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Linux Web Browsers Reviewed
juniorboy writes "This is an article reviewing 5 web-browsers that run on Linux.
" Really not a lot of surprises, but its itneresting that the number of reviews of this nature focusing on Linux are increasing.
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I thought it was pronounced "H-puke".
That's just bloody weird. X apps don't normally do that, so believe me -- Linux users DO have a problem with it.
Any good HCI text book will tell you why "Help at top right" is broken.
ISTR Mozilla is fixed in this regard, if it ain't by the time it's released XUL will allow you to fix it...
Java support for Konqueror and KDE in general is being handled by a core developer, I believe basic applets already work. I would have looked into it more but I don't really have much use for applets. I'm just waiting for Konqueror to stabilize a bit more and then it will be my browser of choice under *nix.
Mostly by choice, but also because I've been working poor since 1991 (age prejudice), I've used Lynx (with a shell account) almost exclusively. (Masochist? More likely mildly depressed...(^_^) ) I surely get it in the neck with vendor-specific Web design. I do, however, use Lynx to download images for offline viewing. Btw, Bruce Guthrie has a very nice DOS-based freeware HTML-to-text converter that does tables nicely.
Nicholas Bodley
Plugger seems to work well in Linux. Instead of being a monolithic multimedia player plugin, it uses xanim and mtv to play video, timidity for MIDI, xmp for mods and so on. It's worth a try.
Pretty cool stuff.
Damn Lynx ;-)
the problem is that plug-ins lead to instability. I avoid sites that use plug-ins as much as possible. Let's face it, if a plug-in format takes off, it's going to be natively supported in the next release of all of the major browsers. For that matter, any client-side viewers, plug-ins, etc. just make my browsing experience less pleasant.
NB
bollocks. go to freshmeat and search for w3m. and that does frames and tables. w3m rocks.
it's IMHO, not IHMO, if you didn't realize (assuming it wasn't a typo).
If you compare the latest development versions of KDE vs. Moz KDE is ahead as far as features.
Considering its not even an alpha release yet I'm sure they have got debuging info still in the executable.. plus I think they link in some bug tracking system too..
Look at the KDE2 in action shots at mosfet.org or download the KDE CVS. Gtk does things like image rendering too, so that doesn't make much sense either.
oh great, another giving analogy from the real life... arrrgh
Outlook is highly insecure and to a non-clueless ms system administrator it is the most dangerous source of viruses. It is unfair to benchmark IE/Win against Netscape/Win, since it is impossible to cleanly remove IE from Win. (Prof Felton's hacked, IE-free version of win runs marginally faster than normal win - imagine what MS could do).
you should check out http://www.freshmeat.net and bookmark it. all fashion of applications are available I hit it up ten minutes ago to check out this software (links) and am posting with it. I have to say that I am impressed. good luck Kent
Seems he recently got a card to add lower case, but it's working only some of the time. Wonder whether he's using a 40-column display...He also has an intermittent open in his (shifted) one key.
I shudder to think what this guy's graphics look like. If he drew a face the way he spells, he'd put one eye above the nose, and the other below, have both ears on one side (like the eyes of a flounder), and two mouths.
Is this what we get with social promotion and outcome-based education? If so, we now know how to commit national suicide. It will be the well-educated immigrants who save us if we'll let them.
Unless it's so bad that it makes it harder to understand the message, that is. English has a ludicrous spelling system, anyway - it's almost as hard to learn as Chinese. It is uncommon for native English speakers to be able to spell perfectly before they have been learning to read/write for five years. In Spanish or Italian, it's more like 1 year. Dunno how foreigners ever manage. What a stupid lingua franca.
... if, by driving my Microsoft I contribute to making it impossible for people to have this choice in the future. That's what happens every time you generate hits using IE, giving Microsoft a higher browser market share, encouraging web designers to write "IE-only pages" instead of "html pages". Go, drive your Microsoft, if you like. When you find you can't get off in two years' time, don't expect me to help.
In much less time than projects like Mozilla have been around, Konqueror already has CSS1 and parts of 2, Unicode, plugin support (and real plugins like postscript viewers, not just toys), and is *fast*. The fact that he compares development browsers vs. the old KDE browser is odd.
Sorry, didn't mean to post above comment as score 2. Guess lynx is going to take a little getting used to!
I recently d/l'd it and installed it in my old but nice HP Vectra 386/16, 8//52 MB. Total size of the d/l was 1MB. On the whole, really rather nice. Buttons (not resizable) take up a lot of screen space, but so do typical MS apps if you have nested scrollbars, toolbars, etc. My ISP seems to be faking PPP somehow, and although I could get the dialer to connect, I couldn't get the browser to connect to the default dialer. (Yes, there was a TCP/IP stack in there.) Failure to connect is not their fault, pretty sure. Full of misspellings, but they are more a failure to learn/understand how our language works (his first language is Czech, apparently) than mental blocks that typical /. posters have that make them unable in practice remember how words they read are spelled. Seems to be a one-man product, and the guy's talented. I give it a thumbs up, although I don't see it competing with IE. Has its own GUI, of course. On a 16 MHz 386 (below the min. recommended) it is slow, but that's about at the bottom of the useful specs for any reasonable computer. (My Vectra ran Debian base beautifully in text-only mode, btw.)
(I'm posting this with w3m.)
Really, you should give a try on w3m. It is far from perfect, but still does a neat job.
For example, it does tables (in a great way) and frames (ditto), but cannot show documets while it loads. It traps Ctrl-C and interprets that as a Stop signal (witch lynx does not) so you can stop downloadings on the fly, but has a somewhat extremist cookie policy (yes/no), while lynx lets you choose if allow them or not based on domain info
I'm very happy with w3m, it has also a lynx-friendly key bindings, so lynx users won't be lost the first times. Yet, I still need some time to catch the esoteric (default) key bindings. But I can change the colormap on the fly!
Anyway, I hope w3m in the future becames as mature as lynx, it has the potential.
Yours truly,
AJH
And with more features in Konq than Mozilla.
It's:
1. Having to take your hand away from the keyboard, and all the way over to the mouse.
2. Having to physically move the mouse.
The keyboard-only user is already done with what he's doing before the mouser's hand is even halfway to the keyboard. No matter how fast you move your arm, it takes at least an eighth of a second to move your hand to the mouse. In that time, you should be able to get at least ten keystrokes in.
All you've proven is that for some things, using the mouse can speed things up. Well... duh. But for most purposes, the mouse is just a dummy tool for people who haven't learned the faster keyboard command.
I'd like to see how long it would have taken you to write that post of yours if you'd had to click each letter on some onscreen keyboard with your beloved mouse.
Hmm... I'd like to see you *try* to run our biochemical simulations on any MS product. MS OSes are all so full of memory leaks any moderately huge program operating on moderately huge datasets brings them down in a couple of days. We used to use Solaris, but lately, we've discovered a commodity PC running linux can also run them stably.
if you have a JVM for your OS why should you not be able to run a Java coded browser?
speed
Pardon me ;-)
Help menus are supposed to be on the far right. What? You say Motif *sucks*? Yes it does, like a hoover, but it's a standard so there you are.
Does anyone have any tips or pointers on running the SunOS version of Internet Explorer on Linux?
They forgot the two best Linux web browsers. In second place, w3m. And in first place, links. Yes, "links". Not very widely known but truely an amazing piece of software. In fact, no piece of software has ever impressed me so much. Go get it!
PS... it's very fast.
He doesn't want to do anything interesting. Just wants to use his 'puter like a special tee-vee. Don't judge him. His goals are different from yours. ;)
Rare to find Netscape installed on a production Web server, which was I think the context. And the article wasn't wrong, Lynx can do what he said it could.
As both a Mozilla tester and KDE user I am pleased to see that Mozilla now has real competition. While KFM was good and really set the standard for free browsers, it lacked a lot of things Konqueror and Mozilla really need to support. Since Mozilla seemed to me to be taking an awfully long time and Konqueror seems to be picking up a lot of features quickly maybe this will help motivate people to work on Mozilla faster. Which in turn will motivate the KDE people, and on and on :)
IE on its native platform (Win, of course) is slow, buggy, crashy, and annoying. Netscape4 may not be much better, but it at least supports CSS passably.
:).
Dear me... I am ALL against Microsoft (I've dumped all Win* machines from the office), but I am not crazy Anti-Microsoft maniac - which translates - Microsoft has done some good things.
IE works just fine, and is more reliable than Netscape (at least on Win* platform - couldn't manage to get IE work on HP). Outlook is wonderful piece of software. They've done very good work there.
I would like to see IE for Linux (dare I say: I would even PAY for it if it works better than Netscape
Please, all you 15-yrs old "Linux r00lz!" kids - ignore this message. It's not intented for you... (yes, I'm using Linux at work/home, and all other brands of UNIX (should I also mention VMS?) at work - so just GIVE ME A BREAK WITH "Linux this, Linux that...").
Computers are TOOLS - not "way of life".
Get a life kids...
Read text porn. Reading is fundamental and encourages you to use your imagination. :)
it is way behind MSIE now, and there is no improvement in sight.
By the time (if ever) they do release another version, they will have fallen too far behind MSIE to have any possible chance at catching up.
Because they're secret/hidden and undocumented. No one knows what they do or the best way to use them. It would be firing blind - to some degree. Trial and error, mostly error.
And then the punch-line: the follow-up to the follow-up gets moderated *up*!
How much sense does it make to allow a follow-up to a down-moderated article to be moderated *up*?
(There's some flame-bait for you. And it's off-topic to boot.)
SOC/RO Update: It is, as Comandante Taco puts it, "itneresting" that the number of reviews of this sort of thing are increasing. Why wouldn't it be itneresting? There are many itneresting attributes of the Open/Source community. But out of all of these itneresting things, I'd have to say that by far the most itneresting (but not surpriseful) thing is that the number of reviews of Linux-based Web/Browsers are increasing. This is a marker of an increase in acceptance of Linux in the "general population" of lower itnelligence beings. Some more itnelligent people have been using Linux for 20 or more years now. Among these people are Feynman, Hawking, Insane Evil Robot KZ-467Y, and of course Schrodinger. Bohr uses ProDOS. Of course, they all must reboot into Windows in order to play Star/Siege: Tribes. Hawking especially is an excellent Renegades player with his mad reflexes and his ability to manipulate complex geometry effortlessly in his mind. He plays as [CkH] WHO -- http://www.theclq.com/asp/find.asp?pid=3309553 Feynman prefers the Shifter mod, himself: "I prefer the Shifter mod, myself." He plays as "(ICE) NoLimits C" -- http://www.theclq.com/asp/find.asp?pid=6216948 If you are playing Tribes, and you run into one of them, tell them you know who they REALLY are. Try to get them to admit to it. They try to hide their Tribes addiction, they don't admit they have a problem. But all they do is sit isolated in their Ivory Towers playing Tribes all day. Perhaps an itnervention is in order.
