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Galeon 1.0 Released
exceed writes: "Finally, after about a year, version one of Galeon -- the GTK+ web browser based on Mozilla's rendering engine, gecko -- has been released. If you plan on installing this for the first time, you might want to read the 'INSTALL' files included within the package for requirements. Head on over to the project's file list at Sourceforge."
"Galeon -- the GTK+ web browser based on Mozilla's rendering engine, gecko -- has been released"
Folks, Galeon is a GNOME web browser, can we start making the distinction? There is a differance, SkipStone afaik is the Gtk+ web browser and does not depend on any Gnome lib.
... OK. from the website. I posted AC so that I am not a Karma whore..
A web browser is more than an application, it is a way of thinking, it is a way of seeing the world. Galeon's principles are simplicity and standards compliance.
Simplicity:
While Mozilla has an excellent rendering engine, its default XUL-based interface is considered to be overcrowded and bloated. Furthermore, on slower processors even trivial tasks such as pulling down a menu is less than responsive.
Galeon aims to utilize the simplest interface possible for a browser. Keep in mind that simple does not necessarily mean less powerful. We believe the commonly used browsers of today are too big, buggy, and bloated. Galeon addresses simplicity with a small browser designed for the web -- not mail, newsgroups, file management, instant messenging or coffee making. The UNIX philosophy is to design small tools that do one thing, and do it well.
Galeon also address simplicity with modularity to make a light and powerful application. If something can be implemented using external applications or components, we use it rather than wasting resources in the web browser. Integration will be achived with CORBA, Bonobo, and the ever popular command line.
Mail will be handled with your favorite e-mail application (Evolution, pine, mutt, balsa, pronto, whatever); GTM (Gnome Transfer Manager) will be used to download files in a standardized manner.
Indeed, on my machine a freshly launched Mozilla uses _less_ RAM than Galeon:
/usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin
/usr/bin/galeon-bin
sumner 23726 22.4 9.8 35376 25052 pts/0 R 05:00 0:03
sumner 23722 0.0 11.7 43232 29896 pts/0 S 04:51 0:00
29MB for galeon vs. 25MB for mozilla. It's tough to tell how much is shared under 2.4 kernels, sadly.
Both have 4 threads, so stack utilization should be similar.
Still, I like the fact that Galeon uses the same widgets as everything else (blends with my themes, etc) and it seems faster psychologically. I've not done objective timings.
This is with Galeon 1.0 and mozilla 9.6.
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
For those forced to use Win32, the alternative to Galeon is K-meleon.
It is available from Sourceforge.net too: kmeleon.sf.net
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
> It would be nice if I could hack the Mozilla XUL framework easier (like I can hack Emacs lisp).
You might want to try PatchMaker for that:
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/patch-maker/
it should allow you to hack the framework fairly easily.
Andrea
After finally getting tired of waiting for Mozilla , I had been using Konqueror all of the time up until about a month ago. Since then I've been using Galeon non-stop. I now think that it's the best browser option in Linux. Here's why:
1) It uses Gecko, so the rendering engine is pretty much second to none. I almost never have any problems viewing any webpages with it.
2) Because it uses Gecko, I get a lot of great things from the mozilla project. I have all of the plugins I want, I have a browser engine that most webmasters have heard of, so they listen if I complain, I get great standards compliance
3) Because it is an actual gnome app it integrates very well with other GTK apps. Where Mozilla/NS6.x goes it's own way and as a result doesn't really integrate properly in any OS, Galeon looks and behaves just like all of the other great GTK apps I use (grip, sylpheed, j-pilot, gimp, abiword, gnumeric etc.)
4) When I really get surfing I often have >10+ browsing sessions open. With Galeon this is all within a single window, and is handled brilliantly. I really miss the browser tabs when using Konqueror, I get a better rendering engine than Opera, and the tabs are more configurable/faster than Mozilla. As a complete bonus, I keep all browsing sessions between uses of Galeon. As far as I know, Mozilla does not do this. Also, when I'm using many browser sessions I find Galeon to switch between them much faster than Mozilla (though this is getting better)
5) Fewer UI inconsistencies. Mozilla has many odd XUL-related UI bugs. (for instance, open preferences and expand out all of the options. The options go past the end of the dialog, but you can't scroll down, so some options are cut off.)
6) Galeon is very simple and stable. I've been using it exclusively for a while now and I've had exactly one crash in this time. This is by far the best stability I've seen in a browser more complex than lynx for some time.
