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Alternative Browser Review
alfredo_tomato writes: "I would have liked to seen a larger selection, but here are three browsers reviewed: You'd be surprized at who came out on top. The ugliest of the lot won."
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Password management sounds to me like nice words for "completely loss of security." The only places I've encountered that require password entry repeatedly are exactly those places you don't want to be automatically logged in: banks and e-stores. Everyone else tosses cookies at me, auto-logging me into Slashdot, NYT, etc.
Opera isn't strictly for old metal. I run a K62-400 with 96Mb and an ADSL connect. Opera is my exclusive browser.
Why? Because it's fast. It has superb keyboard controls, which makes me faster.
It has excellent cookie management, which makes me feel better.
It lets me toggle in User CSS overrides, which makes it a *lot* easier to read poorly-designed webpages.
When I do webpage creation, Opera's the ideal test browser: it renders *to spec* much more thoroughly than any other browser. The developers are extremely intent on creating compliancy with HTML 4, CSS 1 and 2, WAP and supporting XML with CSS. Opera is the standard by which all other render engines can be compared.
I like its print preview, and ability to shrink the render so that I can save a page when the last page has widows on it.
It's got great bookmarking.
And I really like the MDI interface. Other than my daily cruise through the newsites, my main use of the web is as a research tool. I'll have my wordprocessing or pagelayout tools up and running... and Opera, doing searches for terms, ideas, clarification, etc. Instead of having to deal with dozens of application windows, I have only one or two. Opera's internal window tabs make it brainless to jump between web windows.
Best of all, though, is the responsiveness of the Opera programmers. They really care about their product, and they really do respond to suggestions and questions. They're worth paying, because they really do have my best interests at heart: they want my feedback so they can make the software work better for me.
That's way better than the response I've had from any other software company, and quite a few freeware authors...
[FOOTNOTE: Biggest challenge to using Opera is getting over one's paradigms. When you're so used to the way Browser X works, it's very difficult to accept any other UI. As a fellow who's used MSIE, NS and Opera all, I say Opera's GUI is rough around the edges, but its keyboard controls are the best, bar none... and the keyboard is now where I spend my browsing time. It's worth getting over the hurdle...]
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Opera doesn't actually have its own JVM; however, the downloadable versions for Windows come with a JVM from Sun, in the same download and as part of the same install sequence.
As for the cost - Opera is particularly good on older hardware (my mother used it on a 486SX/25 with 8 MB RAM and Windows 3.1 for quite a while, and it was a lot better than Netscape, and I used to use it on a slow P200 laptop). So if you can pay $30 to avoid a hardware upgrade, you are way ahead financially.
Opera is missing a few features such as password management, etc, but its speed and ability to turn off images with one click is enough for me. I'll be registering the Linux version as soon as it gets out of alpha/beta, as it is stunningly fast on my AMD K6-2/350 as well.
You'll spend a lot of time under iCab's hood--well, in the Preferences menu--in order to get it working the way you want. For example, you have to turn on InScript, which is iCab's partial implementation of JavaScript, because it's not enabled by default. But all that tinkering is actually the browser's strong suit: you can configure an impressive array of features, including our favorite feature, iCab's image filtering.
So, they think it is cool because it is 'highly customizable', even though it'll cost you quite some time to set it up (e.g. you have to turn javascript on by yourself etc.)
Wait a minute, isn't that just the reason people always complain about 'Linux not being ready for the Big Market'???
So I don't understand why they like this product, while 'Linux still isn't there, blah blah yadda yadda'
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
The KDE Browser gets top rankings...
It's fast.. effective and soon to have Java and Javascript.
Still needs a lot of work but works quite well for most of my browsing...
It looks like KDE is taking the microsoft approch to browser plugins..
Let's hope develupers don't plug into the KDE system with wordprocessors or basic and port e-mail viruses over.
Byond that the KDE browser (and system) is making some nice moves in the area of a user friendly Internet interface...
The only sad side of course being this won't work on Gnome or WindowMaker...
Modzilla. Really just Netscapes dev version.. even before it was open sourced...
It's nice but it's still just the dev browser for Netscapes commertal product. I'm not sure this one will ever be compleatly ready...
There are some nice ports of this to many platforms. Once it plugs into modern libarys it seems to speed up quite a bit...
