Gecko (software)

Gecko is a web browser engine used in many applications

developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation (notably the Firefox web browser including its mobile version and their e-mail client Thunderbird), as well
as in many other open source software projects. Gecko is
free and open-source software subject to the terms of the
Mozilla Public License version 2.[9]

out at the time) rather than the old layout engine, requiring large parts of the application to be rewritten.
While this decision was popular with web standards advocates, it was largely unpopular with Netscape developers, who were unhappy with the six months given for the
rewrite.[12] It also meant that most of the work done for
Netscape Communicator 5.0 (including development on
the Mariner improvements to the old layout engine) had
to be abandoned. Netscape 6, the rst Netscape release to
incorporate Gecko, was released in November 2000 (the
name Netscape 5 was never used).

It is designed to support open Internet standards, and is

used by dierent applications to display web pages and, in
some cases, an applications user interface itself (by rendering XUL). Gecko oers a rich programming API that
makes it suitable for a wide variety of roles in Internet- As Gecko development continued, other applications and
enabled applications, such as web browsers, content pre- embedders began to make use of it. America Online, by
sentation, and client/server.[10]
this time Netscapes parent company, eventually adopted
Gecko is written in C++ and is cross-platform, and runs it for use in CompuServe 7.0 and AOL for Mac OS X
on various operating systems including BSDs, Linux, OS (these products had previously embedded Internet ExX, Solaris, OS/2, AIX, OpenVMS, and Microsoft Win- plorer). However, with the exception of a few betas,
dows. Its development is now overseen by the Mozilla Gecko was never used in the main Microsoft Windows
AOL client.
Foundation.
On July 15, 2003, AOL laid o the remaining Gecko developers and the Mozilla Foundation (formed on the same
day) became the main steward of Gecko development.
1 History
Today, Gecko is developed by employees of the Mozilla
Corporation, employees of companies that contribute to
Development of the layout engine now known as Gecko the Mozilla project, and volunteers.
began at Netscape in 1997, following the companys purchase of DigitalStyle. The existing Netscape rendering engine, originally written for Netscape Navigator 1.0 2 Standards support
and upgraded through the years, was slow, did not comply well with W3C standards, had limited support for
dynamic HTML and lacked features such as incremental From the outset, Gecko was designed to support open Inreow (when the layout engine rearranges elements on the ternet standards. Some of the standards Gecko supports
screen as new data is downloaded and added to the page). include:
The new layout engine was developed in parallel with the
CSS Level 2.1 (partial support for CSS 3)[13]
old, with the intention being to integrate it into Netscape
Communicator when it was mature and stable. At least
DOM Level 1 and 2 (partial support for DOM 3)
one more major revision of Netscape was expected to be
released with the old layout engine before the switch.
HTML4 (partial support for HTML5see
Comparison of layout engines (HTML5))
After the launch of the Mozilla project in early 1998,
the new layout engine code was released under an opensource license. Originally unveiled as Raptor, the name
had to be changed to NGLayout (next generation layout)
due to trademark problems. Netscape later rebranded
NGLayout as Gecko. While Mozilla Organization (the
forerunner of the Mozilla Foundation) initially continued to use the NGLayout name (Gecko was a Netscape
trademark),[11] eventually the Gecko branding won out.

JavaScript 1.8.5 (full ECMAScript 5.1 support),[14]

implemented in SpiderMonkey
MathML
RDF
XForms (via an ocial extension)
XHTML 1.0

In October 1998, Netscape announced that its next

browser would use Gecko (which was still called NGLay-

XML 1.0
1

5
XSLT and XPath, implemented in TransforMiiX

Gecko also partially supports SVG 1.1.[15][16]

In order to support web pages designed for legacy versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, Gecko supports
DOCTYPE switching. Documents with a modern DOCTYPE are rendered in standards compliance mode, which
follows the W3C standards strictly. Documents that have
no DOCTYPE or an older DOCTYPE are rendered in
quirks mode, which emulates some of the non-standard
oddities of Netscape Communicator 4.x; however, some
of the 4.x features (such as layers) are not supported.