Yes! Yes, I admit it, I do! I miss Veronica every time I fire up Netscape!
Well, actually, no I don't, 'cause Back Then (TM) the university account I was using didn't have Veronica, Lynx, an archie client or anything, so I used to telnet into the open account at CERN (this was from Japan, BTW). It sucked.
That's "YMMV"...
I have Win, Linux and Mac computers and can compare, say, Mac version of IE to Netscape. You know, IE blows NS away. All three parameters - speed, features, reliability. On Windows, the difference is not so big, but IE is still better, IMHO. Linux browsers are joke, except Lynx, which I use most of the time.
Um... Opera (beta version) is available for Linux.
billg: the moment I find a way to telnet in as root, I start coding on IE4 for Linux
Then you'd better start coding (not that I know if anyone would want IE4 for Linux), because it's pretty simple to make it possible for root to telnet in...
(moderate this previous post up!) As I was reading down these responses I was hoping someone would say this. If Netscape was allowed to preload most of it's code with the GUI/OS you'd see a huge speed increase. It's not fair to compare IE on Win32 to Netscape on Win32, it's too inbred and unfairly native. If you're looking for quality of code and how it would run on another GUI try comparing the Mac version IE to Netscape, or other browsers. -- ever notice how in those napisan ads they say "recorded live"? yeah, john harcourt, recorded live as opposed to what?
It's not a bad thing, this is a good thing. One of the greatest things, actually. Following your argument why not just standise computer's OS's too, monitors, browsers, hell.. everything. Diversity of GUI and the freedom of choice breeds good software. Evolution in action. A 'standard' GUI wouldn't help anyone in the long term.
Not to be pedantic, but there are as many, if not more, browsers for Win32 as there are for Linux. IE (obviously!) Netscape Mozilla Lynx Various DOS browsers Opera
I assume you mean re: post #60 and not re: post 95
It sucks memory up like a hog on ice. It's not much faster than IE5/Netscape 4.x anyway.
Wow...when you talk like that I feel as if I am taking a deep breath of air on the "campus" at Redmond.
url?
Your Opinion: Why would we want to port the worst browser around to linux? This is entirely aside from the fact that (1) MS really REALLY won't want to support anything linux, and (2) they're an evil company :-). FUD noted.
Anyone have any pointers/tips on how to get the SunOS version of IE to work on Linux and iBCS?
One of the FreeBSD developers here in Japan is blind. He mentioned that the move from text terminals to X Window was one of the biggest obstacles for him.
Bug-21468
Also I don't think the debug info need to hog so much memory. Currently it consumes memory nearly 3 times that of Netscape and 4 times IE5.
Also, its FORM handling is still uglier and very un-predictable. (for example see:Bug-23986
But I am not telling these things to drive away people from Mozilla. Mozilla is a beautiful beast and I very much hope by the time it is beta all these things would be solved...as there were huge improvements from M12 proper to the 13Jan2000 nightly build. The Wallet feature is also very good and is working right-now(tm)...
The core is perfect (as you can see in CSS implementation), only the GUI needs improvement, which gets fixed as time goes...
--nivas (A mozilla fan)
Truetype support really belongs in the X server. For X 3.3.x, use xfsft or xfstt (modern distros like RH 6.x and Mandrake 6.x) actually use xfsft as their xfs (a lot of people, it seems, don't know that, and then install xfstt/xfsft too, which is a waste)
What is REALLY needed is more people working on Display Ghostscript, so we have a 1:1 correspondence between screeen and printer, so that anything that uses XFree86 becomes a viable professional DTP platform, and as a side effect, any display-ghostscript apps will automatically have excellent antia-aliased font support (like the anti-aliasing option in gv)
Ghostscript, by the way, already supports Truetype fonts as another type of software rasterised printable outline font- and very nice results they give too, for printing.
The funny thing is, amiga browsers have been doing this for years, the programmers didn't even realise it was a special feature.
And you old geezers probably miss Veronica, the Very Easy Rodent Oriented Network Information Chaser-After, or something like that.
Where do you find text porn? Any recommended sites? I hope they're WAP-enabled!
What about w3m?
>M$ may be evil, and they may make a slow, buggy, single-user OS, but
>they have a very good web browser.
You're right. Microsoft does have a very good web browser.
For the transmission of computer viruses and other such things.....
>I'd rather not download either of them.
>A site whose only options are a 30K flash or a 100K animated GIF is
>not a well-designed site.
Right on. I don't want to waste my time wading though this crap either. Reading the posts of people who actually defend the use of this nonsense [Flash] makes me wonder about the so-called thought process these people go through.....
It's even more funny when you realize that you've been moderated down, too.
If it's flamebait, where's the flames? Offtopic sure, but not flamebait.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I think articles are searched for the word "linux" in it, whether it's relevant to Linux or not, and boom, instant slashdot article. :)
Yeah man, the mouse is for pussies! Computers have been going down hill ever since the icon was invented.
Punch cards are the way to go if you ask me; it just gets you "closer" to the hardware. You gain a sense of oneness that you young whipper-snappers just haven't experienced.
Before they can port the thing, they'd have to choose one of the GUIs to port it to. They would never do this because that would instantly legitimize that GUI, there-by removing Linux' Achille's Heel: the lack of a standard GUI.
Linux will never go mainstream unless and until there is a standard GUI so Microsoft isn't going to waste it's time dealing with it.
You guys can dream on about how great Linux is, but people are using it through the UI, so in reality there a whole bunch of 'Linux' s out there. And so long as there is a percieved confusion you can forget about Microsoft bothering with it.
Besides, you guys all seems to enjoy the pain of using the things, so why not stick with it the way it is?
Talk about missing the blinding flash of light.
Listen buddy: wake up; it's the year 2000.
If you think computing is nothing more than reading a bunch of text, then perhaps you should pull your head out of your ass and get a clue.
All you Linux chumps are stuck in rather-push-a-Linux-than-drive-a-Microsoft land. You're so used to lack of functionality you're starting to view it a blessing rather than a curse.
So damn what if the word to graphic ratio is 1:30.
Let's NOT!
:-).
IE on its native platform (Win, of course) is slow, buggy, crashy, and annoying. Netscape4 may not be much better, but it at least supports CSS passably.
Why would we want to port the worst browser around to linux? This is entirely aside from the fact that (1) MS really REALLY won't want to support anything linux, and (2) they're an evil company
Bite the bullet and wait (and wait, and wait, and wait some more) for Mozilla, or for Opera. Honestly, if web browsing is that important, what difference does the underlying platform make? (other than philosophical ones)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Why isn't there more people out there working on these browsers? Think about it, the web is a HUGE part of the internet, and one that is fairly intertaining and usefull. Yet, there's a whole 5 browsers out there for linux? (well, 5 "working" ones) I mean, come on! Then again, there are only like, 3 browsers out there for windows. Don't think you can get much better than IE5 though. Except, need more advanced options.
I used a Solaris port of IE at one time and I was not terribly impressed. I don't think they would do a better job with the Linux port than with the solaris port.
..."snake".
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Huh? I look at any graphics I want to with Lynx. Check out ZGV.
Not everything:
* Table borders in Links give a very "dotted" impression, while they look fine in w3m.
* Links doesn't handle SSL, w3m does.
* Links doesn't seem to handle bookmarks or cookies, w3m and lynx do.
* w3m has mouse scroll support, Links doesn't.
* w3m handles frames, Links doesn't.
OTOH: Links (and lynx) does incremental loading. w3m doesn't.
I just downloaded the very latest version (v 0.82) and it seems that Links does indeed have cookie support now.
I guess I should also clarify that by "doesn't handle frames", I meant that it handles them lynx-style, instead of rendering them.
Anyway, get Links at http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mikulas/links/
or get w3m at http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/~aito/w3m/eng
or check out a quick text browser comparison at http://www.zinescene.org/home/browser.ht ml
PH-UX (Which is the expletive of choice for anyone trying to compile anything on those stupid boxes. It almost makes AIX look standard.)
I haven't read the paper in question yet, but I just wanted to note that, AFAICR, one of the enhancements in mozilla is a re-write of the network layer to explicitly take into account downloading from multiple browser windows, and giving the active browser window more of the pipe. I don't know if this is in current builds or not.
--
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
personally, I think that the mozilla engineers will succeed.
--
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
"Once running, this Netscape looks identical to the Windows versions. The menus and the preferences panel are the same. "
Well, not quite. Expecially at higher resolutions, I can never find the help menu on the Linux version. Oh yeah... there it is: about as far away from the other menus as it can be, hidden up there in the right corner where I least expect it.
I'm sure more regular Linux users don't have a problem with it, but I felt the urge to say something.
Does anybody know of the status of the Arachne browser? Arachne was excellent in DOS. A graphical browser that could run on a 286 with 1MB of RAM. I did it, with a (small-as-I-could-find) PPP packet driver. It used to crash quite often back then, but that was in its alpha stages. They were going to make one for Linux, although I read one time a suggestion to use Arachne in DOSEMU with dosnet. I never got that to work, though. I tried Arachne on a 486 with 8MB RAM that I acquired one time, and was almost shaking at how efficient it was on that old machine. Graphical browsing on a 286 just isn't comfortable, let me tell you :)
the real at&t mix
That is odd. For me W3M fired up emacs (actually my emacs wrapper) as set in $EDITOR. In the W3M config the editor is set to: [sensible-editor ] .
