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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?"
Only a few minutes ago, I was looking at my IE browser at work, thinking 'If only I could have something like Galeon on Windoze'. Then up pops Pheonix. Wow! I probably won't install the 0.1 release, but hopefully we won't have to wait years for 1.0 to arrive. I'm replacing IE with Mozilla right now.
HH
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is for my gtk theme to take over the Mozilla theme. Widgets and whatnot, not just color. I don't mind having buttons and layout set by moz, but I'd like an integrated feel, like it's part of the system... esp since it's the app I use most. I won't use galeon, mainly because it doesn't have some of the bells and whistles that mozilla does(that I do use).
Is this just YAGBB (Yet Another Gecko Based Browser) or will this be the start of a modularization of the Mozilla browser???
I am a happy user of Mozilla, but i dislike the monolithic approach of integrating browser, mailreader, newsreader, composer and you name it into one executable. What happened to the old and proven Unix approach of "Do only one thing, but do it well!"?
I hope Mozilla in the future will be split into a suite of components, that work well together and with a consistent interface.
If I.E. does what you want, then why do you feel the need to switch?
Opera is much slower. I heard how fast Opera was, so I downloaded it and watching as the images diffused before my eyes.
From what I can tell, Mozilla and the rest are constructing the page offscreen, then flipping it into view all at once. Opera seems to construct the page in pieces. With Mozilla and the like, It seems there is more delay before the page actually begins to display.
I use Opera almost exclusively, but I just downloaded Mozilla 1.1 to see if it was any better than the 1.0 prerelease I tried last. Moz 1.1 is indeed much better, faster loading, etc.
Recent versions of Opera Linux seem to crash a lot more than the 5.0 series did. With Mozilla improving so quickly, and Opera taking so long to stabilize the 6.0 series, I may start using Mozilla more.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I can't seem to find the system requirements anywhere. Is this browser going to be more forgiving on older computers? I doubt it since it still uses XUL, but you never know...
I love everything open source, but yet I am the slashdot's troll's cliche since I use windows as my main OS, albeit a pirated version of XP. So, I figured I should at least switch to Moz. I made the commitment to try moz as my only browser for two weeks and to only use IE if I needed it.
.rar, .wmv, etc. and just have the file not downloaded, but opened in a new window or tab. I see where I can add such mime types, but this should be done already.
So far, Ive been very disapointed
First, I dont know what all this hubub about tabbed browsing and mouse gestures has been. W/o a quick way to cycle through my tabs, w/o being to have a tab be automagically reloaded, w/o a keyboard shortcut to close the tab, I dont see why opening multiple windows and using the WinXP group programs feature isn't any better.
Second, the auto-scroll Moz bug has been around forever. Every time Ive been on another computer and browsed in IE, I realiz how often I use that feature. It drives me crazy not having it in Moz.
Third, maybe I can w/ a theme, but I can not quickly move and re-arrange my bars like I can in IE. Luckily there is a google bar (kinda) for moz now, but since it has to sit stacked w/ the other bars and I can not combine, I don't use it.
Fourth is rendering. I know this is due to sites doing best viewed in IE, but when I need to read a bug report on microsoft.com, or a story is only at CNN.com, I need to be able to read it. Would it be so wrong to add in what is needed so IE pages render correctly? On top of that its very anoying when I go to some sites to be told I have to have such and such browser. Again, its the fault of the webmaster, but it screws me.
Numero cinco. Mime types. It is really anoying to click on links like
6. Form and password management. If more then one person used my computer, ever, I would think the password manager in Mozilla is great. However, I am the only user and its really anoying having to enter a password every time to save the time of entering a password. I also notice that some forms (ie the google search) do not auto fill, or show me what I have entered there in the past, even though I have that option turned on.
7. Mouse gestures were a joke. Every time I wanted to highlight something, and then copy it, the gestures decided I wanted to close Moz. I could have saved this with a modified key, but then what is the point of the gesture if I have to hit my keyboard?