REFERENCES

4 Criticism
In the past, Gecko had slower market share adoption
due to the complexity of the Gecko code, which aimed
to provide much more than just an HTML renderer
for web browsers.[22][23][24] Mozillas engineering efforts since then have addressed many of these historical
weaknesses.[25]

The Gecko engine also provides a versatile XML-based

user interface rendering framework called XUL that was
used extensively in mail, newsgroup, and other programs.
Another reason for much of the complexity in Gecko
is the use of XPCOM, a cross-platform component
Gecko also has limited support for some non-standard Inmodel.[26] However, its use has been scaled back.[27]
ternet Explorer features, such as the marquee element
and the document.all property (though pages explicitly On Windows and similar platforms, Gecko depends on
testing for document.all will be told it is not supported). non-free compilers. Thus, FOSS distributions of Linux
While this increases compatibility with many documents can not include the Gecko package used in the Windows
designed only for Internet Explorer, some purists argue compatibility layer Wine.[28]
that it harms the cause of standards evangelism.

Usage

Gecko is primarily used in web browsers, the earliest being Netscape 6 and Mozilla Suite (later renamed
SeaMonkey). It is also used in other Mozilla web browser
derivatives such as Firefox and Firefox for mobile and
the implementation of the Internet Explorer-clone that is
part of Wine.[17] Mozilla also uses it in their Thunderbird
email-client and their Firefox OS.
Other web browsers using Gecko include Airfox,
Waterfox, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Pale Moon, Portable
Firefox, Conkeror, Classilla, TenFourFox, HP Secure
Web Browser, Oxygen and Sylera (for mobile).
Other products using Gecko include Conkeror, Oxygen, Nightingale, Instantbird and Googles pictureorganization software Picasa (for Linux).[18]
DevHelp, a GTK+/GNOME browser for API documentation, used Gecko for rendering documents.[19]

5 References
[1] Firefox Notes (40.0.2) Mozilla. mozilla.org.
2015-08-13. Retrieved 2015-08-13.
[2] Firefox Notes (38.2.0) Mozilla. mozilla.org.
2015-08-11. Retrieved 2015-08-11.
[3] Firefox Beta Notes (40.0beta) Mozilla. 2015-0703. Retrieved 2015-07-03.
[4] Mozilla Firefox Web Browser Download Firefox Beta
in your language Mozilla. Retrieved 2015-08-01.
[5] Firefox Aurora Notes (41.0a2) Mozilla. 201507-03. Retrieved 2015-07-03.
[6] RapidRelease/Calendar - MozillaWiki.
2015-07-03.

Retrieved

[7] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/eula/
[8] Mozilla Licensing Policies.
2013-03-26.

Gecko is also used by Sugar for the OLPC XO-1

computer.[20] Gecko is used as a complete implementa[9]
tion of the XUL (XML User Interface Language). Gecko
currently denes the XUL specication.
[10]
Products that have historically used Gecko include
Songbird, Epiphany (now known as Web and no
[11]
longer using Gecko), Sunbird (calendar), and other web
browsers including Swiftfox, Flock, Galeon, Camino,
Minimo, Beonex Communicator, Kazehakase, and [12]
MicroB.

mozilla.org.

Retrieved

MPL 2 Upgrade. Retrieved 2012-08-18.

Embedding Mozilla. Mozilla.org. 2012-10-25. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
nglayout project: identity crisis. Mozilla.org. Retrieved
2012-10-31.
Castro, Jorge O. (2004-06-16). Ars Technica interviews
Scott Collins. Arstechnica.com. Retrieved 2012-10-31.

After Gecko 2.0, the version number was bumped to 5.0

[13] Mozilla CSS support chart. Developer.mozilla.org.
to match Firefox 5, and from then on has been kept in
2012-08-04. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
sync with the major version number for both Firefox and
Thunderbird,[21] to reect the fact that it is no longer a [14] ECMAScript 5 support in Mozilla.
Develseparate component.
oper.mozilla.org. 2013-11-14. Retrieved 2013-12-02.

