Gecko ported to Qt/KDE

Several hackers had ported Gecko (the render engine of Mozilla) as a Qt/KDE component (KPart), which will enable Gecko to be embedded in KDE applications.

On the night before the start of the hacking marathon, a conversation including, among others, Ian Geiser, Lars Knoll, Dirk Mueller, and Zack Rusin happened onto the topic of integrating Gecko into KDE. Lars and Zack jumped into Mozilla's code, to see how feasible such a plan might be. Within four days (and before the end of the marathon) the two had a working port: Gecko running on Qt. They credited the speed of implementation to the maturity of the respective technologies and KDE's component architecture (though the caliber of the hackers certainly didn't hamper the effort).

We are delighted to work with the KDE community, both to extend the reach of Gecko, and to be part of an effort bringing even greater depth to the KDE desktop. Making Qt another platform for Mozilla, and Gecko another option for KDE is a win for both users and developers commented Mitchell Baker, President of the Mozilla Foundation.

This is the best of both worlds for KDE said Lars Knoll of the KHTML project. Integrating Gecko side by side with our existing renderer opens a lot of doors, without any compromise of the hard work and clean design that make KHTML what it is.

Wow... Cool! Does that mean we will have a Gecko-based Konqueror (or even Safari?!)?

More news articles here:

• aKademy Hackers Port Mozilla to Qt/KDE
• Gecko ported to KDE/Qt, available as a KPart
• KDE Project Ports Mozilla, Adds Support in Applications