Re: [platform-help-dev] Embedding Mozilla

["Nick Edgar" <Nick_Edgar@xxxxxxx>]

John,

This looks very interesting.  Thanks for informing me about your work.  I 
will be in touch.

Regards,
Nick






"John Ponzo" <jponzo@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: platform-help-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
23/07/2002 08:33 PM
Please respond to platform-help-dev

 
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        Subject:        Re: [platform-help-dev] Embedding Mozilla



Nick, 
 
        I have  been working on embedded Web Browser support for Eclipse 
that might be useful for you.  I have a collection of SWT widgets that 
embed Web Browser controls and provide two categories of APIs: Navigation, 
and DOM access.   The navigation APIs simply expose high level Web Browser 
function such as url navigation, forward, back, and status.   The DOM API 
uses the Java interface bindings for W3C DOM level 3.  The W3C DOM API is 
implemented via direct calls to the  native DOM interfaces of the embedded 
Web browser controls. 

I have three versions of this SWT widget: 
1. Windows - using Internet Explorer 
2. Windows - using Mozilla 
3. Linux/GTK - using Mozilla (This runs on a backlevel GTK.  I'm waiting 
for Mozilla embed support for GTK2 in order to run on the new Eclipse GTK 
2 builds) 

In the case of Internet Explorer the internal implementation has a direct 
Java API mapping of all the COM interfaces for accessing the browser DOM. 
This extends the existing SWT support for COM/VTable binding to native 
components on Windows found in org.eclipse.swt.ole.win32.   These native 
COM interfaces are surfaced as Java classes and are used to implement the 
W3C DOM Interface. (I've also surfaced the Internet Explorer edit mode 
interfaces so this widget  also doubles as a light weight WYSIWYG HTML 
layout editor. Mozilla also provides an editor which I also plan on 
surfacing to Java) 

As for Mozilla, I have an XPCOM package that is modeled after the COM 
interface handling in  org.eclipse.swt.ole.win32 for XPCOM bindings.  This 
works similar to the Internet Explorer version but surfaces all the XPCOM 
related interfaces for Mozilla access.   All the Java code for the 
Mozilla-based widget is the same for both Windows and Linux.  The only 
difference is the SWT JNI library which includes a compile switch for 
Windows or Linux.   

In both cases developers can access the Web Browser specific APIs for DOM 
manipulation if Web Browser specific function is required.  However, the 
W3C DOM interface provided for both Web Browser controls  is sufficient 
for most DOM related function and provides portability across Eclipse 
plugins for Windows and Linux. 

These controls can be used for simple Web Browser embedding and for Web 
Browser DOM programming in Eclipse.   Since these controls are SWT widgets 
they can easily integrate into existing projects.  The original goal of 
this project was to provide developers with a simple path for migrating 
Web-based tools and interfaces  to Eclipse.  Eclipse plug-in developers 
can simply instantiate these SWT widgets and call a getDocument() method 
which returns an object of type org.w3c.dom.html.HTMLDocument.   The DOM 
interface allows developers to dynamically modify Web pages and create 
event handlers for processing HTML element events.  For example, an event 
handler can process button click events within a Web page or dynamically 
augment external Web pages with Eclipse specific handlers. 

I would like to contribute these controls to Eclipse.  Please let me know 
if this is what you are looking for. 

John Ponzo 
IBM Research 
jponzo@xxxxxxxxxx