Linux Web Browsers Compared

Rob Valliere writes: "The best Linux Web browsers have dramatically improved in the past few months: they are all stable, standards compliant and loaded with solid feature enhancements and additions. Using Red Hat 7.2 and the KDE desktop, the premier Linux browsers are Galeon 1.0.3, Mozilla 0.9.8 and Opera 6.0 TP3. The best Web downloads and installs were from Opera and Mozilla, which have minimal dependencies. Galeon is a small download but can be difficult to upgrade due to its Mozilla and GNOME dependencies."

Comments

What about Konqueror

[Starving Artist]

It rocks, except for a few JavaScript nasties.

Re:What about Konqueror

[Zathrus]

In a case where X displays on the majority of browsers, but does not display on browser Y the fault lies with Y, not X.

This is how the world works. This is how TCP/IP has worked for 20 years (BSD was the standard - if you interfaced properly with BSD, you met the real world standard, since BSD varied from the "official" TCP standard in certain cases).

For as much whinging as there is about IE, the fact is that it is now the defacto standard for webpage rendering. It's wise to fulfill the official W3C standard. It's smart to then go make sure things work like IE as much as possible (without the random security holes). Where the two contradict each other is the fun part... do you write to the official standard and hope MS fixes things, or do you write to the de facto standard because users don't give a crap about W3C - they just want to see the content.

And, really, that's what it's about - the content. Being standards compliant means jack if you can't view 20% of the websites out there. I used to run Netscape 1.x-4.x, and then Opera 5.x on Windows. I finally gave up in frustration after too many sites either wouldn't display or hosed Opera. And after much bitching and moaning I started using IE. I'm not happy that I have to use it, but know what? I have to admit that surfing is now easier and more reliable than it was under either NS or Opera. And no, IE doesn't crash constantly anymore. It certainly does so less than either of the aforementioned browsers. Maybe the Linux versions are better about all of this - I don't have a spare box available currently to test with.

I fully expect this to get modded down for no good reason. Oh well. It's only karma.

Opera ads became intrusive

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

Opera used to be my favorite browser, but I switched from that to Mozilla at around Christmas, simply because of one ad campaign that involved an animated gif of human head that waggled from left to right. It was so intrusive that I took to covering the ad area with a gnome-terminal, and looked around for another browser. I told the Opera people about my problems.

Using X on a small laptop via a fairly powerful firewall machine, I eventually realised that I could run Mozilla on the firewall and put the display on the laptop. Although Mozilla is a rather bigger browser than Opera, it actually runs better in that mode than when I ran Opera on the laptop.

Push them to the limit!

[ihatelisp]

Come on, the test only briefly mentioned about testing with graphics, CSS, and Javascript. Any modern browser can handle that so easily, it's not even worth testing.

When car magzines do a car review, they floor the gas pedal to get the fastest 0-60mph time. They cut corners much faster than street driving speed to test the suspension and handling characteristics of the car. What I don't understand is, why does this browser review treat these browsers like babies? Throw in some DOM2/3, CSS2/3, bidi text, DHTML, and XHTML! Let the best engineered browser shine, instead of fixating on those performance numbers!

Re:Push them to the limit!

[pointwood]

That is not something you just do - that takes a lot of work I believe. However, here is a pretty good overview of the browsers support for the W3C recommendations: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?/~ppk/js/b rowsers.html.

Table rendering performance

[Admiral Llama]

One area where IE simply trashes Netscape and Mozilla is rendering huge tables. I'm talking about the 1 meg of text variety. Has anyone tried putting the various browers through the paces on this kind of test?

Mozilla all the way ..

[TheViffer]

may not be the best, but with there latest security options, it makes live nice.

Go into

Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Scripts & Windows

and uncheck "open unrequested windows"

The pop-up nightmare has ended!

Not saying other browsers cant do this, but if they can't, they will be real soon.

Now I am just waiting for the "block these sites" style of entry which can be seeded by a downloaded file to block ad servers.

