
A web browser reference implementation using Mozilla Android Components - commoner
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/reference-browser
======
commoner
This browser uses the same GeckoView engine as the recently updated Firefox
Focus (for Android), which runs much faster than the Gecko engine that's
currently being used in Firefox for Android.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/geckoview-firefox-
focus](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/geckoview-firefox-focus)

------
blahblahblogger
As an Android engineer, what would I use this for in my app?

Is it something I would embed to use in lieu of Chrome Custom Tabs if I wanted
an in-app browser experience (similar to CCT) but that I could customize more
or if I wanted more control over the "web browser engine" for some reason?

~~~
commoner
Mozilla's Android components repo describes the project as "A collection of
Android libraries to build browsers or browser-like applications." Since this
includes an entire browser engine and browser features such as autocomplete
and history/bookmark syncing, I don't think this is meant to be a substitute
for Chrome Custom Tabs. If you intend to develop a complete browser (e.g.
Brave) or an app that uses multiple browser features (e.g. a shopping app with
a built-in browser), then Mozilla's Android components might be right for you.

[https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/android-
components](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/android-components)

The Mozilla Reference Browser appears to be targeted to end users as a way to
showcase performance improvements in an upcoming version of Firefox. Right
now, Mozilla isn't able to include GeckoView into Firefox Nightly because it
doesn't support all of the existing browser features.

------
untog
Is there a similar component for the Firefox JS engine? I'd be interested to
know if it could be used standalone and how big it would be. (Mozilla also has
the Rhino JS engine that works on Android, but this is something different)

~~~
commoner
Originally, there was XULRunner, which was used in applications including
ChatZilla, Google AdWords Editor, Komodo Edit, Pencil, Songbird, and Zotero.
XULRunner has been discontinued.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XULRunner)

Mozilla briefly developed Positron, which was an Electron-compatible app shell
that used Gecko instead of Chromium/Node.js/V8. Positron has also been
discontinued.

[https://github.com/mozilla/positron](https://github.com/mozilla/positron)

The developer who was working on Positron went on to develop qbrt, which is a
CLI interface to a Gecko app runtime. The project is unstable, and the last
commit date is Jun 30, 2018.

[https://github.com/mozilla/qbrt](https://github.com/mozilla/qbrt)

Another Mozilla developer has a project called servoshell, which is an
embeddable version of Servo. It's described as work-in-progress, and the last
commit date is Jan 7, 2018.

[https://github.com/paulrouget/servoshell](https://github.com/paulrouget/servoshell)

I'm afraid this is it for now, since embedding Gecko is no longer unsupported
by Mozilla.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embed...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Gecko/Embedding_Mozilla/FAQ/Embedding_Gecko)

Hopefully, Mozilla will continue working on embeddable versions of desktop
Gecko after they release the necessary improvements in Firefox.

