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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."
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!
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?
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.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
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.