[15] The SVG font, color prole, animation, view, and cursor
modules are yet to be implemented and the lter and text
modules are only partially implemented. The extensibility
module is also implemented but is currently disabled
[16] Mozilla SVG Status. Mozilla.org. 2012-08-25. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
[17] IE Uses Gecko Under Wine. Wine Wiki. Retrieved
2009-09-14.
[18] Picasa 3.0 for Linux. Google. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
[19] Ocial package devhelp (0.19.1-6 and others) on Debian
Lenny. Debian Project. Retrieved 2009-08-12.
[20] Martens, China (2007-01-03). One Laptop Per Child
readies 'Sugar' interface. IDG News Service. Retrieved
2007-12-28.
[21] Gecko versions and application versions. MDN. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
[22] Mike Shaver (2003-01-08). Designate contact sierrave. Shaver: Noise from signal. self-published.
Archived from the original on 2009-09-06. Retrieved
2009-09-06.
[23] David Baron (2003-01-09). Thursday 2003-01-09.
David Barons weblog. self-published. Archived from the
original on 2009-09-06. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
[24] Paul Festa (2003-01-14). Apple snub stings Mozilla.
CNET Networks. Archived from the original on 200909-06. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
[25] A revamped Gecko puts the re in Firefox.
[26] Jorge O. Castro (2004-06-15). Ars Technica sits down
with Scott Collins from Mozilla.org. Ars Technica.
[27] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105431
[28] http://wiki.jswindle.com/index.php/Fedora#Working_
Wine Archived April 2, 2015 at the Wayback Machine

External links
Gecko - Mozilla Developer Network
Gecko development wiki (wiki.mozilla.org)
Mozilla Product Strategy Proposal (DRAFT)
Web Browser Standards Support
JRex (Java API for Gecko)

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

Text

Gecko (software) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)?oldid=669068843 Contributors: Magnus Manske, Matthew