8. Until I hunted it down, Moz would not let me use anything other then composer for mailto: links. This I was able to fix, but it was not cool.
9. This one seems to make no sense what-so-ever but I think is my last main complaint about Moz. Last night I wanted to download a patch from fileshack. So, I started the download in Moz and noticed I was only getting 50KB/s. Normally, I get somewhere around 300. So, I fired up explorer.exe, hit fileshack, and started another download at the same time, and downloaded it very quickly at a full 300KB/s. I tried this with different sites and different downloads (inc http and ftp), and each time Moz was comming up as one slow download.
10. One last thing that relates to this article is speed. After I have moz open and have gone through a few tabs and few windows, I check mem usage and Moz is using over 40megs and is running 20-30% cpu usage. IE never did that.
So, I dont think this is the FINAL gripe about Moz, at least not from me. Ill finish out my two weeks, but I can't wait to get back to IE. I am just as anxious to try Moz again after the next big release.
PS - A cookie import would have been a good feature too.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
there are a few simple things that would make it feel so much faster....
1) Cache a picture of a blank page instead of mucking about drawing everything from first principles every time. Show this (or whichever part the user has chosen to start up with) FIRST before doing anything else. It doesn't matter if the thing isn't clickable yet, there is plenty of time to get to that stage while the user is moving the mouse. Buffen any clicks the user manages to make before you are ready and they will never notice.
2) Accept and buffer keyboard input while pages are drawing. I get so annoyed that I can't fetch one page and then get a new browser window to open - even Netscape 4 let me do this!
3) Cache the way the mail window looks and restore to that when it's opened (see point 1)
Things like this would give an impression of improved speed with practically no change in the actual code. Hell, you could even take the startup pic away earlier in the loading process and it would make the thing feel faster!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I just downloaded the app for Win and took it for a spin. Very stable.
Ehhh...how can you say something is "very stable" when you just downloaded it? I'm not saying it isn't, but from the obviously short time you must have used it, you simply can't have any idea about whether it is "very stable".
This all started with Apple's QT 4 player, which completely broke the highly regarded Apple Human Interface Guidelines and was put onto the Interface Hall of Shame just for that. Then Winamp came out, creating one of the first in-app skinnable applications, which is cool, but led everyone to release skinnable apps, such as Windows Media Player, and a lot of similar ones on the *NIX side. Sure, it's a media player, you don't interact with it like a word processor or the like, but there's something to be said about interface consistancy when teaching computers to newbies. That's why it's odd that Apple broke that mold with QT4, as they lived and died by the HIG in their efforts to promote the Mac system.
Now with MOz's interface scheme, as with a lot of other cross-platform libraries like Java, QT, etc, it doesn't tie into the OS control toolkit and instead relies on drawing it's own widgets. To do the former would have to break cross-platform ability (I've yet to see a fully cross-platform system that uses the system's native toolkit, mostly due to lack of certain features in some kits compared with others. Even those that try to do this typically have to hard code certain settings that the user would normally be able to change -- I have a friend (hi paul!) that typically likes light text on black, and it's amazing how many Windows-native programs alone don't use the system colors, or use them inconsistantly as to make programs unusable.) It's understandable that WORA is a lofty goal, but there should be more push to try to provide some system native level that can be easily built without too much problem. For example, Nethack is a good example where out of the entire source tree, only a few special files are needed for supporting a different interface, including text and graphic variations; someone even pasted a Diablo-like orthorhomic few on top of the Nethack code, by only adding the appropriate hooks for that GUI. I'd rather see more effort here with Moz and other programs to provide this, though with much effort, than to keep on reinventing customization wheels that are inconsistant with the OS's customization.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
What is the point of developing another nerdy XUL based Mozilla browser? Have the lessons of the Mozilla project not yet been understood? Some of the biggest weaknesses of the Mozilla browser can be attributed back to XUL. XUL enables cross platform applications to be quickly built, but for this developer convenience the biggest trade off for your end users is that your application will never fully conform to the native user interface of the operating system it is run on. A secondary concern is the memory and processor cost of the XUL layer - no one wants a fat and slow browser, caused by having to compile and run a Java Script based user interface at runtime.
