Slashdot Mirror
By Popular Demand: More Linux Browsers
Chris Halsall writes "Based on the great feedback generated by the posting of my Web Browsers under Linux article on /. and LinuxToday last month, WebReview has published an unplanned follow-up article covering four more browsers.
There are a good deal of browsers coming into the picture though. Opera, Konqueror, etc.
And let us not forget that Mozilla is shaping up nicely. M13 is actually useable in most cases, and it renders pages rather nicely (and in most cases doesn't actually crash as much as Netscape 4.x). If they can stamp out the expected development bugs, get rid of the debug code (which slows it down a bunch), and get the thing released, I don't think Linux users will have too much to complain about.
Even if Mozilla ends up ruling, I think we need as many browsers as possible on every platform. This will prevent any one browser from becoming too dominant, and also force web designers to actually write HTML according to W3C standards (something that is often ignored even by "major" web pages). I think the increase in browsers will be a good thing, overall.
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Well, apparently the current GNOME html code is based on KDE code. (Saw that somewhere on www.mosfet.org, I think, with a link to some page on www.gnome.org)
It's nice to hear of some alternatives to Netscape on Linux, but Konqueror is too tied to KDE for my tastes. And the others mentioned in the review are either just too esoteric or too slow for my purposes.
I wish I knew of a Really Good Browser for Linux, but alas, none exists.
I like the autocomplete feature of Netscape and IE on Windows, but it doesn't exist for the Linux platform, at least not the last Netscape version I tried. (I admit that there might be newer ones that use autocomplete, but I am still using whatever came with Red Hat 6.1--Netscape 4.1?) Plus Netscape seems to hang an awful lot.
Netscape on Linux is slow compared to IE on Windoze. Netscape on Windoze is also slower than IE.
Mozilla is too slow and unresponsive to be more than a lick and a promise to me. (I don't have time to help contribute performance enhancements, sorry.)
Further, the Mozilla UI seems like an artistic disaster, despite its themes functionality.
I like the idea of an open source browser, however, and encourage the competent Mozilla team to keep plugging, because assuredly they will get it right and I will use Mozilla on a day-to-day basis.
I have never gotten used to Opera. Perhaps it is the best thing since the invention of the zero, but it's not clicking with me.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
case 1:
;) Pages load _way_ faster in lynx/links and w3m, and the only info you really want is the text anyway, unless you are surfing one-handed.
You have a lowend pentium or a 486, with little RAM ( 16 MB). Running X, a WM, and some graphical browser, will make your system _crawl_!! Even if you are on T3 connection by yourself, web pages will load up very slowly, and the whole experience will just suck.
case 2:
You can't currently run X. If you are telnetted into some box, and want to grab a file off of freshmeat, or run a quick search on altavista, a graphical browser isn't even an option.
case 3:
You have a beefy box. But you have a some what slow connection (spent all your money on cool hardware
case 4:
you are hardcore. Who needs X anyway?!
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
When running on a modem, I usually turn off graphics for speed.
Fight Spammers!
It still lacks some things (like cookie support), though. See the home page for more info.
This only lists a small portion of browsers that are capable of running in linux, there was an article not long ago with quick reviews on 21 Linux Web Browsers?, the article can be found here.
:)
I have a personal preference to any browser that is not capable of javascript, although, it does have it's uses, as we have seen this week, with the CERT release, there are some things it can do that we may not like...
I personally use some of these browsers after Netscape has Crashed (TM) for the 10th time in as many minutes, it reminds me too much of another OS I do my best to get away from
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Most of the time I just use lynx because it good at handling cookies, but when I goto sites like hotmail that needs a browser that supports https I use w3m, but for thing that really need to be rendered properly I use links. w3m is good at rendering things but no where near as good as links. Try looking at a tv guide and you'll see the difference or even just goto hotmail. Anyways each of these browsers have something that the others don't, Lynx: Good with cookies, Everyone know the controls w3m: ssl, 80% perfect rendering links: 99.9% perfect rendering, can keep on smurfing while downloading files, great mouse support Stick them together and you'd have one cool text based browser, but until then I guess I have to keep switching for what works best on each web site.
