Linux Web Browsers Reviewed

scubacuda writes: "A while back, Slashdot posted a Rob Valliere's Linux vs. Windows review. Since then, he has posted a 2002 Linux Web Browser Review." This is a great , straightforward round-up of current web-browsing options, as shipped with distributions. Note though that none of these browsers are static -- Konqueror's CVS version, for instance, now includes tabs and other goodies. So bear your own downloading and installation habits in mind.

Comments

Old software

[JanneM]

That's the problem with these kind of reviews; Mozilla is at RC1 and Galeon is at 1.2 - I assume the other browsers are similarily updated. A review of such software needs to be done almost literally within a week or two, or it will be obsolete and/or wrong by the time it reaches its readership. Reviewers really should take note of that, and maybe include a small section on what is happening to each product in developer-land.

/Janne

galeon

[layyze]

The review was great and all, but did it really say that Galeon was a 20.0mb download? Even with downloading all of the necessary library dependencies shouldn't 20 megs seems a little high. This review stinks of Redhat/Ximian bloat. Although I am happy to see a more update review, even if the test machine may be slightly outdated to what many of us use these days.
-lt

What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[PunchMonkey]

For a full browser suite, the latest Mozilla was the most impressive and like Netscape, has the best looking interface, is available on multiple platforms and includes a good help system. But unlike Netscape, Mozilla is rapidly developing, is easy to upgrade, is better than Internet Explorer/Outlook Express and includes some great features: it can use Tabs by default and saves complete Web pages perfectly.


Not to be a troll, but it irks me when I hear someone saying "this" is better than "that" cause I said so. It causes me to lose some respect for the reviewer.

As a happy user of IE and OE, I'd love to hear what the reviewer find better in Mozilla over IE/OE. My experience in the past with *nix web browsers hasn't been all that great. I think the IE interface is quite nice, easy to upgrade, and can save complete web pages perfectly as well (.mht).

Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[dasunt]

You forgot that it also allows you more non-work time while you wait for the damned thing to load and it increases computer memory sales, helping other geeks out there.

Seriously, Moz is a great browser, but its *bloated*. Horribly so. Opera has a brief loadtime on my Win98SE/AMD 1.33Ghz/256M memory home machine, but Moz takes a relatively long time to load. In fact, I'm guessing if I decouple IE from Explorer, IE would still load faster.

Sure, I'm patient enough to wait for Moz to load, but OTOH, I don't expect bloat from any of my web browsers.

And no, I don't want to use the quick launch. I like to conserve my memory.

Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[stevey]

Tabbed browsing - it's worth all the hype it receives.

I use Mozilla on Windows and Linux - and I love tabbed browsing, it is the killer feature for me as I don't tend to visit sites with popups.

However I find one thing lacking in Mozilla's tab browsing - it isn't possible to switch tabs via the keyboard. To switch to a new tab you have to use the mouse. I've downloaded the source to see how hard it would be to add this, but I've not got round to unpacking it yet.

It's all very well to open new tabs with the mouse, or Ctrl+T but until I can cycle through them with Ctrl+Tab, or similar, I'm gonna be a little grumpy ;)

Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[lkaos]

Yeah, IE has this for a while, OE and FrontPage Express can be downloaded with IE, or they can be skipped. OE is my mail client of choice, with very nice searching and filtering capabilities, and any serious webdev is not going to use something that came with their broswer to create sites.

FrontPage is not free though. I don't care about serious web development. There are many circumstances where it is necessary for a real programmer (note: web page designer are not programmers) to generate HTML for various reasons or another. It's nice to have a WYSIWYG editor that is low bloat, and that allows for complete extension via source modification.

Yeah, and IE has customizeable sidebars as well, including sites like Google (actually a top bar) MSNBC.

These things require programming extensions though. That is insecure and generally not cool. The Mozilla sidebar is based on XUL (which is an HTML-like language) so its pretty safe to install sidebars from any site.

I only reason most folks use IE is because its already there. You would be making the same argument if IE had better features than Mozilla but Mozilla was already installed. Simply put, it's laziness. I don't care if you use it or not, but don't knock it and give people a false impression of it's quality.

If you felt a need to reply, you should of simply said, "I use IE because I'm too lazy to download Mozilla. Mozilla does have better features, but I'm just lazy."

His tests are crippled

[dcstimm]

I just read his review. He said Konqueror is faster than mozilla loading, this is because he is running it within KDE! I here use windowmaker and find mozilla to be alot faster (1.0 rc1). Also he is running these browsers on a slow slow machine. (Even slower than the average on the current slashdot poll). Konqueror is a great browser if your IN KDE! Also there is alot of changes since Mozilla 0.9.8 and 1.0 rc1. I find 1.0 rc1 to be about 30% faster then 0.9.9. I really hope next time that they use the lastest browsers.

Pop-ups will return

[mblase]

I use Mozilla to disable auto-popups, and I love it. But it occurs to me that if/when IE integrates this feature, it won't be long before it's worked around.

The problem is that many pages create JavaScript popups when you click on a link, and for this reason Mozilla allows you to enable or disable this separately. There are many reasons you would want to enable click-triggered popups, so most folks will want/need to leave this on.

Well, I've written a couple of sites where a user clicks on a link, and JS triggers a popup as well as opening up the desired page. This is done intentionally and for functional reasons; but it's only a matter of time before someone at Geocities or Angelfire figures out how to rewrite a user's page so that every single link triggers a popup in addition to opening the desired hyperlink.

It would only take a few lines of server-side scripting; a Perl regexp could do it in a second. And then we'll all have to contend with unwanted popups again, opening on the second page of a site instead of the first; only this time we'll have to disable the good popups as well as the bad ones.

Towards that end, I dearly hope that MS never, ever decides to add pop-up blocking to their browser. As long as they have over 50% usage 'net-wide and lack this feature, no one will see the need to do any of the above. See, unjust monopolies can be a Good Thing....