Mozilla Jumps on 'Lean Browser' Bandwagon

fader writes "Following in the footsteps of fast (and often fantastic) wrappers around Gecko (the Mozilla rendering engine), Mozilla has just released their own lightweight browser, Phoenix. Only Phoenix will still use XUL, the cross-platform markup language used for the current Mozilla interface. Will it still be fast enough to overcome the final gripe about Mozilla, namely that it's just too slow?"

Comments

I timed it

[Publicus]

If you allow Mozilla to load itself into memory for faster startup times (only fair considering IE does it without asking) you'll find that you can get a page loaded faster with mozilla.

I tried it using both browsers on the same site with my machine at work. The difference was on the order of seconds...

IE is junk compared to mozilla. Also, the Orbit theme rocks! Take a look here.

Re:I timed it

[ivan256]

Trust me, it is not my machine, nor is it the dozens of other machines I have tried it on.

/me types this into Mozilla 1.0.1 on Win2K

The only time I have to wait for anything on my Win2K box (Mozilla included) is when it's spun the hard drives down due to 3 hours on inactivity. With quick launch, the limiting factor in getting Mozilla on the screen is my video card, and I have a Geforce 4 Ti 4200. If I had to guess I'd say it taks 3-4 frames to come up at 1600x1200x85Hz. Granted, my machine is a little faster than most,(Dual XP1800+ w/1GB RAM) but even on older hardware, quick launch should bring up mozilla before you can get your mouse from the start menu to the address bar. It sounds to me like your probelm is that you've got like 128Mb of RAM, and a slowass hard drive, and all your system memory is being used by the OS. (Win2K uses ~100MB of memory on my system without anything loaded right after boot.)

If you include page loads in the timing between IE and Mozilla, it's no contest. Slashdot is loaded practically instantly in Mozilla, and takes seconds to render in IE.

You've only tried really low end Win2K boxes, haven't you?

Re:Gripe

[Jugalator]

The Mozilla IE Theme looks pretty much like IE to me, and I'm using IE regularly.

Of course won't solve the shortcut problems and if it's not customizable by editing some file (anyone know?), then I hope the Mozilla team will have that in 1.3 or so.

Just installed and tried it...

[Elledan]

It feels... smoother than Mozilla, loads pages a bit faster (or at least doesn't hang for nearly a second when switching between apps while the page is loading), and it uses fewer resources:

Currently Mozilla (1.1) is using 32,852 kb of RAM, while Phoenix (phoenix.exe) is using 25,188 kb. This without any additional tabs/windows open.

There's only the fact that many, many preferences are not accessible yet (although many are enabled by default), but that is to be expected from an 0.1 release.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on this project :)

Screenshot

[Jodrell]

Here's a screenshot of Phoenix (mirrored here), if you're interested (via Google).

Tried it.

[DeadSea]

They cut out a lot of the Mozilla's best features to make a smaller browser. There is a note in the prefs under advanced saying "your favorite features will be here soon".

Gone:

• Themes. This browser has yellow buttons that look pretty good but a bit bright. You can go in the prefs and rearrange the buttons with drag and drop or choose small icons.
• Ability to block popups without disabling javascript.
• Fine grained cookie management. No more "alert me" and "remember this decision".
• Sidebar
• Chatzilla, Mail, Composer
• Site Navigation Bar

Still there:

• Bookmarks and bookmarks manager
• History
• Javascript Conole
• Download Manager
• Search plugins
• Tabbed browsing
• Cache

Since my computer is fast enough and has enough memory to run Mozilla, I don't notice that Phoenix loads faster. An older computer with less memory would probably be a better test. Since my favorite privacy features are missing, I have no intention of switching, but if it runs faster on older computers I would recommend it for that. (Please try it on something slow and report.) It might also be appropriate for somebody who wants "just a browser" because of the lack of other applications. The lack of these applications seems to only save a couple megs of download, again I'll take the full featured Mozilla.

Re:Tried it.

[mwa]

There is a note in the prefs under advanced saying "your favorite features will be here soon".

