linux (Google's photo organizing software), or the Songbird media player are also based on Gecko. The following table compares the different versions of Gecko:

Other programs not included in the table above are Sugar, Swiftfox, konqueror, HP Secure Web Browser, ReactOS Explorer, Oxygen, Sleipnir, Minimo, Sylera (for mobile), Thunderbird (mail client), Sunbird (calendar) and Instantbird (instant messaging).