VIEW SOURCE is a necessity - mozilla loses

[mgkimsal2]

There was a linuxjournal article last month comparing many browsers and their ability to handle ssl, printing, etc. I don't think this is the same article (can anyone verify that?).

Anyway, on to my flamebait of a title. Most geeks are developers of some sort, and need to see 'under the hood'. Yeah, you've got source code, but if you're a webmonkey, you need to see the source of the page you're one. That's usually not possible in Mozilla or Netscape if you've POSTed stuff. As much as I'd like to use Mozilla for everything all the time (once it speeds up just a bit more!) I can't - I have to use something else (IE, Konqueror, depending on platform). Why the heck isn't this fixed YET? I see we can get MathML builds, but something as basic as this STILL isn't addressed.

"Go code it yourself" is an answer I feel coming on from someone, but you and I both know it's not a realistic solution. :)

Re:Let's hope..

[BurritoWarrior]

Except this is exactly the point of Microsoft's .net initiative. To make the internet (or what most people think is the internet - www) not be HTTP based anymore, but to rely on proprietary extensions/applets/applications built around the .net framework.

In their eyes 90% of the web will require IE in order for the "web services" to work. And they will leverage things like MS Office to get the ball rolling. No longer will new features be added directly to office, but will be available on the web - provided the user has Windows and is using IE...

Mod this as flamebait if you want, but that certainly seems to me to be the direction they are heading. Heck, MS execs are even talking about how http's days are coming to an end...

Re:Konqueror is not a MUA/newsreader/HTML editor!

[swillden]

And, for the paranoid, it handles cookie requests as well as... Lynx!

Actually, I think Konqueror is the best browser available for cookie handling. One major feature it has that all of the others (I've seen) lack is the ability to look at the cookie before deciding to accept/reject it. In particular I like to look at the expiration date, because cookies that don't last long don't bother me much.

Looking at those expiration dates inspired me to hack my copy of Konqueror so that I can configure it to automatically accept any cookies of short duration (i.e. expiration not specified or specified to be within one day) on a per-site basis.

The other thing I want to change but haven't gotten round to, is to give myself the option of rejecting cookies based on the origin server instead of the stated cookie domain.

You might this this is a lot of bother, but I find that with a few such options in place I can both minimize the number of cookies that are tracking me and avoid having to deal with a lot of "Accept this cookie?" dialog boxes popping up all the time. The "accept short cookies" option was a huge win in achieving a nice balance.

Oh, and yes I'm going to submit my patches, but they're pretty rough right now -- not something that any maintainer would accept.

Re:Galeon is hard to install/upgrade?

[swillden]

You really ought to consider giving Debian a try. I like to build stuff myself on a regular basis, too, but there's also an awful lot of stuff I just want to get installed with minimum hassle.

The galeon example here wasn't a great one, either, because I (apparently) already had all of the prerequisites installed. What's really cool is bringing up a really basic box that has practically nothing installed on it, and typing "apt-get install kde" (or whatever other large, complex system) and watching it get and install all of X, KDE, etc.

It's even nice when you want to configure/build yourself. Just "apt-get source galeon" instead and it'll download and unpack the source tree. You then have the option of configure-make-make install or you can look in the debian directory, tweak all of the config params and use "dpkg-buildpackage" to build your own customized installable package that meshes seamlessly with the system. And if there's no debian package available for an app, it's pretty trivial to add your own debian directory to the source tree and build and install a package so that, again, it fits into the system.

Oh, and don't let all of the "but Debian stable is *ancient*" naysayers discourage you. Just run "testing" or "unstable" and you'll have all of the latest. And don't let the description fool you, "unstable" is very solid. I run "stable" on servers (actually, I'm running "testing" on my servers right now; they're not mission-critical and 3.0 is really close) and "unstable" on my desktops, although when 3.0 is released, I may switch to "testing" on the desktops (i.e. stick with Sid).