Thank you! I never really considered w3m before but tried it on your recomendation. I just installed W3M (apt-get install w3m) and it rocks! It displays Slashdot wonderfully. It uses my editer of choice to enter this comment. I probably won't use it for my day to day browseing, but I will be putting w3m on all my machines. Sometimes a text mode browser is exactly what I need. (like when trying to read those online docs when your hardware stops working.) All you Lynx users should atleast give w3m a try. At the very least it will show you what you have to add to the lynx codebase :-)
Eh. I don't know if low memory consumption was one of the primary design goals, but if so they haven't reached it yet. I've compiled my own with sources from 4 days ago and it's distressingly worse than Netscape in terms of memory use.
And that was with --enable-optimize and --disable-debug arguments passed to configure. I desperately want to see Mozilla succeed, and I've no doubt it will be a worthy rival to IE, but I'm not sure if it will be suitable for low-memory machines.
On the other hand, I remember reading about it being adopted for some low-cost "web appliances", which I have to assume won't be very memory-rich. So perhaps this is just pre-code optimization bloat. I sure hope so.
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
>Leave your hand on the mouse
:P
How do you type that way? That's gotta be slower.
Note, that I still prefer the mouse for web browsing, but a lot of time is in fact lost with moving the hand back and forth. You can't just leave your hand on the mouse unless you are just mindlessly clicking away.
/me notes that I reached to the mouse to post this...
I don't care if there are 5 million reasons why you think that IE is the greatest browser in the universe. It's not going to be ported to linux. Ever. Let me repeat that. No IE for linux. So what do you do about it? 1) ditch linux because you feel that unless you have IE, everything will suck 2) brainwash yourself into thinking that IE sucks even though you just gave 5 millions reasons why IE rules 3) help out the mozilla project to make sure that it's a better browser than IE. Submit bugs, run it all day until you have to send a talkback report, read up on it by visiting mozillazine or mozilla.org, read the newsgroups-anything...heck maybe even check out the source code or design a cool skin for it. Mozilla is open source and designed by people who know how the web works so that it doesn't screw up under bad html (99% of all websites :))
---
What network is this on?
--
Though there are other text mode browsers, w3m & emacs/w3 spring immediately to mind.
Bull.
IE on it's native platform (I used Win98) is flaming fast, about the same as netscape in the bugs department, and has full PNG suppport unlike netscape, which butchers the images or flings them off to an external viewer.
I hate to say it, but the Linux/netscape combination is less stable than IE and Win98.
M$ may be evil, and they may make a slow, buggy, single-user OS, but they have a very good web browser.
0 1 - just my two bits
Another browser is set to do to w3m what w3m did to lynx - it's called "links" and it's available on Freshmeat. Really you have to see it in action.
The only thing I miss in links is (a) http authentication (coming soon, I guess) and (b) w3m-like navigation.. but oh well, can't have it all..
--thi
As a Linux user it pains me to agree. IE is fast (being built into 98 helps), functional, pretty (with full screen access), and just better except in the ftp department. I used to love Netscape to death until I saw what IE 4 and 5 could do in the HTML department. IE has terrible FTP which takes time to load and has a clunky interface at best. I somewhat prefer Netscape's mail in comparison to Outlook Express. Its strait to the point and does the job well. We definately need help in the web browser department. Preferably something with truetype font support (if Enlightenment can do it netscape can do it), Webpage rendering, they should steal IE's ability to save the entire webpage intact, and they should chose a better gui tool kit (Netscape does'nt seem to fit in with my other X apps). Mozzilla looks exciting and I can't wait to make that my main browser. KDE is also doing a fantastic job. There are so many beautiful apps in Linux and it is saddens me to see us do so poorly in the HTML environment.
I tried "Konqueror" from KDE2's pre-release awhile ago. Although it's still a bit unstable, it's also not released yet and KDE has a reputation for releasing really stable stuff.
It's already loaded with features: CSS1, Java, Javascript, plugins, embeddability (in KDE apps, or other apps in the browser), progressive page rendering (and pages actually look right!), a working font dialog (darn you, Netscape), drag-and-drop, and it's also a file manager. Oh, and its FTP mode is the best I've seen in _any_ Linux software, hands down.
I hope to switch most of my browsing to it when KDE2 comes out.
I don't have a lot of confidence in Mozilla, which has been big, slow, and non-functional since day 1 despite endless promises that "the nightly builds are way better, just wait for milestone n+1."
Have fun
pretty much the same as lynxs..but with a few inhancements. its on Freshmeat
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
It's an example of one of the horrible multi-functional applications that do many things imperfectly.
:o)
Well, it is meant to be a replacement for MS Office
(Sorry, couldn't resist it!)
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Not to make this a flamewar or anything, but...
Links, my favorite text browser, does everything w3m and Lynx do, but better. Links supports background downloading, colors, and renders stuff (even slashdot) much better than I've seen either Lynx or w3m do.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
I'll have to second this. Links is an excellent text mode browser. I use it on Linux at work and on OS/2 on my home computer. Very fast and nice page formatting. There are some minor features that I miss from Lynx but the overall functionality makes up for them. I find myself using Netscape less and less.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I love Lynx as much as you do however... no frames and poor table hacks have made me use it less and less. I prefer w3m. It does almost everything better than Lynx. Also, if you'd like to see pictures, you don't have to save it and then view it again... you can just pipe it to svgalib plug.
I wish Lynx and w3m combined their forces and made a single, console based, browser.
--
GroundAndPound.com News and info for martial artists of all styles.
Ummm, try "Technology Preview." Translation: Pre-alpha.
And that's really what it is. It's not here yet, by a loooong shot.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Ummmm... NEXT!
Hate to break it to you, bud, but these particular functions happen to be open and well-documented.
I've used them myself on a couple of occasions to embed rudimentary browsing ability into some of my Windows Apps.
It's called the Microsoft Internet Transfer Control, it exists as both standard (DLL) and ActiveX (OCX) libraries and is well supported and documented.
Sorry, but you stuck out on that one. Learn what you're speaking about next time!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
My understanding is that a large part of the difference is that Mozilla is going for Java support (easily 1/2 a browser's capabilities) whereas Konqueror is not.
Also, in a more generic sense of the same issue, K is "farming out" a lot of its capabilities to bits of KDE that already do it (image rendering, for example), while Moz has to do everything "in-house," as it can make no assumptions about the system it is running on -- it may be on a barebones X with Gtk, for all the developers know.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It sounds appallingly difficult, also something absolutely essential. I read an article a while ago about a blind sysadmin which I assumed was a hoax - have you observed her using it? Hats off to the developers!
A concrete example of what I'm talking about is trying to display classical Greek fonts. There do indeed exist Adobe-encoded classical Greek fonts and I can install them, use them, good example being Ismnin.pfa. I can go to edit->pref->fonts and select the installed font which I've preview with xfontsel. Now, I go to a nice online database of classical greek texts with morphological analyses and links, the Perseus Project and look at some work by Aeschinus . They have the option of displaying actual, greek text using the Ismini font if one uses the "Change Greek display" button at the top of the page and select the Ismini font. Does it work on Linux? No.
It works on Macintosh damn well though.
These worthy people (it's a great project) point out that they can't support everything, and indeed they do support several different Netscape versions on WinXX and Mac and several different IE versions.
They claim in their Font Help section that there are fundamental problems with Netscape displaying different fonts.
Anyone have any take on this? At the very least it would discourage anyone trying to use current tools used in Classics from using Linux and Netscape. A damn shame.
I'm going to give it a shot right now. I've always been put off running Lynx to be honest just because I like the pretty pictures - is that a new planetary science icon? Also, for other sites do you find that you lose much contextual information...picture equivalent to a 1000 words blah blah etc?
Hmmm, you seemed so happy with it I decided to try it too... Pretty cool stuf indeed. I'm sticking with w3m in text mode too.... One slight minus is that it ignores $EDITOR, and starts vi for editing textfields... I'm typing this in vi now, and what to get back to my jed. If you're reading this,
Hmmm, that just saved... Well, I can try
The weirdness! I'm using w3m/beta-991015...
Normally, I don't reply to ACs, but this is an exceptionally well-written post for an AC, so I will address it.
Having to take your hand away from the keyboard, and all the way over to the mouse.
Again: Leave your hand on the mouse. Use one hand for keyboarding, and one for mousing, and you'll find your browsing experience is much improved. If you refuse to do that, well, don't complain when the hammer makes a lousy screw driver.
Having to physically move the mouse.
Turn up your acceleration. I can cover the entire screen area of my 1600x1200 pixel desktop with small wrist movements. You're not using the mouse correctly; no wonder you have trouble with it.
I'd like to see how long it would have taken you to write that post of yours if you'd had to click each letter on some onscreen keyboard with your beloved mouse.
You're big on this whole "using a screwdriver to hammer in nails" technique, aren't you?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
While I think your review is slightly(?!) terse, it does bring up an interesting idea...could we bug MS until we get a copy of IE for Linux?
;-) ), and Mozilla is still in the "getting there" stage. (I'm right now dloading Opera and going to try that in a few).
Honestly, while I love Linux to death, its ability to do web browsing is still somewhat restricted. NS 4.x has been probelmatic for most people I know, the only people I know who use lynx are masochists (j/k! calm dowm
Does anyone think that MS is even thinking of porting IE to Linux?
--------------------------
w3m does support vi-styled movement
w3m has gpm support (you can click on links). People who like to copy/paste strings may be annoyed by this, however.
In order to configure w3m, type 'o'. There's a place to specify your editor of choice in there (among other things).
"Printing" a document to a file to save it is so incredibly non-intuitive it's not even funny. It took me about 2-3 minutes of digging through help pages to figure out how to save a freakin' file.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm no Lynx-basher. It has its uses, that's for sure!
...if you ask no questions, beware of lies...
>The Hacker's Diet spreadsheets were originally
>developed in 1990 with Excel 2.1 on Microsoft
>Windows 3.1.
Wasn't Windows 3.1 released in March 1992? Talk about early-preview-releases...
Just for interests sake, one of the main features of the next version of Internet Explorer is it's (allegedly) vastly improved ftp support.
It seemed that IE4 had repartitioned the users hard disk
/. for 18 months now.
Oh, please. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I've been reading anti-Microsoft flamage on
You may not like IE, and that's fine, 'cause it's a free world; but for goodness sake, stick to the facts.