Why doesn't the Mozilla project develop fully native user interfaces around the Gecko HTML rendering engine instead of wasting precious time and development resources on another dead-end XUL based browser. A number of separate teams have already started such projects independently (Chimera, K-Meleon & Galeon). The Mozilla team need to refocus their efforts from developing half-caste XUL based browsers toward building native front-ends for each operating system that can complete head-on with the more popular commercial browsers. An XUL based application will just never cut it for the masses.
I'm having a heck of a time finding a lean browser to run on this thing. I haven't even attempted Mozilla. Galeon is too big, sending my poor machine deep into swap. I tried downloading Opera, but it kept complaining about not finding the right version of libXm.so, even with the statically-linked version.
I see lots of talk about how fast this Phoenix is, but I've yet to see *any* mention about its memory footprint. Is it really lean, or is it simply lean as compared to Mozilla?
I now have dillo running, and it looks promising. Any other suggestions?
(No, buying a new computer is not an option. I remember running browsers on my old 486, so this shouldn't be impossible!)
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I don't consider Galeon to really be "lean" in this context. Galeon *requires* mozilla to be installed. The whole thing. so instead of 1 browser on your lean box, you have 2. This isn't very efficient.
Mozilla should publish geko as a library that galeon can use/include then you only need galeon. Galeon 2 wouldn't have to wait for mozilla to catch up to gtk2 and so forth. and THEN, and only THEN would it be a "lean" browser.
Don't get me wrong, Galeon is great. it's my default browser, but having it require another browser in it's entirety is not "lean".
-- DuckWing
Chimera also is an 8 meg download that expands to a 25+ meg executable.
iCab, another lean browser for the Mac, weighs in at about a 2.3 meg download that expands to about five megs (not exactly sure on those figures, I am not at my OS X box).
Feature for feature, I would put it with any browser. About the only thing that it does not have is tabbed browsing, but it makes up for that with some of the most complete filtering and security you could imagine. I use Chimera for the few sites that iCab does not work with, and I keep wanting to go back to iCab.
Want to save your Slashdot cookie forever, reject all Doubleclick cookies, save apple.com cookies until the end of the session, and be prompted for all others? You can do that.
Want pop-ups to work on this site, but not on that one? Done.
Want "Open in rear window" as a contextual menu option? Done.
Want BestBuy.com to know you as using a Mozilla client so their stupid DB pages work and everyone else to see iCab, without ever having to manually switch? Done.
Want to never send "Referrer" headers except for the stupid sites that require it, or to just send referred headers within the same domain? Done.
Want to completely turn JavaScript off on this site, but leave it on for all other sites without manually changing it before entering the site? Done.
Want to reject all images from DoubleClick? Done.
Want a browser so HTML compliant it ships with a validator? Done.
A five meg browser can do all of this on MacOS X and Mac OS 8/9.
This is the type of browser I want to see.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
With Slashdot open, Phoenix takes up 21MB of RAM. Under the same conditions, K-Meleon 0.6 is using up 11MB and Opera 6.0 w/o Java uses 8MB. All three seemed to take about the same amount of time to start.
Does any of this really mean anything? I my unscientific and statistically insignificant conclusion is that it's a great effort, but it would be nice if Phoenix were even leaner and faster. 21MB is not insignificant.
I'd like to think that even in this day and age an old P166MMX, 80MB EDO, NT4 is still good enough to surf the web. (Mozilla 1.1 is essentially unusable on this dinosaur.)
Even if it doesn't really make a difference as a practical matter, I would hope these bragging rights still mean something to the anti-bloat coder.
"Mozilla Jumps on 'Lean Browser' Bandwagon"
(emphasis mine)
What other browsers are (or at least claim to be) part of this "bandwagon" besides Opera? If none other than Opera exist, I think it to be quite an insult for this wise drive in the right direction to be relegated to bandwagon-hopping.