---
# iptables -A INPUT -s 0/0 -j DROP
*shrug*
If you're talking about Lynx, try LYNXCFG://reload/ . You should be able to reload almost all settings without leaving the browser. Don't forget that w3m also have SSL support like Lynx, but not as a patch. You don't need to tweak a patch to get it to compile with a new version.
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
You should be able to get Lynx to compile with SSL support without major problems. The patch isn't maintained for ALL (development, pre, and release) versions, but it works fine. Yes, I'm just waiting to see it incorporated in the sources, but there are some american stupid laws, you know.
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
I've already seen some complaints about NS 4.7, Motif, and XAW. (Here and attached to other articles.) I don't see what the problem is. I've provided a screenshot of a prepared desktop.
.
(It appears that my department's server doesn't feed PNG's properly, you may have to your box and display locally. A JPEG was too big for my taste.)
My window manager is UDE. My workspaces/virtual desktops/whatchamacallits are just color schemed and minimal. What apps I use that use xrm always match (colors, fonts, etc.) the workspace in which they are opened, so the desktop is consistent. The screenshot has three windows:
(1) At the bottom of the stack (top left of screen) is Netscape 4.7 after running a bit of my own JavaScript. This is the mode which I usually use for reading long documents, except that the window would be maximized. All the functions of NS that I need are available through keystrokes and button 3.
(2) In the middle (stack and screen) is GNU emacs running the ansi-term from which I took the screenshot.
(3) At the top of the stack, in the bottom right of the screen is NS 4.7 again; this time without my JavaScript. I don't like any thing that uses vertical space since I'm used to reading paper that is taller than it is wide. (Though I may have to get my hands on a green-and-white line printer someday.)
I'm a minimalist (I suppose) so I've cut down on the windowing fluff as much as possible. The screenshot was taken at 1024x768 on my 12" external monitor. That's right 12" external; it can be a relief from running 800x600 on the 10.4" laptop LCD. (No cricks in the neck either.)
What I'd like to figure out is how to make my little JavaScript execute whenever a new browser window is opened. I imagine there's something in preferences.js or netscape.ad that would make it possible, but I haven't found it yet (probably for lack of trying).
Sometimes I think that people who complain about these things are waiting for a magic desktop. That makes me wonder why they don't use CLX.
Ever notice . .
Microsoft and its allies assume everyone is stupid.
A 486 is perfectly "usable", as is a 386 for that matter. I don't see what the cost of a replacement has to do with it. As for graphical browsers, the whole point of the Web is text, if you think about it (hypertext, remember?), so a "text-based broswer" is a pretty good tool for using it. If you just want pretty pictures, a TV is cheaper and easier to set up than a computer anyway.
Hmmmm, it appears The Great Taco has disable ALL HTML in "Extrans" mode. No doubt related to the CERT alert. However, "HTML" mode still works. How odd. I liked Extrans; it saved the effort of marking up all my paragraphs. Oh well.
A lot of people find Netscape Communicator on Linux to be unstable. And they are right. However, there are some things you can do to dramatically improve stability.
First and foremost, download Netscape Navigator (the stand-alone browser version), and NOT Communicator. The mail, news, and HTML editor components of Communicator seem to significantly reduce stability. This alone has cut my Netscape crashes to only occasionally.
Next, make sure you have all the proper fonts installed. Netscape expects certain fonts in a few places, and gets rather confused if it doesn't get them. The Java VM in particular has this problem.
Notably, some versions of Red Hat Linux don't configure all the fonts properly. Check the /etc/X11/fs/config file's catalogue section to be sure all of the following are included:
It is okay to have more, just make sure the above are included, both unscaled and regular.
