We'll soon have access to <iframe mozbrowser> in desktop Firefox (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1238160).
I realize you are proposing a different API than mozbrowser, but I just wanted to point out that there will be some HTML-based approach for browser chrome available on desktop soon. - Ryan On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 2:19 PM, Benjamin Francis <bfran...@mozilla.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I've been thinking about working towards deprecating "Open Web Apps" (aka > mozApps > <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/API/Navigator/mozApps>) > in Gecko. > > For the most part I think mozApps should eventually be replaced by > standards-based web apps using Web Manifest, Service Workers etc. I'd love > to see a standalone display mode for Firefox which supports these web apps > on desktop and mobile to replace the now defunct web runtime, but that's > not what this email is about. > > For the most privileged pieces of UI like the browser chrome of the > browser.html project and the Firefox OS system app I think we may need > another solution. I'd like us to be able to split Gaia > <https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia> into chrome (the system pieces) and > standard web content (everything else). (I'd also like to see a lot of the > current mozApps-only DOM APIs become web services). > > - In the past we had XULRunner but this has recently been removed and it > seems the continued use of XUL is being discouraged in favour of HTML. > - There was an attempt at rebooting the Chromeless project > <https://github.com/mikedeboer/chromeless2> but it looks like that was > still based on XULRunner. > - The browser.html <https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/> project > currently uses Graphene > > <https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/wiki/Building-Graphene-%28Gecko-flavor%29>, > a build of Gecko/Servo which runs locally hosted web content as browser > chrome, but that's based on certified mozApps and the mozBrowser API. > > After chatting with members of the browser.html team I'd like to propose a > solution inspired by Electron <http://electron.atom.io/> (which they > already proposed <https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/issues/639> > before <https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/7379>). This would involve a > new type of HTML-based chrome including a new <webview> element. > > Kan-Ru previously did a comparison > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/BrowserAPI/Common_Subset> of Mozilla's > mozBrowser API, Google's <webview> and Microsoft's <webview> and I started > to spec something out <https://github.com/benfrancis/webview/> with a view > to potentially standardising this, but the web lacks the security model > needed to expose this API and there's currently not much interest in a > standard. So my proposal is a chrome-only <webview> element for Gecko which > would replace the mozApps-only mozBrowser API > <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Using_the_Browser_API>, > along the lines of Electron's <webview> element > <http://electron.atom.io/docs/v0.36.8/api/web-view-tag/>, to allow you to > safely embed web content in an application with HTML-based chrome. > > We could also potentially emulate other parts of Electron's APIs too, see > their quick start tutorial > <http://electron.atom.io/docs/v0.36.8/tutorial/quick-start/> to get an idea > of how their embedding works. > > Initially this would be used by the browser.html and Firefox OS projects, > but I think it could be a possible route away from XUL for Firefox in the > future too. > > I've chatted with a few people working on browser.html and Firefox OS about > this, but I'd like to get broader feedback. Vivien told me he's already > prototyping a similar solution <https://github.com/vingtetun/planula> to > the same problem so I'd like to kick off some discussion here about which > direction we should take. > > Thanks > > Ben > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