7) It has many other nice extras. Bookmarklets are nice, the security and cookie options are easy to understand and change, the portal is great, the search tabs are handy, and everything is fast and integrated.
8) It's just a browser. It lets me easily use whatever mail client I want (sylpheed, kmail, evolution etc.) it lets me use an extrnal ftp/download manager if I want.
To sum up, I like Galeon because it's fast, stable, and has a ton of features that are either missing from Mozilla and other browsers, or are better implemented in Galeon (like tabs and cookie management.)
First off, you guys are doing a great job. Themes, spinners, preferences, no pop-ups, Flash, etc. All wonderful stuff. Tabs and myportal especially.
:)
Here's a few things that are bugging me tho:
1. This may be a gnome or gtk problem, but when I click to download a link and the directory chooser window opens, if I click on another directory in which to store the file, the pop up window kills the name of the file and I have to retype it in all over again. Very annoying. Also, the preferences menu won't show hidden directories. For the record, Anjuta-0.1.7 has a button which toggles the display of hiddens. Quite nice.
2. I mentioned this another post...yeah, um, my scrollbar is GONE. Couldn't find a place to toggle it on/off in the preferences menu. If it is in there, it obvoiusly needs to be turned on by default. Perhaps it will help the developers if I tell you that I've got my bookmarks folder docked, and there's a scroll bar in it. They also show up in the preferences menu, just not my html window.
3. And this is nit-picking: If the number of items in a particular toolbar exceeds the width of the window, then the bar needs to add vertical space and continue on a sort of "next-line." The buttons aren't much use when I can't click on them, but I am not aware of a browser that doesn't have this problem.
Damn...these are really the ONLY things that bug me about galeon. If you knew what a little bitch I am, you'd be impressed with that. Did I mention how much I like the scrollable history in the smart bookmarks folder? Being able to scroll thru a list of text searches you've already performed at a site is just damn sweet. And the text zooming...don't even get me started with how nice that is (If you bought as many parts online as I do, and got really sick of the Edit-->Preferences-->Fonts routine whenever you got to a site with a way-too-small-font, well then you understand
/me doffs his cap to the entire galeon crew
1. It's lack/bad hack of a security console.
You have to open something like the javascript console which yets Mozilla's interface bleed through to then use Mozilla's security interface. I would really think if you were going to release 1.0, you would have the basic functionality of a security console finished.
2. The current sites certificate is unavaiable for examination.
Go to random website that you are about to dish your CC number out to and you want to look at their website certificate to see if they used a CA or their certificate got replaced by crackers, or whatever, you can't.
3. Not easy to turn on encryption for passwords.
You have to go dig through the mailing list and find the prefs.js setting to turn it on. When you do have it on the dialog for it I think comes from Mozilla instead of Galeon and is functional but looks bad. I will say that Mozilla requires you to do the same thing for certain features, but then they state the offically supported ones like pop-up prevention on the release notes page.
4. Lack of a Socks proxy line in the Proxy section.
Many people use Socks proxies for a number of reasons. Mozilla has a line for Socks, and Galeon's proxy section seems to have the same layout as Mozilla's, except it is missing Socks.
Galeon adds it own features that are very nice, but I would think they would want to make sure to have all the basic functionality of Mozilla, but with their goal of a simple interface before they start adding new features. Which they seem to not have to done.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
It's because of NS4's buggy CSS rendering. If you turn JS off in NS4, it also turns off CSS handling (silly Netscape).
The Galeon page is nothing fancy. It's just using normal HTML -- no JavaScript required. If they did their HTML properly, the page was meant to degrade gracefully. That is, if you view it in a browser that correctly adheres to the standards that it claims to, it should be usable. Their HTML looks pretty simple, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did do it in vi or emacs.
The problem that you have is that NS4 doesn't do CSS correctly, but it likes to pretend that it does. It's a problem that many web designers face, and often the decision is: "Screw Netscape" because NS4's CSS handling can be quite unpredictable.
Why would people use CSS? Ironically, because it's supposed to allow them to create a nice-looking page that will be usable in older browsers. It's unfortunate that Netscape had to screw it up.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
You don't need the source, you can use the precompiled tarball or the rpms. What you do need however, is the header files, but instead of getting the source tarball, I just get mozilla-devel-0.9.6-0.i386.rpm. That contains all the header files you'll need.