If you can do without it, turn off Java support (not JavaScript -- the two are completely separate things). Netscape's JVM is remarkably unstable.
Consider turning off JavaScript, too. Not only can it be abused (CERT advisory, blah, blah), poorly designed code can make Netscape screwy.
Keep an eye on the memory usage of Navigator. Navigator has some severe memory leaks in it. If it starts to grow larger then 50 MB or so Virtual Segment Size, exit and restart it.
No, none of these things are acceptable behavior for a browser, but they will get you by until Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, or whatever GUI browser replacement you favor is ready.
As an aside, if you are using Communicator, ALWAYS turn off "JavaScript in mail and news" -- apparently Netscape wants to be like Microsoft and allow people to send you emails that take actions.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
(Drifting off topic here, sorry...)
Well, apparently the current GNOME html code is based on KDE code.
Ya know, this single statement is actually rather insightful.
There are a lot of people (not pointing fingers here, just making an observation) that say GNOME and KDE are a duplicated effort and they they should merge into one project, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But here we see how Open Source Software makes that line of reasoning obsolete. Because all the code is open, both sides are free to borrow code from the other. Indeed, we have seen code being borrowed by one, improved, and then reincorporated back into the original. This not only reduces duplication of effort, but encourages the developers to make their software compatible whenever possible, because it may save them some work in the future.
I just wanted to get that off my chest. Yes, I feel better now. :-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
As for graphical browsers, the whole point of the Web is text, if you think about it (hypertext, remember?), so a "text-based broswer" is a pretty good tool for using it.
While I'm not disputing the usefulness of a text-based browser, I do disagree that the whole point of the web is text. It isn't. The point of the web is connected information. Information can be expressed in a number of ways: Written word, spoken word, images, etc. Ever hear the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words?" It is often true. I object to sites that use images when text would do, but I also object to those who think the <IMG> tag should be banned when a diagram would obviously be much clearer then ten pages of text.
End of rant. :-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I wish a little more attention were paid to the status of Unicode in the various web browsers.
Consider for example this Unicode test page I wrote. While it is acceptable for a browser not to have the appropriate fonts for the rendering of Sanskrit (the Devanagari alphabet, one of the most complex parts of Unicode, together with Arabic, because of the ligatures and the reversal of position of the vowel i), it should at least offer a transcription of it: yes, there are quite a few million people in the world who use the Devanagari alphabet (it is used in Hindi). Also, the fact that the different kinds of spaces are generally not correctly displayed is quite inacceptable.
Perhaps Unicode status does not attract much attention because of the erroneous belief that Unicode is not useful for typesetting English texts. That is wrong: the em-dash, the en-dash, the English quote characters (as opposed, e.g. to the French quote characters), the ellipsis, and various similar punctuation characters are not found in the standard ISO-8859-1 character set but only in ISO-10646/Unicode.
Netscape is probably the worse of all (though the little I have seen of w3m indicates that it tries hard to compete with it). For example, it selects the display font according to the document encoding, which is an absurdity, in contradiction to the fact that all web pages are ``at the bottom'' in Unicode (and all Unicode characters are always accessible through the &#xxxx; encoding, whatever the document character encoding). The (related) fact that Netscape does not recognize — and such has always driven me out of my wits. Amaya, despite the fact that it is the W3C's own web browser, used to be quite bad at Unicode; it has made much progress recently (but I think it still cannot use an ISO-10646-1 font even if you have one). Mozilla is also still incomplete in this respect. Lynx and Links are both quite good. In fact, Lynx in a UTF-8 xterm (compiled with --enable-wide-chars) with a fixed-width ISO-10646-1 font is still the best we have in the matter of a true Unicode web browser; but since UTF-8 breaks ncurses, it will sometimes behave strangely; and the combining diacritics, which have to be handled specially, are not so.
We are still very far from the beautiful rendering I show as png images on the test page I mention above. Sigh.