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
KDE's file manager, kwm, also is a fair web browser. It is missing some functions, like Java and Javascript, but on some sites with intrusive Java, I count that as a feature. ;-)
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
I usually have no less then four browser windows open at once. More then ten is not uncommon. (And, no, running multiple instances of Lynx in an xterm is not the same thing.)
I do the exact same thing at present, and I find it to be an unacceptable solution to the parallel browsing problem, because it's so resource hungry and such a pain to manage all those windows (not to mention that probably 1 out of 5 times I close one of my open windows in netscape, it closes ALL my open windows. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS!).
I was thinking about this problem one day, and I drafted an idea of software I think could help alleviate this problem. Check it out (my "whitepaper," if you will) at http://joshua.haberman.com/compute rs/ibiwnn.html I'd really appreciate input about it, would it help/be useful?
No matter how fast you move your arm, it takes at least an eighth of a second to move your hand to the mouse. In that time, you should be able to get at least ten keystrokes in.
At least 10 keystrokes in 1/8 of a second?
That's 80 keystrokes/second.
That's 4800 keystrokes/minute, or 600 WPM, assuming an average of 8 letters/word.
You've gotta tell me where you learned to touch type.
dive
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
>... Jeb ... or whatever his name is ... looks like Tux run over with a steam roller
Heh, lol. Duke it is. Ever noticed that he also looks just like HP's "Doctor Deskjet"?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Ok, so it still loads slow, but that's probably debugging stuff which is to be expected in alpha stuff.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
insist on describing standalone PNGs as "unknown or unsupported image format," and refuse to view them.
I found a way around this if you JUST want to view a PNG all its own in IE:
about: I think that's how it works. Basically, you can stick HTML after about:. enjoy
IE on its native platform (Win, of course) is slow, buggy, crashy, and annoying. Netscape4 may not be much better, but it at least supports CSS passably.
Funny, I've never had any problems with IE 4 or 5. You see, you just justified a version of IE for Linux. You said its slow,buggy and crashy on Windows. Personally I've only had IE crash only a few times(and one was from ThirdVoice). If one was to port IE over to Linux, woulnd't that make it better? Hell, it's avialable for the Mac Platform, so I wouldn't see MS saying no to it. They could proudly put their name on it, and everybody'd be happy.
Well, except for the Anti-MS zealots that would accuse them of finally putting the last nail in the coffin for Mozilla. oh well
thanks
Kent
The trouble with your argument is that if every desktop Linux user in the world stopped using IE completely, those hit rates wouldn't burp noticeably enough to make a difference. As long as Windows has 90%+ of the desktop share, they'll have the majority of browser hits as well.
The argument for open source should be that it works better. If it doesn't work better then public advocacy is sheer zealotry, and only zealots listen to zealotry. Outside the Microsoft Tax on new computers, I haven't purchased a product from them in years, so I personally agree with what you say to some extent. But it's a very ineffective strategy for converting the masses.
This is about freedom for me. That includes the freedom to use the most effective browser currently available, unless I *choose* to make a protest. I currently see that as being too ineffective to be worth the appreciable pain involved. I don't always. I've been boycotting proprietary compilers for years, and recently wrote an assembler for a TI chip because I wanted to be able to work under Linux, among other reasons.
"... and has full PNG support"
Nope, it has pretty mediocre PNG support, it's just that you've gotten so used to totally abysmal PNG support in most browsers that you think IE is doing a good job.
If you're lucky, and have the right version of IE (not the latest) then most PNGs will render to the baseline standard, which is a long way short of good, but better than nothing. You certainly won't see 32-bit RGBA images as you would hope, and you won't see proper support for OBJECT embedding a la HTML 4.0
If you're NOT lucky, for example if you have QuickTime, then your browser will render every PNG OBJECT with its own private scrollable frame (Huh???) and will insist on describing standalone PNGs as "unknown or unsupported image format," and refuse to view them.
The IE development team have shown no interest in fixing their implementation of HTML 4.0 to have more than a passing resemblance to the specification, and like most proprietary software vendors they've chosen to go it alone in implementing PNG, rather than using the excellent and freely available example source.
If this is the best Microsoft have to offer (and personally I think the NT kernel would fit that mark better) then it's a tribute to consumer stupidity that they're top dog in the marketplace.
Nick.
So, what you're saying is, IE has the best browser PNG support...
Actually, that prize goes to Acorn's imaginatively titled "Browse", with *full* tranparency support and seemingly full PNG support in general. Unfortunately, since Acorn died and went to heaven Browse is the property of Pace, who haven't seen fit to release it. Besides, it's only available on RISC OS, so would be useless to most people.
Browse, and possibly ANT's Fresco - I'm not sure, I haven't checked recently - are the only two browsers who support PNG correctly. Netscape renders inline PNGs to some extent, but doesn't display the images on their own for some bizarre reason.
How's Mozilla's PNG support?
I read the "whitepaper", and found it pretty interesting. I kind of like the idea of a cache that allows you to make a note of all of the links that you are interested in and have it load it while you do something else.
The only things I would add would be the ability to preferentially load one link over another. I'm not sure how easily this could be implemented, but I know that one problem I have with the "multitasking" method is that because I'm using up my pipe in multiple ways, I often am not able to get anything, so I just keep on opening new things until finally something loads. Which, of course, causes everything to download even slower.
As far as how you would display the links, I think something of the format of a tree control (like Windows Explorer) would probably work well. Mabye not the best thing, but certainly a potential. Alternatively you could continue with something like yours only allow someone to collapse a section. The idea being that all sub-links would be displayed, but they'd be connected to the previous parent with some sort of indication that there are 1 or more sections between them.
Also, as far as integrating into a web-browser, I know it can be done. I'm not positive on how to do it, but if you go to www.hotbar.com, it will add a menu bar into IE5 that makes all of the menu bars have "skin" on them. It's kind of fun, although I decided to turn mine off, I guess I was just used to a normal window.
Anyway, the point is, I'm sure there must be some way to integrate a new menu into IE. I realize that might not be what you're going for (it sounds more like you want to affect a Linux browser). But then again, Mozilla's source is open, so it might be easy to create somthing that would fit on the menu.
Just my two bucks. Email me if you're interested.
I second that. IE5, although it requires a lot of memory and is occasionally quirky, is faster, more up-to-date with standards, more stable, and provides a better browsing experience than Netscape 4 on any platform.
That said, I'm really looking forward to Mozilla - the daily builds are really starting to get good, and the skins support is pretty unique.
--
> Funny, I've never had any problems with IE 4 or 5.
You never had any problems with IE4?! I wish I could say that. I work for a civil engineering company with about 75 computers or so, and I've seen some really sh*tty software come and go in the last ten years, but I've got to tell you, for supremely sh*tty software, IE4 takes the prize. Not only was it a flaky program itself, but half the time when someone installed it on a Win9x or NT PC it booglarized that PC so damn bad that the only practical cure was fdisk. Don't get me started about that fscking "Active Desktop," also known as "Spastic Desktop." Not only did that evil IE4 screw up several machines in my office, when my daughter downloaded it and installed it on her PC it tangled it up so bad she couldn't even get the system to boot at all.
In contrast IE5 doesn't seem half bad. After my miserable experiences with IE4 I was afraid to touch IE5 with a ten foot pole. It didn't make me any more enthusiastic that in order to download it, you couldn't just go to ftp.microsoft.com and download one big fat file you could drop in a network directory or burn onto a CD, no-oo!
Instead to get IE5 you had to go through this preposterous rigamarole. First of all you wade through Microsoft's webpage haystack - using an earlier IE, I couldn't even get to the download page at all using Netscape. That's one Hell of a way to dissuade people from that (anti-)competitive upgrade, that is. Next you have to fill in a registration page (actually several pages, one after the other!) with roughly as much personal information as you'd expect to have to supply the FBI to get a top-secret clearance. Next, having plumped up MS's marketing database, you download a 5 or 6 MB downloader, which you then have to install (and reboot, of course.) Then you run the downloader, which brings over the IE installer itself, another download of many tens of megabytes. Then you run the IE installer (guess what! another reboot).
Now, finally, you can run IE5, but by this time you've as probably as not been transformed by this experience into an embittered Luddite whose only interest in the Internet might be to search for bomb-making formulas. And suppose you want to install IE5 on two machines? Why, simply go through all that crap twice.
But then I bought Adaptec Easy-CD Creator v.4, which comes with IE5 on the CD. In fact, if you want to run Easy-CD Creator, you have to install IE5 (I think). So I crossed my fingers and installed it, and to my surprise and relief, IE5 seems to work reasonably well, quite nicely really, and more importantly, it didn't break half the other software on my system like installing IE4 did.
I did have one entertaining experience with IE5, though. A while back I wanted to look at Microsoft's advertising pages for Windows 2000 Server, so I could see what this "Active Directory" business was all about. So I fired up IE5 and waded in. When I got to this one ad page, IE5 told me I was supposed to download some kind of Dynamic HTML add-in so it could render the page. Well, I did that, and I even rebooted the PC after I installed the plug-in, but when I went back to MS's web site to read the page, IE5 promptly (and repeatedly) crashed all over the place. I laughed my ass off!
Jeez, MS! I can dig the part about "eating your own dog food," but don't you think you could try out your flaky new HTML extensions somewhere else besides on the pages where you're trying to sell your corporate customers the latest version of your flagship product? I bet your marketing people would appreciate that.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I think it's funny that /. points to a review that concludes that Netscape 4.7 is the best of the bunch, when the most reliable way I've found to crash Netscape 4.7 is to point it at http://slashdot.org. Something about the /. site just blows that sucker away. Then load the same page later and it loads just fine. Not just the front page, either. I run Netscape 4.61 just to cut down on the crashes, but when I hit the -REPLY- button to write this message the first time, Netscape traded itself in on a 10Mb core file.
/. that crashes Netscape, anyway?
What the heck is it about
but of what version?
IE on its native platform (Win, of course) is slow, buggy, crashy, and annoying. Netscape4 may not be much better, but it at least supports CSS passably.
Oh please. Both IE 4/5 work great and render pages fast. The programmers who made it did a pretty good job, why do you assume that they wouldn't do just as good a job porting it to linux?
Hey Netscape/AOL! Yes, that's right. Some of us Linux users have something other than an Intel box. I use Linux on my Sparcstation at work, and on a DEC Alphastation. So, how about releasing binaries for them? Otherwise, don't claim you support Linux when all you support is x86 Linux.