Woodcraft, Brion VIBBER, Andre Engels, Vaganyik, Aldie, Hhanke, Lightning~enwiki, K.lee, Michael Hardy, Hoshie, GTBacchus,
Minesweeper, Ahoerstemeier, Nanshu, 5ko, Den fjttrade ankan~enwiki, LittleDan, Nikai, Evercat, Jonik, Feedmecereal, RickK, Dmsar, Dysprosia, Jitse Niesen, Miernik, Hao2lian, Tpbradbury, Itai, Nv8200pa, Nickshanks, Chealer, Noldoaran, RedWolf, Stewartadcock,
DocWatson42, Haeleth, Tapo, Itpastorn, AlistairMcMillan, Mooquackwooftweetmeow, Pgan002, Wickedpedia is a fascist project, Beland,
Paul99, ZZyXx, Bbpen, Karl Dickman, Asqueella, Grstain, Reinthal, A-giau, Rich Farmbrough, Qutezuce, EliasAlucard, Luxdormiens,
Gronky, Bender235, Evice, Balubino, BruceRD, Peter M Gerdes, Causa sui, Adamlock, John Vandenberg, Cwolfsheep, Garlics82, Deryck
Chan, Anonymous Cow, WikiLeon, Minghong, Wayfarer, Zachlipton, Nanobot, Ijain, Kocio, Mrholybrain, Schapel, Danhash, Kuda,
Tedp, Kurivaim, Forderud, Ian Moody, Jannex, Mindmatrix, Torqueing, Bluemoose, GregorB, Waldir, Havarhen, Toussaint, Rgbea,
Ictlogist, Yoric~enwiki, BD2412, Phoenix-forgotten, Rjwilmsi, Koavf, KamasamaK, Gudeldar, Miha Ulanov, Brighterorange, GeorgeBills, Yamamoto Ichiro, FlaBot, Foolishgrunt, DevastatorIIC, DrIdiot, Stephantom, Adoniscik, Lil devil, YurikBot, Borgx, Laurentius,
Limulus, Lavenderbunny, Hm2k, Toehead2001, WulfTheSaxon, Complainer, Wae, Bota47, Jeremy Visser, ColdFusion650, Ms2ger,
Kgyt, Skedaddle, Composingliger, GrinBot~enwiki, Mardus, NetRolller 3D, SmackBot, Faisal.akeel, Renegadeviking, Ultramandk, Eskimbot, Darklock, Bluebot, Thumperward, Metavida, Frap, Juancnuno, UU, Superjordo, Charles Merriam, MichaelBillington, Alsh,
Michael Bednarek, 16@r, Poemich, Sharcho, AGK, FatalError, Marbles, CRGreathouse, Pentiumforever, Simast, Monta990, Wikien2009,
Kweeket, Herorev, Neustradamus, Elikser, Thijs!bot, Stewx, Bobblehead, WinBot, CZmarlin, Isilanes, Dylan Lake, Progdev, JAnDbot,
Wootery, Jldupont~enwiki, Photobiker, Skezo, DrSeehas, Arkar1984, Gwern, Cmsjustin, Jesant13, Jreferee, R!SC, Jojas, Austin512, Little
Professor, Bsmith781, AhmadSherif, Plasticup, Josh Tumath, Funandtrvl, Gerhartm, Nomaxxx, TheOtherJesse, Benbucksch, TXiKiBoT,
Rei-bot, Broadbot, Abdullais4u, Fenring, ITxT, Digita, LittleBenW, SieBot, HuggaBounce, Phe-bot, Execvator, Theaveng, Jruderman,
StaticGull, Shooke, Ehsan Akhgari, ClueBot, Czarko, Kl4m-AWB, Wolfbeast, Darth NormaN, Alexbot, Alexqw, SF007, Miami33139,
Antti29, C. A. Russell, Jrooksjr, Addbot, Mabdul, AndersBot, Numbo3-bot, BitterEndofRosemary, Mktsay123, Yobot, Vitalie Ciubotaru,
A0091206, AnomieBOT, Gtz, AtteL, Deeringc, Berntie, Citation bot, Kaltaugh, ArthurBot, 1wolfblake, Locos epraix, 1nt2, Oneliketadow, DeTru711, Thorenn, SL93, Rayqwmon46, USam, Ale And Quail, Defrector, Romaxa2009, EmausBot, WikitanvirBot, Jjeka, Entalpia2, Josve05a, H3llBot, Markrlondon, Jaycee55, Jasontan90, Bomazi, Arcorann, Sudozero, Czeror, Will Beback Auto, Robin Mathew
Rajan, Trewyy, BG19bot, FloFlo91, Clothbound, Cyberbot II, Damiengolding, Rezonansowy, Hoestmelankoli, Enock4seth, S8321414,
Whalrush, Comp.arch, Lennartelsner, Werddemer, ScotXW, Xue Fuqiao, Nutty151, Karrtojal, BugsGounelas and Anonymous: 211

7.2

Images

File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original

artist: ?
File:Crystal_Clear_app_browser.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Crystal_Clear_app_browser.png
License: LGPL Contributors: All Crystal icons were posted by the author as LGPL on kde-look Original artist: Everaldo Coelho and
YellowIcon
File:Crystal_Clear_device_cdrom_unmount.png Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Crystal_Clear_
device_cdrom_unmount.png License: LGPL Contributors: All Crystal Clear icons were posted by the author as LGPL on kde-look;
Original artist: Everaldo Coelho and YellowIcon;
File:Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg License: Cc-bysa-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Free_Software_Portal_Logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Nuvola_apps_emacs_vector.svg
License: LGPL Contributors:
Nuvola_apps_emacs.png Original artist: Nuvola_apps_emacs.png: David Vignoni
File:Mozilla_Firefox_logo_2013.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Mozilla_Firefox_logo_2013.svg
License: CC BY 3.0 Contributors: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/identity/firefox/branding/ Original artist: Sean Martell for
Mozilla [2][3]
File:Mozilla_Firefox_wordmark.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Mozilla_Firefox_wordmark.svg
License: Public domain Contributors: Firefox from PDF le at Mozilla ;
Original artist: Yarnalgo (<a href='//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Yarnalgo' title='User talk:Yarnalgo'>talk</a>), User:
Nicosmos, Erik Spiekermann (FF Meta)

7.3

Content license

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