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.

Comments

E-commerce, text, and graphics

[KMSelf]

When it comes to steak and sizzle, the problem is sites which confuse the two. Graphics and additional content are useful, but they're value-added over basic, accessible text. Accessible by people (including the disabled), accessible by machines (including, say, intelligent shopping agents), accessible by a variety of computing devices, including Palm and other handhelds, phone (text-to-voice -- unless you want a pel-by-pel breakdown of that gif), and a variety of devices whose display dimensions, formats, and characteristics are currently unknown.

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?

Answer

[Chris Johnson]

I quote a bit of text from John Walker's 'Hacker's Diet' pages, which should be taken as a hint towards the answer you seek:

"Why So Many Versions?

The Hacker's Diet spreadsheets were originally developed in 1990 with Excel 2.1 on Microsoft Windows 3.1. Some of the components in the package use Excel macros which are, for the most part, relatively simple and straightforward compared to those found in a typical corporate Excel application.

Nonetheless, thanks to Microsoft's practice of "strategic incompatibility" and utter contempt for the investment made by their customers, these rudimentary macros have required specific modifications for every single new version of Excel in the decade since they were originally released, and things have gotten worse, not better, since Microsoft introduced the new Visual Basic programming language for Excel (itself a cesspool of release-to-release incompatibility), due to what appears to be a deliberate Microsoft strategy to destabilise the original macro language in order to force customers onto the new one (at a cost to Microsoft corporate clients I estimate on the order of a hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars).

The upshot of this is that while in a reasonable world spreadsheets and macros would be capital, created once and then used thereafter with no additional attention, in the world of Microsoft, software developed for their platforms is a "wasting asset" more like a stock option with an strike date about 18 months from the time it was developed. By then Billy Boy or one of his Kode Kiddies will have changed their mind about something (or simply introduced a gratuitous incompatibility, whether for strategic reasons, due to sloppiness or incompetence, or just for the Hell of it) which pulls the carpet out from under the application and its users when they "upgrade" to a more recent Microsoft release (which is increasingly involuntary as more and more new computers are sold pre-loaded with the latest releases of Microsoft operating systems and applications, offering the customer no option but to pay the "Microsoft Tax" bundled in the cost of the system)."

Does that help?

Large footprint?

[Griim]

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.

Re:StarOffice

[crush]

ugh. Takes over entire desktop, crashes more than Netscape. ugly. It's an example of one of the horrible multi-functional applications that do many things imperfectly. Sort of like the way Netscape has developed actually.

Question

[YoJ]

Can someone answer me this question please? I really want to know. Why don't people make browsers for Windows that are as good as IE by using the "built-in" routines that are "part of the OS"? Why can't Netscape use the IE routines (since they are part of the OS and are freely available) and then add cool stuff on top of that? I know that Gecko is competing with the rendering engine of IE, but in the meantime until Mozilla is finished why not embrace and extend IE?

-Nathan Whitehead

Keyboard vs mouse - that old thing again?

[DragonHawk]

The reason is that lynx has a much better UI. First of all, navigation is done with keyboard - which is inherently faster than mouse...

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. :) 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.)

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. :) Keep your other hand over the keyboard. Ta-da!

Lynx is a fine browser, and has a lot of things going for it, but let's not by silly, here.

'Tis not the browser -- 'tis the ISVs

[DragonHawk]

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.)

Re:Shortest, most accurate linux web browser revie

[helix_r]

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.

IE for Linux would be good...

[Skim123]

I use to use Linux quite a bit, but one thing that really bugged me was its web browser support. Netscape in Linux absolutely is the most offending program I've ever used. It's slow to load, having multiple windows open and downloading content is painful, and too often Netscape will crash, just disappearing from X. Using Netscape in Linux is almost as painful as using Netscape on a Mac.

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)

lynx and w3m

[Rainy]

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.

Still needs better plugin support

[Fjord]

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.

Have you tried w3m?

[gregstoll]

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!