BTW, I have complained to the Netscape X11 group about this via e-mail. If you use something other than x86 Linux, how about sending them a e-mail?
Why you think anything IE does is part of secret APIs? Is this just some FUD you've learnt at college or something? Cause I can tell you, there's NOTHING IE does that I can see that requires the use of APIs that doesn't exist. Windows is very modular, so you can do just about anything, including kernel (ring 0) stuff, so all your crap about 'hidden apis' is exactly that, crap. Windows gives you all the GDI, DirectX and winsock functions - everything you need to make a web browser. If you would care to prove that IE5 uses some secret API like MakeEverythingFasterThanNetscapeEx() then I'd love to see it. Netscape is slower cause it's simply not well written, the fact that Mozilla is considerably faster than netscape (but not quite as fast as IE5) proves that.
IE5 uses a lot more memory? Eh?
:).
I've noticed IE5 usually uses around 6MB even when viewing large pages, that's compared to Netscape's 12MB and Hotjava's 40MB
LOL
IE is not repartioning harddisks?
I suppose you're going to tell me that IE5 also set your house on fire and told your girl friend that you wanted to break up with her?
If Netscape was allowed to preload most of it's code with the GUI/OS you'd see a huge speed increase
Firstly, what's stopping them from this special 'preloading' you're talking about?
Why do so many people think that just cause windows uses internet explorer rather than explorer as a shell, that automatically means microsoft have somehow integrated IE5 into the windows kernel (not that Netscape couldn't do that either with VXDs).
Netscape runs in it's own process, by preloading i'm assuming you mean caching DLLs so they get injected into netscape.exe faster - but that would only improve load time.
Once netscape is loaded, what's the excuse for it be slower?
It renders pages slowly, and everytime you resize the window, it has to repaginate the entire page all over again! And most of the time it does this off the server again!
I have never seen IE4 ask for large disk support.
And what you're saying is like a linux distro asking, hey do you want to fdisk your disk.
Anyway, show me any proof IE4 comes with FAT32 convertors...I'd like to see that.
And IE5? You can _uninstall_ that, it doesn't even come with shell extensions.
iCab also has full PNG support. It's a very good browser, if you use a Mac:)
Sorry, by "You know, when the first books came out, they had only words in them", I assumed that you meant books that came out of a post-Gutenberg printing press, since books before that sort of just stayed in the monastery; didn't really come out in the sense of being available for mass consumption.
Daniel J. Peng
Daniel J. Peng
Yes, if an animated GIF or a shockwave plugin explains a concept better than text or expresses an idea with more clarity than text, then it makes sense to use such a representation to convey the information. The best way to get a message across is the one that should be used.
On the other hand, a Flash animation that just scrolls text in front of my face at some predefined rate is more than just useless; it also makes me sit there and wait for all the text to flash across. Take splash pages for another instance; of all the splash pages that you've seen, how many actually serve any useful purpose? Also, if an HTML layout is essentially one big graphic, then my attention is more likely to be drawn to the "pretty pictures," rather than the message that the page is trying to get across. Pictures, illustrations, animations, etc. are fine, so long as they serve a purpose (preferably mine ;-).
In the 15th century, when illustrations were first placed into books, to take an image and put it in a book involved making a woodcut or an engraving -- a nontrivial amount of work, not one that would be undertaken simply to make a book "more enticing." I find it more likely that illustrations would be published with a purpose: maps, art, etc. If it did "nothing to enhance the story," I doubt that that publishers would have gone to so much trouble. Daniel J. Peng
Daniel J. Peng
Not at all. IE actually does render pages faster. Try loading pages over a slow connection - IE is capable of displaying and then dynamically redrawing pages as more information about the page is available (e.g. image sizes). Mozilla should be able to do this as well.
I know, I know, I should just have nuked LYM, but I got kind of scared to modify anything on NT because a) it takes all day to figure out how to do it and b) you usually break something else.
Anyway, Hot Java was interesting. My 350 Mhz PII took about three minutes to launch it. Then, I looked at a page that was supposed to be specially intended for HotJava. It said something like "if you're looking at this with a lesser browser, you won't see Little Jeb (or whatever his name is--the guy that looks like Tux run over with a steam roller) waving."
Needless to say, li'l Jeb was stationary. I decided I didn't want to have to get a four-processor PIII box just to browse the web, so I nuked it. Too bad, I kind of like programming in Java.....
It's simply amazing what incompetent users can accomplish when running a fairly well laid-out installation program.
You should post that anecdote to alt.folklore.urban.
Nope, it has pretty mediocre PNG support, it's just that you've gotten so used to totally abysmal PNG support in most browsers that you think IE is doing a good job.
So, what you're saying is, IE has the best browser PNG support...
If you're NOT lucky, for example if you have QuickTime, then your browser will render every PNG OBJECT with its own private scrollable frame (Huh???) and will insist on describing standalone PNGs as "unknown or unsupported image format," and refuse to view them.
Who's fault is that? Microsoft's? Why is it every time that I've installed a Windows version of Quicktime, it's broken something? Someone call the DOJ...
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
give it a spin.
The other special use for Lynx is in those situations where you've got shell access to a remote machine, and you need a file available via a web server somewhere on the Internet. Rather than downloading it to your local machine only to upload it again to the remote machine, simply use Lynx to download the file directly to the remote machine in one easy step.
You don't need lynx for this. The author seems to forget you can run netscape/opera (whatever X broswer you want) on the remote machine but have it display on the local one. That's the whole point of X! He would have to set some environment variable or something but it would definitely work
When he hits File/Save he would see the remote filesystem he is trying to save to.
I know it could, but i was just pointing out that he seemed to think X based progs always had to run locally.
I should have made my point clearer.
You had a point about Netscape not always been installed.
I really like links too, it just rocks, but can you explain what exactly is w3m-like navigation? (haven't used w3m much, i didn't like it at all, at least not after trying links also).
It seemed that IE4 had repartitioned the users hard disk...
Does someone keep an archive of stupid comments by uninformed people? This one belongs near the top.
The scary part is that this statement came from someone doing diagnosis!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
all reviewed browser is GUI on linux
whay hotjava excluded ,
I've test it, and look OK
but anyway it has lack of function supported\such as css
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
They're talking about it on http://www.tgwbp.addr.com/cgi-bin/wwwboard.cgi Supposed to be bigger than Nutscrape.
billg: the moment I find a way to telnet in as root, I start coding on IE4 for Linux
Lynx is still my favorite though....on Linux
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
I had to diagnose and fix a hosed IE4 install. It seemed that IE4 had repartitioned the users hard disk, and crashed in the middle of it, leaving 2 non-dos partitions that were unreadable, and unrecoverable. Fuck IE. With trojans like that, imagine what it would do to a linux system.
Lars -
Actually if you investigated the history of IE and how Micros~1 hides product updates inside other less attractive software packages, you would realize exactly what I'm describing. If you had a version of Windows 95 4.00.950 or 4.00.950a, it did not support FAT32. If you installed IE4 on it, it asked if you wanted large drive support. Hell yes most people said. This is where they beta tested thier FAT16-FAT32 converter, way back then. It is this botched install that created the destroyed partitions. LOL IE4 repartitioning hard disks? YES.
As for burning down the house, well I may set your house on fire in order to get that filthy IE5 out of your system.
Lars -
OK, maybe I'm blessed or something, but Netscape in Linux almost NEVER crashes for me. Really! I leave it running for weeks at a time, no problem. Same thing with Mozilla. I'm not sure what everyone else is doing to crash their browsers so much...
/., anandtech, tomshardware, the Register, and a bunch of other random sites (GameFAQs, if I'm working on a PSX game at the moment :)
I usually visit
This is puzzling to me, though.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Lynx:
Upside - very stable, tens of pretty colors to look at. you can use it in any term
Downside - text based only, that pr0n pic of Chloe Jones you downloaded doesn't look very good represented in ascii.
Netscape:
Upside - mouse and/or keyboard use. Communicator provides a decent mail client for p*ssies who can't figure out how to configure fetchmail with pine. And those pr0n pics of Chloe look OUTSTANDING!!!
Downside - it's buggy as hell. crashes quite a bit.
Conclusion? - Which is better, snowboarding or skiing?? NEITHER (read: preference)!!!!
BTW - if i hear one more hammer/screwdriver allusion, i'm going to go f*cking postal! -FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
IE on its native platform (Win, of course) is slow, buggy, crashy, and annoying.
IE on Windows is faster than Netscape on Windows. Netscape on my Linux-based system is as fast as IE on Windows. How fast would this make a native IE for Linux?
Why would we want to port the worst browser around to linux?
Worst browser around: To each his own.
Why port: Because it'd be really easy, considering it already runs on Solaris and H[ockey]P-UX.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Lynx would keep us out of tables- and frames-based sites (the vast majority of the commercial WWW). Try w3m instead; you can find it at freshmeat.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nonsense. Im running Win98 Lite on my windoze box and IE4 is still faster than Netscape 4.5. Ive had far fewer problems with IE crashing than Netscape. Integration has nothing to do with it. For the record however, Ive found that Opera is the fastest of the three. And Ive never had Opera crash... Im dying to see a decent graphical browser on Linux. And one that will do Java for chrisakes. Netscape runs for the hills as soon as it gets a whiff of Java running on my Linux box. Im hoping that Opera on Linux will fill the need, and Im definately looking forward to Mozilla being usable full time.
Yes and no. The images on a proper web site are supposed to be extra information, and not relied on for presentation, but you'd be amazed how many "bad" websites there are.
Sigmenation fault.
There are only two decent JVMs from a speed perspective: Microsoft's and IBM's. Microsofts is obviously out of the quesiton in terms of usability for running a Java browser on Linux. IBM's is hobbled by the fact that its still living in the Java 1.x world.
Java is a great language, but you can't overlook the speed issues it still has as a client-side platform.
Neoplanet is basically a browser shell that uses the IE rendering engine (a newer version can be made to use a Gecko renderer beta too I believe), and on top of it adds its own UI with support for skins and other neat features.
actually, the opera people are working on a text only browser. the betas look really, really, cool. it does frames and all kinds of things lynx can't do.