Just for grins, I copied my Mozilla prefs.js over the phoenix version. Theming doesn't work, but the proxy and tab preferences do and it appears to ignore onLoad for popups as well. Apparently, the Edit preferences ability is not done, but using the prefs.js does.

Re:Gripe

[benwb]

I'm at home right now so I don't have a windows box in front of me, but I'm pretty sure IE will find next by hitting F3

This is version 0.1, *not* 1.0

[TomatoMan]

This is not a finished product by any means, although the /. story says it's "released." It's the FIRST release, version 0.1, missing many features; 0.2 is in development now. Also, there's no mac version yet.

Re:This is version 0.1, *not* 1.0

[jacobito]

There will be no Mac version. The Chimera project fills that niche (with a Cocoa UI, to boot).

Re:I recently "made the switch"

[Luyseyal]

Eh, I'm not sure if your Windows shortcuts will be the same as my Linux ones, but here goes...

1. cycle tabs: ctrl+pgup, ctrl+pgdown. Auto Reload: (not sure. you can do it in Galeon.). Close tab: ctrl+w. No clue about the XP group feature. Is it anything like window groups in Enlightenment?
2. no idea
3. yeah, Galeon allows you to rearrange the menu bars. Moz doesn't appear to on first glance. For stuff like the Google bar, you don't really need the Google bar since the Location bar will fwd the request to Google and open the results in a new tab.
4. IE-specific code: no it's not fixable. If we cede control of standards to Microsoft, Moz will forever be playing the catch-up game. It would be helpful to have a quickie option to make the browser lie and say it's IE, just like Opera.
5. No idea how MIME is handled on the windows builds.
6. Edit, Preferences, Privacy & Security, Master Password. Customize to your heart's content. RE: autofill, I wonder if this is an IE bug where it autofills stuff it's not supposed to cache. Not sure.
7. One reason why I don't use em. :)
8. Isn't that an option in the Windows installer? If not, seems like it should be.
9. There's another post on how to fix this. You'd think this would be an installer option...
10. My understanding is that IE lies about its memory usage. It also can cheat and use undocumented APIs and other tricks to make the kernel favor it.

so anyway, I hope this helps, even if just a litttle...

-l

Re:Gripe

[DrXym]

I believe it used to, but nowadays it opens their search sidepanel. The IE online help lists no shortcut for doing a Find Again which is a pretty lame omission if you ask me. And this is typical all the way through IE and OE.

Re:Adding proxy in prefs.js doesn't work?

[Eagle7]

Ok, got it, you need to make sure you have:

user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);

or

user_pref("network.proxy.type", 1);

depending on if you want auto (2) or manual (1).

Re:Mozilla's Biggest Problem -- Poor Branding.

[mr3038]

Mozilla needs some marketing oriented types instead of more nerds.

Ever heard of company called "Netscape"? Mozilla isn't meant for end users. Quote:

Mozilla is an open-source web browser and toolkit, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. Mozilla.org provides binaries for testing and feedback.

(emphasis mine)

Ever heard of "security"?

[FyRE666]

Since there are new security exploits appearing for IE almost every month/week/few hours, unless you cripple the browser by turning off all scripting/java/activeX controls etc, you're likely to end up with a virus or shitload of marketing crap all over your harddrive eventually.

I still use it, and have now added entries in my local DNS server to block out links to gator etc as I got sick of uninstalling their redirect garbage.

Besides which, MS is the beast, as we all know and using their browser just encourages them...

Re:Gripe

[Tekai]

next try, i think theres a bug in the comment system code, preview as plain old text killed my link although i noticed my mistake and set it to HTML Formatted. Here is the url: http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys

Re:XUL is holding back Mozilla project

[rycamor]

Wrong. There are many more at MozDev, as well as links to other Mozilla/XUL sites. Also Komodo , a commercial product was written with Mozilla. Activestate is actually making money with this.

O'reilly is taking this seriously. Maybe they know something you don't ;-)?