Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Google Chrome now has an extension capability, but there are still rough edges, and there are no equivalents of some of what I use in Firefox.
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A few more comments as background. I'm
not knocking Chrome. It's a worthy browser, and if I have to use a machine that only has it, I can deal. Which browser to use is very much a subjective matter. You use the one that you are comfortable with and fits your style. As long as you
don't use IE, I don't care.
Why Firefox for me?
Under the hood of
all Mozilla products - Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey - is the Gecko rendering engine. Gecko interprets the HTML and CSS and displays the page, and interprets and runs JavaScript embedded in the page. It's probably the most standards-compliant rendering engine, though the other browsers are all implementing standards as fast as they can, including IE.
But Gecko takes it one step further. It also interprets and renders XUL ("zool"), an XML language for creating user interfaces. The actual look and feel of Mozilla products is determined by XUL, and the browser itself is simply an instance of what Gecko is rendering, with JavaScript performing the actions when you click a button or a menu choice.
This makes it possible for developers fluent in XUL, CSS, and JavaScript to create themes that alter how the product looks, and add-ons that change and enhance how it behaves. Developers have, and literally thousands exist.
That extensibility is why I use Firefox and other Mozilla products in the first place. I don't use themes, but an assortment of extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey have become part of my standard kit, and get installed as part of the process any time I install them.
It's also possible for Gecko to be under the hood on products that aren't browsers, or even from Mozilla. Current examples include the Songbird cross platform media player, and the Komodo programmer's IDE from ActiveState Corp. The longer term plans for Mozilla include breaking out Gecko as a separate runtime called XULRunner, so instead of a copy of Gecko being bundled with each product, you have one, and the individual products are simply instances of things Gecko renders. One possibility is a replacement for Windows Explorer, implemented in XUL, CSS, and JavaScript, and rendered by Gecko. There's no reason it
couldn't be done.
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Dennis