A browser for most people has gotten to be a commodity. When browsers just had to support html they were pretty easy to write. Now that you have browsers handling all kinds of content in addition to html you end up with a mess. The other problem is that the standards are always being upgraded. Do you write for java 1.0 or java 2.0 standards? Do you find a way to handle all of the sound and video formats that currently exist? Do you try to handle active (cough) X ? This makes it less likely that the kids who code for fun are going to do to much for it. I also noted that the Java browser was not mentioned and if you have a JVM for your OS why should you not be able to run a Java coded browser?
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
I agree that graphical browsing, like TV, is great, but only because other people may like them. You have got a good theory there, but the practice so far stinks. (Wasn't TV supposed to be great, too?)
Personally, I'll stick to a text-mode browser (that is capable of displaying images on demand, BTW) for the same reason that I'll avoid the boob tube--I want the steak not the sizzle.
Furthermore, if not for my T1 connection I would have time to go and get myself a cup-of-coffee before my the plug-in loads.
Plug-ins are the main force behind web slowing because valuable bandwidth is wasted on seeing cartoon characters jump up and down on your screen, and playing yankee doodle midi file.
Look thi, graphical browsers are here to stay, whether you like them or not.
I should add that like other lynx advocates, your website is about as attactive as old pair of mens briefs. If you think the future of the web will look like your website, you cannot be more wrong.
I think it is best for linux if lynx is not mentioned as a possible browser that can compete with other browsers, especially IE.
I guess the only way to really prove the first two points is to measure performance in some way, but it is hard to find anyone that thinks IE is less stable than Netscape. The last point is not debatable see... http://webreview.com/pub/guides/style/style.html The discussion is about CSS1, IE's compliance far exceeds netscape's. Both browsers have good HTML 4 support. XML support does not exist in Netscape, and is brain-damaged in IE.
I agree that porting IE to linux is a pointless thing to wish for, but what do you really mean when you say that IE is "worse" than netscape?
> Note: Unicode is not just useful in foreign languages. Some punctuation
> signs like the ellipsis, or, as I mentioned above, the em-dash and the
> quotes, are to be found in Unicode. As a matter of fact, Unicode is more
> useful for English than for French,
As a developer in the online publishing business, I have to say I ache for
the day we can assume that all browsers understand and display Unicode.
One of the first projects I had at my current job was to render as GIFs
all the various symbols used in scientific articles (medical, biomedical,
and other sciences). It was a major pain, and while the results are
not bad, I'm told it's still a bit of a problem to position the images
properly in relation to the other characters. Unicode would solve this.
I hope that one of the developments with graphical browsers will be
Unicode support! I'm a fan of Plan 9, and sometimes wish Linux had the
same Unicode abilities!
Jim
A valid consideration indeed, and one that I had not personnally seen. IE, while produced by a monopolistic, overgrown boar, is still a viable solution for surfers.
Netscape has always been my second favorite.
If I was rating a browser on historic impact on the internet, or corporate appeal, or simple usability, Netscape would indeed get my vote.
Unfortunately however I tend to follow the leader for impact and rendering ability. Yes, IE is soft, and almost any newbie hack's html will pass through it. That alone is part of the reason I use it. I can see everything, well coded or not. Don't take that to mean that I code for IE. Not on your life. I learned long ago from Element5 not to code for IE, as your mistakes are only apparent to NS users, but as a surfer, IE ensures that I can at least see the content through the crap...
// Hunter, Angler, Photographer, Dad. (In no particular order.)
I would have to agree that it seems that IE5 is faster than Netscape under Win but I suspect this has something to do with it's "integration" with the OS. I suspect that if Netscape had access to the sort of integration that the Microsoft people do to their own OS then it would be just as fast.
Perhaps my anticorporate paranoia is running away with me here, but doesn't it seem like major news outlets like CNN, NASA, foxnews, etc. are driving the need for plugins?
For instance, why do I need a shockwave plugin when the sorts of lame graphics we see could have easily been done with an animated GIF? Why would someone produce a video clip that could ONLY be viewed with the latest shockwave or quicktime when it is clear that the same video clip could be viewed in a format readable by all shockwave or quicktime plugins? Why are some sites giving you a "slideshow", which is nothing more than a few pictures displayed sequentially, using javascript and special plugins? Couldn't this more easily be done using a standard link to a page with a few
I personally believe there are two reasons:
1) Incentives offered by the plugin companies to use their "latest".
2) Stupid pointy haired bosses (PHBs) who demand the "latest" software.
If this is really going on as I believe, it's wasting bandwidth and complicating the development of the web by making things inconvenient for the casual user with a slow connection.
Shouldn't there be some sort of guidelines for web sites and producers of plugins on backward compatability with previous versions of plugins? At least that way once you get a Linux plugin to work, programmers who are donating their time for a Linux port wouldn't have to hit such a moving target.
no i don't use that. but i am really waiting to have that... this sounds really cewl... because lynx is not a very good "Grapix" browser. i definitle need this... with frames and everything ... just in a console.. Linux is really getting the future in our community
On the contrary, I find Netscape a joy to use, although I have been using a lot of w3m recently. As an alternative, if you're not interested in fanciful plug-ins and java then try the built-in browser which comes with KDE. I have friends who swear by it. Some have mentioned that it is much, much faster than Netscape. Internet Explorer on Linux would be a nightmare to use. I've tried it previously on a Solaris machine and it's painfully slow. Microsoft's inexperience at producing an X application is showing, and worst the product introduces bloatware into un*x. Microsoft should stick to writing WinDOS products.
If you want a feature-obsessed culture, you know where you can get it. And you know what problems come along with it. Java is a big deal. Rendering all pages readably is a big deal. Mayby plugins matter, too. But none of this is as important as a browser that doesn't crash and can view the simplest pages in a readable way.
Netscape is legendary, on all platforms but especially on Linux, for crashing, for freezing sometimes just briefly but obnoxiously and others for several minutes, and for displaying text in an unreadable 4pt font that's locked down becuase their font size dialog box is broken. I don't care if I'm reading ACM articles or Slashdot or porn--problems like this make a browser simply unuseable. My technophobic neighbors stop by on occasion and ask to use ``the Internet,'' and literally half the time they end up writing these four-page-long gushing letters to their girlfriend in Hotmail, and Netscape bunges it up, crashes, and loses their email. I find myself using Lynx (and now w3m) not because my machine is too slow, but because it doesn't crash and the text in an xterm is big enough to read. Frankly I think that's exactly why a lot of people use Lynx. This is an absurd situation, and the review all but ignores it.
I'd like to see a review that dealt more with stability than rendering quality in obscure situations.
I love the Web. I hate the Web. I love information, interactivity, communication. I hate banner ads, slow loads, and animated gifs. I've conquered most of these with three tools which work under Linux/xBSD and even legacy OSs:
I feel like my browser is mine again. Or, as the ads say: the Web is once again your friend.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Crossreferencing is far more important to the spread of the web than graphics, IMHO. With crossreferencing, adding something to the web increases the value of all the web, not just your site. Instead of the web being just someplace where you can put content to make it public, the web is a whole system. That, and the web came to be around the time when people started to be able to access it in large numbers.
Graphics aren't unimportant, but they weren't even much of an option when gopher was around, and they weren't very exciting when the web was starting either.
The Solaris and HP/UX versions of IE all suck rocks.
If you want to use IE under Linux, I've managed to run IE 3.0 for 16-bit Windows under Wine (the colors are fixed now, yay!). I can't manage to install IE 4.0 or 5.0 yet--they seem to require a network install.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You should give w3m a shot as well. lynx is nice -- I used it for a while -- but w3m, combined with low available resources, knocked Netscape out of the picture on my computer. It renders tables and frames exactly as they'd appear in a graphical browser (except, of course, that the pictures aren't present), makes it easy to view an inline image, and supports mousing in an xterm. I'm sure it does more that I'm not thinking of :)
The only real problem with w3m is that it's sometimes unstable and/or has odd/inconsistent responses..mainly due to the fact that it's still in development. But most of these are minor annoyances (for example, the context menu is entirely broken) and don't interfere with browsing.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
IHMO, what's most shocking to me is the high demand for Browser Plugins, and the obscurity and difficulty of getting them working with Linux Browsers.
Oh no! Here we go... you can't mention Vi without [X]Emacs. It too can browse the web!
This is the kind of crap that I hate seeing. People say, "The web was only meant for text," and "Graphics suck, they make the web slow." You know, when the first books came out, they had only words in them, no pictures (unless you count the letters as pictures). But then discovered that you could put images in books as well, too, and even though it cost more and took more time to print, the did it. Why did they do it? Because graphically it was more enticing. Sometimes it does absolutely nothing to enhance the story, but sometimes, they're very beneficial.
Slashdot readers talk, on one hand, about e-commerce and how it's revolutionizing our lives and how it'll be great when we have this perfect 'Netcentric society. On the other hand, they, they say, "Woe is me, the 'Net's changed so much since I was using back in the day!" Why do companies put graphics on their web page? Because it helps to make the web site more appealing graphically. Most Companies are defined by their corporate image. That's a visual representation. Microsoft in text and Microsoft in logo are two very different things. I would hate to go to a web site of a company that I use and not see their logo, because as a consumer, it's comforting to know that I have the right site, and that image confirms that. I'd hate to go to a friend's web site and read about how great his trip to Spain was and not be able to immediately pull up the images he's talking about. I can do that because of the power of graphics. I miss out on something when I use w3m or similar text-based graphics. A picture is worth a 1000 words, and who knows how many a moving picture can be.
If a Shockwave plugin means I get a presentation explaining a something to me in less bits than a similar animated GIF, great. If an animation shows me what the product looks like more clearly, that's great, too. If someone decides to simply scan their brochue and upload it, then yes, that sucks. But do not look down on Shockwave and GIFs and similar changes in the way that the Web is used. It's revolutionizing the world, and I for one am glad that people are making it at least a little nicer to look at.
Except for this guy. That's just awful, both in terms of images and in terms of text.
What would be great is to have IE's rendering engine ported to Linux in an efficient manner. I suspect that this will all be irrelevant when the new Gecko engine is finalized. Basically, I use my Windows machine to browse the web, and the reason is solely because IE5 has a very speedy rendering engine and pretty solid support for upcoming CSS1/p/2 HTML4.0 standards. Yes, they've added in their own tags and they do support deprecated information, but that's in addition to standards support.
