Gecko (software)

Gecko
Developer(s)Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation, Adobe Systems, and other contributors
Initial release1998 as NGLayout
Stable release
125 / 4 November 2022; 2 years ago (4 November 2022)
Repository
Written inC++, JavaScript, Rust
TypeBrowser engine
LicenseMPL 2.0[1][2]
Websitedeveloper.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Gecko

Gecko (stylized as ɢecko) is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and many other projects.

Gecko is designed to support open Internet standards, and is used by different applications to display web pages and, in some cases, an application's user interface itself (by rendering XUL). Gecko offers a rich programming API that makes it suitable for a wide variety of roles in Internet-enabled applications, such as web browsers, content presentation, and client/server.[3]

Gecko is written in C++ and JavaScript,[4][5] and, since 2016, additionally in Rust.[6][7] It is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License version 2.[8] Mozilla officially supports its use on Android,[4] Linux, macOS, and Windows.[9]

  1. ^ "Mozilla Foundation End-User Licensing Agreements". Mozilla.
  2. ^ "Mozilla Licensing Policies". mozilla.org. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
  3. ^ "Embedding Mozilla". Mozilla.org. 2012-10-25. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
  4. ^ a b "Simple Firefox for Android build". Archived from the original on 2019-09-29. Retrieved 2017-05-03. Gecko is implemented using C++ and JavaScript.
  5. ^ Bergstrom, Lars; et al. (May 2016). "Engineering the Servo Web Browser Engine using Rust" (PDF). Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-05-29.
  6. ^ "Google Groups". groups.google.com.
  7. ^ Yegulalp, Serdar (February 3, 2017). "Mozilla binds Firefox's fate to the Rust language". InfoWorld.
  8. ^ "MPL 2 Upgrade". Retrieved 2012-08-18.
  9. ^ "Gecko FAQ". MDN Web Docs. Archived from the original on 2019-10-08. Retrieved 2017-05-03.