When Mozilla rewrote the browser that used to be Netscape 4.x, which then became Netscape 6/Mozilla Seamonkey, they did so in a way that would allow 3rd party application developers to use the HTML rendering capability of Mozilla. The rendering engine that did the work of displaying the HTML to the screen is called Gecko. It takes the HTML, and later XUL, parses it styles it and draws a bitmap (presumably to a buffer that then gets copied to video memory - I'm sure it's double-buffered and all that good stuff). It is Gecko that 3rd parties would want to embed.

In order to use Gecko you need to bring a lot of other stuff with it however. For awhile the list was getting WAY out of control, but things have been pared down now to a pretty small subset of libraries needed. Because Gecko is written in the cross platform component model (XPCOM) that is the first thing that is obviously needed. Along with it you need networking, html and xml parses and a bunch more stuff. One of the links below has a list of libraries and components that are needed.

This pages purpose is to be a clearinghouse of information for myself. So I know what pages I've been to and read and to have the easily accessible to myself. I'm putting it here instead of just using bookmarks in order to share what I find, as well as allow myself access to it from different computers. As I discover new things I'll post them here and may even post my own thoughts and insights about the workings of the embedding system, provided I'm not just repeating things that have already been said.

There is some duplication right now between the developer.m.o site and the m.o. site. Plus some of the links from dev.m.o point back to m.o. since that is where are the original documentation was happening. I'll come up with a scheme for pointing out the duplication and labeling where links go to make things easier to digest.

• DevMoz Embedding home - This is developers.mozilla.org's home page for Embedding. A good clearing house of information in it's own right. I'll link to the stuff that is here as I read it. I'll include comments relating to the current relavance of the data as well.
  • FAQ - [dup, dmo] - A very in depth FAQ as far as giving a great intro to the topic and then even getting into some detail about specific frequent issues in embedding. Well worth the read. Looks to be the same as: the faq on the m.o site
  • Embedding Basics - [dup, mo] - Not terribly enlightening, particularly after reading the FAQ. Seems to be aimed at educating upper management on why embedding Gecko is a good thing. Might be left over from the AOL days.
• Mozilla's Embedding Home - The home page at Mozilla.org, for embedding. I imagine a good deal of this has bit-rotted but I'm going to slog through it all anyway.
  • FAQ - A very in depth FAQ as far as giving a great intro to the topic and then even getting into some detail about specific frequent issues in embedding. Well worth the read. Looks to be the same as: the faq on the m.o site
• Embedding newsgroup - The google groups page for the netscape.public.mozilla.embedding newsgroup which is the traditional home for discussions regarding embedding gecko.
• site - description