I can do without the extra infringement on my OS and the tendency for it to crash after rebooting from Windows Update.
I use w3m and emacs/w3 everyday at work(e/w3 for at least 5 yrs). I am really impressed with w3m. IMHO, it blows lynx out of the water. While emacs/w3 is slower, I spend most of my time in emacs, so the integration is nice and I have been able to configure it to work with my company's proxy. I've tried to get w3m to work, and for some reason it doesn't.
I also believe that emacs/w3 will display images with XEmacs, but I'm not sure if it does with GNU Emacs. William Perry has done a great job!
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I believe that Opera is going to release a text based web browser for linux. sounds cool nice table and frame layout supposedly. anyone use it yet?
Of course it has! The browser, Links is an amazing text-based piece of work. It supports frames, tables, the mouse through gdm, looks and performs well. It even has pull-down menus that hide when not in use. Helper applications are supported for viewing graphics or even Realaudio. What more could you need?
I'd rather not download either of them.
A site whose only options are a 30K flash or a 100K animated GIF is not a well-designed site.
________________________________
Oddly enough there hasn't arrisen (or at least to my knowledge) any other text-based browser to rival Lynx. While this may seem trivial the very nature of Lynx is often one of it's greatest assets. It can be easily used from public terminals by connecting into your box so you can use your own settings and bookmarks. It runs much faster than any of the graphical broswers. Most importantly it's often an excellent resource when you've gotten your modem or nework card up and running under linux, but still are having trouble getting X going. If a text-based rival to Lynx was to come out the functionality of the text-based browser market could only improve making these tools almost equal to graphical browsers for everyday surfing.
Although, Linux by far is my favorite OS, and KDE is my favorite Window Manager (Of any OS). However, there is no good REAL WORLD graphical browser for Linux. Ya, Lynx is the best in text, and the best of any browser, but many pages will reject text only browsers. Netscape sucks. On my end, the Java is still slow, crash prone, and does not work right half the time. Opera for Win32 is nice. Its fast and does everything the other do, but its not out for Linux yet. IE is good, but it does not work in Linux. Modzilla looks good, but still is beta (Does the Java work?). Everything else does not hold up, not even the KDE built in one (No Java).
What Linux needs is a real browser. Right now it looks likes Modzilla and Opera are the two up and coming browsers. I wish IE would be ported, but that ain't never going to happen.
Linux O Muerte!
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
There should be a stable Mozilla within a few (~2-3) months. There should be a branded Netscape based upon Mozilla within about the same time frame. This is my opinion, judging from the Mozilla chatter on #mozilla and on the news.mozilla.org newsgroups. YMMV.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I use Netscape 4.7 on Linux with no problems.
The load is faster than Netscape on Windoze. The crashing problems I had were with the glibc version, which appears to be really buggy (perhaps a problem with threads?)
Switching to the libc5 version cleared up a lot.
(I have Caldera 2.2, which uses glibc 2.1)
Incidentally I'm posting from Mozilla M12. Its come a long way, but still has a long way to go. Perhaps there will be a stable version by the end of the year (guessing, don't really know)
My journal has hot
Well, I'm trying /. in Lynx now and it seems OK. It's a little less intuitive than the graphical version, but still fine.
I've several blind friends who prefer IE over any other web browser, including Lynx. A speech program like "Jaws" works quite well with IE. Besides images, the hardest things are frames and forms. Navigating frames is quite difficult in Lynx, but much less in IE. And while forms remain difficult, they suck less in IE then on another browser.
-- Abigail
Me: Leave your hand on the mouse
/me notes that I reached to the mouse to post this...
:)
You: How do you type that way? That's gotta be slower.
Sure. But you see, most of my browsing isn't typing. I'm in input mode, sucking up information from the web. For the occasional keystroke during browsing, one-handed typing is just fine.
Sure. But that isn't browsing. That's entering a comment. When I switch tasks from browsing to typing, I put both hands back on the keyboard. Isn't that hard. The occasional task switch from mouse to keyboard and back again isn't significant, compared to the benefits you get from browsing with the mouse.
Of course, I really would prefer to have three arms, but until cyberbioengineering gets a lot more advanced, I'll have to live with it this way.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I do the exact same thing at present, and I find it to be an unacceptable solution to the parallel browsing problem, because it's so resource hungry and such a pain to manage all those windows (not to mention that probably 1 out of 5 times I close one of my open windows in netscape, it closes ALL my open windows. THIS DRIVES ME NUTS!).
/etc/X11/fs/config should include all of the following:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi,
Here are a few tips I have for Linux+Netscape users who have these problems:
* Download Netscape Navigator only -- not Communicator. The extra functions of Composer and Messenger appear to significantly decrease stability. I'm not saying I never have a crash, but it happens pretty infrequently. The Navigator-only version also has a smaller memory footprint.
* Close windows with the "File -> Close" menu command or the [ALT]+[W] keystroke combination. For some reason, using the standard window frame decoration "Close" icon seems to be more likely to cause a crash.
* If you are using Red Hat, make sure your fonts are sane. Your font catalogue in
Make sure you have the appropriate RPM packages installed, that your font server is running, and that your XFree FontPath is pointed at your font server. This smoothes out some things, especially Java.
* Consider disabling the Java Virtual Machine (not JavaScript (well, you can disable it if you want to, but you don't have to)). Netscape's JVM still has trouble.
I agree that you shouldn't have to do this, but doing so has significantly improved stability for me. As the subject line suggests, it functions as a stopgap measure until a better Linux browser is available.
(BTW: I read your white paper. I've seen pre-caching software available for MS Windows. It isn't as smart as your system, but it is there. You might be able to coax something like a caching proxy server into doing what you want. Run HTTP through your proxy. Write a small program to accept a Netscape link via DND, and tell the proxy to fetch it ahead of time. Klunky, but it might work.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I am sorry. I know how much our community is depending on Mozilla succeeding but can anyone verify that Mozilla is using 30+ megabytes of debugging code?
The more I hear this the more shallow it seems. I mean what use is debugging code when the debugging code is that intrusive in the program? Alpha or not, most software starts small then increases as features are added. Or is my impression wrong and software is bloated shortly after development begins and then gets trimmed of 20% by beta?
I would really like someone to verify that Mozilla is as bloated as it has been because of the debugging code. I would also ask why would that much debugging code be needed?
**Or is Mozilla very large and resource hungary without debugging code as well.**
I am sorry but I have many doubts. I really hope I am wrong. But I fear there is less substance in the "debugging code" scapegoat than a hopeful myth.
Please someone put me in the know.
That's right, mixing up layout and structure has caused quite a mess.
;-)) start rethinking their appoach. There is a chance with WAP and all kinds of hand-held devices that we will see content providers storing their stuff as XML and creating several versions from it - HTML with fancy graphics, text-only HTML, WML for your cell phone, etc. Not necessarily because it is the _right_ approach (from a W3C point of view), but because it is the easiest solution for them in the long run.
I hope website designers (at least of those sites that I care about
lynx has this big advantage, also, that it can make something sensible out of Unicode. Netscape is just fscking worthless in this respect: it doesn't even understand — (the em-dash character). Unfortunately, I use — regularly in my web documents (no bugware!), so they're about unreadable with Netscape. Same for “ (the English-style open quotes) and so on (though I tend to compromise and use `` instead of “ or possibly the French double quotes ).
lynx run in an xterm with wide chars enabled and a fixed-width Unicode font is so far the best solution I've found to viewing Unicode characters correctly.
(Note: Unicode is not just useful in foreign languages. Some punctuation signs like the ellipsis, or, as I mentioned above, the em-dash and the quotes, are to be found in Unicode. As a matter of fact, Unicode is more useful for English than for French, because nearly all the French characters are in ISO-8859-1, and the French-style quotes are there, whereas the English-style quotes are far away in Unicode tables.)
lynx has its irritating features, though. It can't render tables, and that's a pain. w3m at least does that correctly. Also, lynx displays <i> as underline: that's stupid, <i> is italics, not emphasis (emphasis is <em>), and if it can't do italics, it should do nothing and ignore the tag. And it doesn't understand <dfn> (now that should probably be underlined).
And lynx completely ignores CSS. Agreed, in text mode, there isn't much you can get from CSS, but at least the margin definitions wouldn't be too hard to implement, and that would be useful.
There is lynx, sure, but there is w3m, and there is..ther is..elvis! Yes, elvis, the hyper-improved-and-two-million-features-added-vers ion-of-vi browses html files instead of editing them! And you can always pipe your graphics through with zgv if you have SVGALib (which some people seem to dislike *shrug*)...and oh i almost for got... :)
/
:); }return(0);}
don't you use telnet to browse the web?
$ telnet some.host.com 80
GET
HTTP 1.1 [you know the rest]
...
$
And heck! The telnet-way of browsing is the easiest of all to install! its in netbase!
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Does this mean we have to revise the old aphorism
"Every program written at MIT expands until it can read email"
to
"Every program written at MIT expands until it can browse the Web"
???
s/MIT/GNU/g if you like.
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
I have a friend who said that until she discovered W3 and Emacspeak the Web was closed to her. While it is true that the blind are a niche market, there is an environment out there that does give them access to the Internet, and it is only available because of free software!
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
That's your experience versus my experience. I've found quite bit of Director based content in my time. For example, Adam Sandler released a Director based movie called "The Peeper", which I qute enjoyed. There were quite a few amusing little Director games on mediadome when it was still around.
The whole thing is a matter of YYMV, though. My original point wasn't that these things are necessary for everyone, but the lack of plugins does make surfing under linux not as good as under Win32. In an age where more and more applications are being moved onto web servers, a factor in OS domination will be the Web browsing experience.
As an aside, this is why reviews like this one are important to linux. It tells people that linux has decent browsers. After a win32 person reads such a review, they may say to themselves "Hey, all I really do is web surf on my computer, maybe I should try out linux as my OS".
As for not being part of the standard, the HTML 4 loose DTD has object as part of the standard. Thus embedding objects is part of the standard. Shunning a site because they embed a Director movie is like shunning a site because they link to a PDF.
-no broken link
Last i checked alot of plugins speed up web browsing. Would you rather load a 100K animated GIF or a 30K Flash object? Sure the first time download is alot for the flash plugin, however it does let you save _alot_ of bandwidth in the long run if sites use it right.
Shit. Moderated down, because I posted something unpopular. *sigh*
"Linux will never be the most popular desktop OS until it has the best browser."
I personally don't think Linux stands much more than a snowball's chance in hell at becoming the most popular desktop OS (in anything resembling its present form), but your point is well taken. Browsing The Web has been the biggest source of computer sales ever, and Linux is without a decent browser. All I was suggesting is that (a) IE is worse than Netscape (which it definitely is, in my experience), (b) MS isn't likely to port it, and (c) in the time it would take to do so, Mozilla and Opera will both be available.
So yeah, the browser situation for linux sucks, but porting IE isn't going to help anything.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
OK, since you asked, the least I can do is answer.
1) On any computer I've used IE on (usually NT-based, I'll admit) the browser has frozen up for 10 seconds to two minutes at a time. Worse, it locks up the ENTIRE COMPUTER! Netscape has never done that to me.
2) Netscape crashes far less for me than IE. This seems to be a case of, 'your mileage may vary.'
3) Fonts? I don't have any problems with fonts. They look the same in both browsers.
4) IE5 may have finally started following some standards. IE4, in its day, was the single worst browser available for the W3C and CSS standards. Regardless, the latest version of both are pretty weak. MS was, last time I checked, trying harder than Netscape to push its own non-standard HTML extensions as well.
But it's all splitting hairs. Both are poor, bloated, slow browsers. Opera and Mozilla can't come fast enough for me.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Given the success of Linux over the last 12 months why does /. still seem amazed whenever it appears in the mainstream press? Is success that difficult to cope with? :)
Psike.
They all suck.
Ok, now let's work on making a real browser. Maybe we could outsource the IE team, I heard they are worried about their stock these days.
Browses the web fine, and a whole lot (maybe too much) more. Free, with support from a large, quality focused vendor. Duh.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I think Konqueror will be amongst the good choices possible once KDE2 is released. With java and javascript support it will hopefully be a mature browser. For current CSS support progress, take a look at http://www.mosfet.org. Those CSS-test-links certainly shows netscape's flaws!
As, on average, the text content to graphic content on a webpage is 1:30, and considering that most of what slashdot is about is text, and that most of us use Linux or some form of Unix or other, and given that Lynx is freely available to be used on such systems, and because Lynx is a text-only browser, I believe that, if all of us used Lynx in our day-to-day slashdotting, we could minimise the slashdot effect.
I agree that it is bad to "integrate" the browser to the OS in the way that MS has done. But lets not forget that the browser is the most important and heavily used application. Few people will give a low-performance browser "a fair chance" just because it works a on a cool OS. Also, shouldn't Netscape be able to exploit a total understanding of the linux OS to make their browser faster and better? Some of the browsers for linux mentioned in the article are a total joke. NO ONE would ever use Amaya to browse the web. Lynx is only for emergency situations or for people who have no choice. Netscape cannot compare to IE. Yes, it is "unfair" to compare the two browsers on different platforms, so what? The computer industry is based on unfairness. The only way microsoft will be buried is if people are given *better* alternatives. This has nothing to do with fairness. In my opinion, the article was mushy and never got to what should be the prime point: All general purpose browsers for linux suck, and MUST be replaced something better. That said, mozilla seems very promising. I hope that it can develop into a stable browser soon.
As far as I can tell, the point of Open Source and Free Software, and ultimately the linux mentality is on of collaboration.
Well, then, collaborate. If you can't/wont contribute (code) to the solution, quit bitching. If you don't like a particular browser, write yourself a new one or contribute to a project like Mozilla.
I personally found the article interesting. Was it perfect? Nope. Was the guy wrong about some things? Maybe. Some things said were opinions *gasp*.
-FP
The power of the web is its ubiquity -- access from anywhere, anytime, without a requirement for proprietary solutions -- hardware or software -- at either the sending or receiving end of the channel. While high-speed access is going to build its way into the fixed-site (and even some limited-range wireless) nodes, universal access from anywhere has to deal with the limited bandwidth and channel space of wireless.
Smart design is simple design.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Does that help?
In the last part of the second half of the review, he states:
Mozilla is looking particularly exciting, although it has a foot-print that may be simply too large for some users.
Is this true? I haven't tried Mozilla in some time (although I will once it's in official beta), but I thought the point to Mozilla is that it was going to have a *smaller* footprint than, say, Netscape.
-Nathan Whitehead
The reason is that lynx has a much better UI. First of all, navigation is done with keyboard - which is inherently faster than mouse...
...
:)
:)
:) Which, for me, is unaccaptable. I middle-click as often as I left-click, sometimes. I usually have no less then four browser windows open at once. More then ten is not uncommon. (And, no, running multiple instances of Lynx in an xterm is not the same thing.)
:) Keep your other hand over the keyboard. Ta-da!
Oh, come on. That old argument again? One might as well say that a screw driver in inherently faster then a hammer.
Go to a page with dozens of links on it, pick a link at random, and compare the navigation between Lynx and Navigator:
Navigator
1. Point with a minor wrist movement.
2. Click once.
Lynx
1. Down arrow.
2. Down arrow.
3. Down arrow.
... [edited for brevity]
31. Down arrow.
32. Down arrow.
33. Press [ENTER].
Even if you turn on the link numbers, I find a simple point-and-click is just as fast as entering in a two or three digit number and pressing [ENTER]. Not to mention a lot easier. To say nothing of those interfaces which cannot easily be accomplished in text mode.
Since I'm here, let me also say...
1. download - hit d, Enter.
Click.
2. save rendered page to disk - hit p, enter, enter
[ALT]+[S]. Two in Navigator compared to three for Lynx.
3. add current doc to bookmark - a, d, enter
[ALT]+[K]. Again, Navigator wins.
4. add current link to bookmark file - a, l, enter
Press. Point. Release.
show source - \
[ALT]+[U]. Lynx wins by a mere keypress here.
6. Next page - space
Ditto.
revious page - b
[PGUP]
first page ctrl-A
last page ctrl-E
Here you score a few points. These two work flawlessly with [CTRL]+[HOME] and [CTRL]+[END] under Windoze. For some reason known only to Netscape, Navigator on Linux ignores those keystrokes. Grrrrr.
reload is ctrl-R
[ALT]+[R] here, close enough.
redraw is ctrl-L
Not applicable.
quit is Q
[ALT]+[Q] to quit Navigator. I usually have it open all the time, so I don't do it much.
What's the keystroke to open a new window in Lynx? Oh yes, I forgot -- Lynx limits you to one window at a time.
I *can* use Netscape but it feels like a huge slow down to reach for a mouse every now and then.
Well, here's a tip -- stop using that screw driver to hammer in nails. Put one hand on the mouse, and keep it there.
Lynx is a fine browser, and has a lot of things going for it, but let's not by silly, here.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The thing that keeps me using IE is the fact that can go to a page that has a Flash object on it and IE will say "You don't have Flash, do you want it installed?" and it automagically does so if I say yes.
This is, in no way, shape, or form, a browser issue. This is an issue with ISV (Independent Software Vendor) support. ISVs are not supporting Linux, so you don't get your plugin.
Don't complain about the browser -- go gripe to those ISVs. You like their plugins so much, but when you ask them to support your platform of choice, they say, "F**k off". Personally, any company that does that to me, doesn't get my business. Maybe you like being told that, but I don't.
Blaming this on the browser is like blaming your car maker that the local gas station's service sucks.
(For the less-informed: Netscape on Linux supports that sort of "You don't have XYZ, but you need it, get it?" dialog, and has for quite some time.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Linux will never be the most popular desktop OS until it has the best browser. You cannot underestimate the importance of a good browser. People _buy_ computers so that they can surf the web. Right now the browser situation for linux is deplorable. Did anyone ever stop to wonder how many people bought redhat, and then were turned off to *LINUX* because the ugly fonts and sluggish behavior and constant crashing of Netscape? YES, that DOES happen. If one more geek talks about the merits of lynx as though it is a viable alternative to a graphical browser, I will scream.
Netscape in a Windows environment is easier to use, although I still prefer IE. I know I would boot into Linux much more often if it had a reasonable browser. (end rant)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Author is quick to dismiss lynx as a browser for text-only terminals. I think he's just plain wrong. Quite a few people assume that lynx is for old 386's that can't handle X + Netscape. Not so. I have p200 64mb ram running X and stand-alone Netscape is perfectly fast and almost never crashes, and yet I choose to use lynx in 99% of cases. The reason is that lynx has a much better UI. First of all, navigation is done with keyboard - which is inherently faster than mouse. Secondly, you can use hjkl vim-style keys to respectively go back/down one link/up one link/follow link. This means you can surf while having your hands on home-row, which is the most reachable and convenient place when it comes to interfacing with the computer. Things that you use all the time while surfing are equally easy:
1. download - hit d, Enter.
2. save rendered page to disk - hit p, enter, enter
3. add current doc to bookmark - a, d, enter
4. add current link to bookmark file - a, l, enter
5. show source - \
6. Next page - space, previous page - b, first page ctrl-A, last page ctrl-E.
7. You can set option to display a number in front of every link - so that when you want to jump to a certain link in the middle of the page, you simply type in that number and hit enter. Works faster than mouse, to be sure.
few misc things - reload is ctrl-R, redraw is ctrl-L, quit is Q.
w3m doesn't display page while loading, and misses some other things like vi style navigation (which can be easily hacked in the code), but can display tables/frames. Note that both have ssl (in lynx you have to apply a patch, that'll take ~5 mins).
How important is all this? Well, now that I use lynx daily, I *can* use Netscape but it feels like a huge slowdown to reach for a mouse every now and then.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
The thing that keeps me using IE is the fact that can go to a page that has a Flash object on it and IE will say "You don't have Flash, do you want it installed?" and it automagically does so if I say yes. And while Linux has Flash, there's no Shockwave for linux (according to macromedia). While plug-ins are the main force behind web surfin, a lack of plug-ins still makes web surfing on linux second rate.
-no broken link
I used to use Lynx for text-based browsing, but now I use w3m - it renders frames in one window, which I don't think Lynx can do, and other neat stuff. Check it out!
Check out Greg's Bridge Page!