Jazilla Milestone 1 ReleasedSaturday May 24th, 2003Slashdot is reporting that Jazilla Milestone 1 has been released. The Jazilla project aims to rewrite Mozilla in Java. It started shortly after the release of the Netscape Communicator 5.0 source code in 1998 but development petered out in 2000. It was revived by Mathew McBride last year has been completely rewritten to follow a more Mozilla-like architecture (Jazilla Classic was closer to the old Netscape Communicator). This isn't the first time that a Java rewrite of Mozilla/Netscape has been attempted. Back in 1997, Netscape and its partners began the Javagator project to rewrite Communicator in Java. The effort — officially codenamed Xena or Maui depending on who you asked — stalled and was finally cancelled in the Summer of 1998. Only the source code of Grendel, the mail/news component of Javagator, was ever released as open source. Jazilla Milestone 1 is currently alpha software. It can be downloaded from SourceForge as a tarball compressed using bzip2. I assume this is Java code compiled for specific platforms so that the user can just run it as a stand alone executable. I wonder if this won't eventually lead to a superior browser, since you'll have built-in garbage collection and all the other protections inherent to Java. why would you assume that? this is platform independent Java - it's a bunch of java .class files, so you need to run them in a suitable environment. there's a readme file that tells you how to do it, and a batch file which works ok on Windows (assuming you have the Java VM installed). the browser has got a long way to go - the current version doesn't seem to support frames, tables, CSS or javascript, and is very slow. it's kind of like stepping back in time 10 years and using Mosaic, only with less features... :) Isn't this just reinventing the wheel? Mozilla is already cross platform. Also, JAVA does not us native widgets, that's why I like Mozilla/Firebird. I don't know about Mozilla/Firebird, but at least the most recent version of Netscape just has the Open File and the combo boxes native; and the later ones, only when expanded. And since Mozilla, Firebird and Netscape use XUL, I guess none of them uses native widgets... "I don't know about Mozilla/Firebird, but at least the most recent version of Netscape just has the Open File and the combo boxes native; and the later ones, only when expanded. And since Mozilla, Firebird and Netscape use XUL, I guess none of them uses native widgets..." XUL doesn't use native widgets - however, the nsITheme interface can be used to present an appearance that looks more similar to the current operating system look on Windows, GTK+ and Mac OS X. The Mozilla Application Suite Classic theme does this, as does the default Mozilla Firebird theme. The Open File dialogue (and a few other dialogues) are native on most systems except Linux, where Mozilla rolls its own. I think the native appearance of the combo box widgets is achieved through nsITheme. Java's Swing has a variety of look-and-feels available, so you can make Swing apps look somewhat native. Jazilla uses a fork of the jXUL http://jxul.sourceforge.net/ API but has the appearance of Swing's default Metal look-and-feel. Alex "Also, JAVA does not us native widgets" Well have you tried UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName())? I believe support for Windows XP was added in the 1.4.2 release. . Great news. There are many more XUL motors aside from Jazilla in Java. My very own is called Luxilla and is part of the Luxor XUL toolkit online @ http://luxor-xul.sourceforge.net I also try to catch all XUL (XML UI) motors/browsers/runtimes out there in the Richmond Post XUL Link-opida online @ http://luxor-xul.sourceforge.net/post/links.html and how heavily modified is it? I've posted some screenshots at: http://gemal.dk/archives/000143.html ...for Jazilla Jirebird and Jazilla Junderbird! But it's Jazilla Jailbird that'll end up getting them in trouble! Hopefully this java version will allow Mac OS 9 users to continue using newer versions of Mozilla. I am using OS X so do not have to worry. There was a real outcry when development was discontinued for the Mac on OS versions older than OS X. This will be good news for users of OS 9 (and other OSs where Mozilla development has been discontinued). Paul. Whilst this is definitely a positive sign, and definitely a great achievement, Jazilla is currently now where near as complete or functional as the last official version of Mozilla for OS 9 (Moz 1.2 I think?) Um, I thought Java didn't really work ('real' Java 1.3+) on Mac OS 9? At least, not without proprietary (non-Apple non-Sun) add-ons. There is great support for java in OS X but I thought OS 9 was an utterly useless java platform... I could be wrong, of course. --sam What is the purpose of using Java to make Mozilla? Well, there isn't a decent, free browser available in Java, so those of us who develop in the Java platform could definitely use a browser for those cases when browser integration becomes necessary. (*I* want one. I'm using a horrible hack to access Internet Explorer through ActiveX, which is nasty and platform-dependent but at least a proper browser that users have installed and that correctly renders most HTML: I haven't decided what to do on Mac OS X yet, or Linux if we support that, but it will probably suck.) Of course this particular project is nowhere near a decent, free browser, but it's got to start somewhere I suppose. That said I don't have much confidence in this project. Sorry, but it just looks a bit mickey-mouse to me. Oh, and I don't see any particular point to imitating Mozilla, unless it's to get publicity. --sam Couldn't you wrap the gecko imbedded component with a little jni while you're waiting for jazilla? That would be much more cross-platform. You might find someone has already done the wrapping somewhere. It's worth having a look around. I was told there is already an HTML viewer in Java. I don't know about you folks, but I can't seem to be able to download Jazilla from any of the possible locations. It would be fun to test drive! |