Arachne. This is really a Dos browser.. for XTs... You may scream now.. It's a full pacage just like Netscape only it's a console browser.
Lacks Java and like Netscape it's free for noncommertal use.
The nice part of Arachne is it's great for a NetBox.. even if your just making one on your own. Just grab an old computer and put Arachne on it. I recomend at least a 386 and no more than 8 meg ram. Arachne accually gets slower when it has to much memory to play with.
VGA and a mouse are good...
This would make a good gift... turns an old PC into a netbox...
The downside... it's not that fast... it uses the hard disk a lot so you want a fast hard disk.. not a big one.. size not issue.. speed is..
I last tryed this on an XT years ago but a while back the min requirements slid up from an 8088 XT to an 8086 XT... wow big jump..
It's safe to say any given XT is a bad move anyway as thies boxes are old enough to have blank BIOS roms.
Anyway there is a Linux version...
Windows users can use the Dos version...
However my recomendation is purely to recycle an old PC and make a NetBox for a famaly member...
http://arachne.browser.org/
And finnaly there is http://lynx.browser.org/
Good old Lynx...
Fast friendly but not GUI...
Lynx is an example of how broken the WWW really is.
Lynx was the second web client.. WWW being the first..
Lynx has had problems supporting HTML every sence HTML 2 and what appears to be a total abandonment of text browsers...
Lynx remains the fastest browser when it comes to loading HTML only pages and of course gets faster when visiting graphic pages (By never loading images).
Obveously Lynx dosn't load banners...
Lacks Java and Javascript and dosn't support plugins.
Mosaic.... a decent base for a web browser itself to old... it won't view most pages (even pages Lynx can view) and is basicly to old to be of any use other than base code for annother browser.
A few updated Mosaics exist however and they are worth using.
Mosaic is a fast decent browser lacking flash and hype... however it's a HTML 1 browser and needs considerable code added if it's to be usable..
My recomendation at this time is the KDE browser...
With the caveot that it needs KDE...
If you want to use Gnome then you probably should look elsewhere...
There are some Modzilla projects to port Modzilla to everything under the sun... odds lay good that a GnomeZilla project exists.. the name sounds to cool to pass up... and such a port is likely gona hook into Gnome something sereous resulting in a nice powerful browser.
One last thing.. I don't nessisarly like KDE I just think it sucks less than Gnome...
Eventually nither will suck... it's just the suckness level of both provides room for Window Manager wars...
Anyway... to take the glass house anolog....
The other camp isn't living in glass houses... they just don't have the walls up yet...
I don't actually exist.
where's good old lynx? ;)
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
i've been using the things for three years. And for content creation, there's no point in considering anything else. But they suck when it comes to browsing the web- particularly on OS 8.1 or lower. The speed difference is scary: set up a linux box, a windows box, and a Mac to load a page and the Mac will lose every time, given unweighted test conditions [the fact that the system goes "uh..." when you press the mouse button has something to do with it, I imagine.]
Still....
If you *like* the Big Two, the Mac is STILL the best choice, with IE5/Mac being a browser like no other. Yeah, it may be open source and all, but Mozilla fucking BLOWS in my opinion [last use was M16 and I'm not using it again until there's a final release, period.]
The Browser Wars concept looks like a pretty grim outcome to me- Mac has the best cut of IE, Windows users are pretty much stuck with shittier versions, and *nix users have Nutscrape/Mozilla. Nice of them to consider the browser that comes with OSX server as an option. [I forget what it's called- all I remember is that it wasn't exaclty satisfactory.]
Opera isn't even an option, really... when the rest are free, why pay money? [the product's window tiling is more of a severe annoyance than a feature with popup ads and java-traps and so forth running rampant out there.]
I'd like to see Mozilla get it's act together so that I actually have a CHOICE of web browsers. If you use Mac and design for web, you're using IE5, and that's all there is.
K-Meleon is a nice, free browser for Win32 that uses the Gecko rendering engine. Worth a try...
... that people keep wanting to call NeoPlanet a "browser". All it is is some prettied up overlay for IE, yet stupid people still insist that it is an "alternative". Seems like Cnet and, in turn, slashdot, is pretty hard of for articles. Anybody can draw up a form in vb, throw a browser control on it and it's a damn alternative browser.
An article on New Coke vs. Coke Classic would probably be a more useful article than this...
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC