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Phoenix 0.2 Web Browser: Lean, Mean Mozilla
GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit reviews the Phoenix 0.2 web browser: 'I've never been a huge fan of the Mozilla web browser. It's too big and too slow in my opinion. I like the Opera web browser a lot, but it is closed source, ad supported (for the free version) or costs money (if you want to get rid of the banner ads). Opera is almost exactly what I'm looking for in a web browser as far as features are concerned: fast, browser window tabs, mouse gesturing, and I can configure the interface a little. It has its problems, no doubt. Java and Javascript are big tripping points for it to name just a few. But speed is what I'm looking for.
Then along comes Mozilla's Phoenix web browser.
Phoenix still uses a lot of the Mozilla code. In fact, Phoenix code is based completely on Mozilla code, so the development should move rather quickly. Here is a link to a road map for what it's developers think is a close time-line for its development. Although still in heavy development, I have found Phoenix quite useable and stable even in the early 0.2 release and I continue to download the nightly release every day.'"
I just finished tweaking it 10 seconds ago under Mandrake 9.
I LOVE IT!
The best thing is that I can customize it so that in full screen mode, my most common bookmarks, an address bar, a google search bar, a go button, and navigation buttons are all in one thin line up at the top freeing all my screen space!
It's also the fastest browser I've ever used under either Linux or WinXP and (in the 10 seconds I've had to use it) seemingly solid.
There is only one thing missing that may force me back to mozilla: the inability to "block images from this server," i.e., to get rid of ads.
I've been using since 0.1 was announced (I know, that's like two weeks) and I've been quite pleased. Layout on cnn.com is pretty fscked up, but other than that it works tremendously well. It's now my primary browser.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
From the looks of it, the browser just seems like they took out the navigator part of Mozilla, and optimized it for speed, while keeping it Mozilla(not like Chimera, Galeon, and K-meleon that use thier native OS environments to gain speed). IF they can do this to navigator, why can't they just do it to all the parts like this and bundle them together. I know that there is the whole platform thing, but for Netscape, it looks like Pheonix is the way to go.
It's small, (300K), fast, and free. What else could you possibly want?
I have found Mozilla to be quite sluggish in many areas. Most noticeable is opening a new window or opening a link in a new window... and for me that is unaceptable. This continues to happen even with very recent builds. I started using Phoenix a couple days ago and, while it does crash on me every now and then, at least things happen when I tell them to happen. Shoot, Phoenix opens faster without any Quicklaunch crap than mozilla did with it! (And this is on windows... and on several different machines from a 450 mhz up to a 1.7Ghz AMD with a gig of RAM.)
when you run the mozilla installer, just don't install all the things like mail, composer, etc. it loads much faster. IMHO of course.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
You're right, I never even considered that. I think I'm starting to blur the lines between Alpha/Beta/Release, and I know I'm starting to ignore version numbers. (eg. Mozilla 1.0 ~= Netscape 7.0)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Well, all i can say is, im hooked. Im a web developer, and thus in my days i get to look at a lot of browsers, and i can say this:
Pheonix is the only browser that has come close to tempting me away from IE!
All i can say is, its fantastic. Small, lightweight. Has jsut the features i use, and is clean as well.
It even makes fonts look good etc. I think ill be sticking for the time being, and i will certainly be following the development closely from now on!
or are trying to compare Moz for Linux (which is =much= slower than it's Windows counterpart)
Why is that?
Mozilla is slower in some areas. I use Mozilla daily. :)
3
Loading large tables and large quanity of images (thumbnails) are slower than IE. Download pre-buffering actually becomes a problem when you download large files, due to it downloading in your temp dir, then moving the file after its completed. Boris Zbarsky said a fix might land in around 1.3'ish http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12992
There are a few other slow downs in mozilla, but most are thread releated. 1 active tab can freeze mozilla, etc.. (I would like to see downloads spawn into a seperate process...)
That being said, the Mozilla developers are top notch in fixing bugs and user interaction. They have always been kind in replying and educating the users.
On Linux, Phoenix has a long way to go before it fetches me away from Galeon. However, it's the first browser on Win32 that's really compelled me to consider switching from IE. While Mozilla is technically faster on Win32, to me it's never really 'felt' faster than IE. Phoenix wipes the floor with Mozilla and IE in the speed department.
If you're running Win32, you can use StrokeIT for mouse gestures on this otherwise feature-lite browser.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Most people do understand the difference between tabs and Opera's "workspace" approach.
:)
They're both MDI, though - "multiple document interface". They just accomplish the same goal in different ways
That being said, most people absolutely abhor window-in-window MDI.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
IE is better. Unlike Mozilla, the bookmarks menu appears the moment you click it. Also, it takes about 3-4 seconds for the download window to close in Mozilla. Because it uses 100% of the CPU cycles closing the freakin' window, the entire application is unresponsive during that period, and this is on an 1.53ghz Athlon. Yeesh.
I can't figure out what the fuss is all about. I just ran it on my machine, with little improvement.
First of all, let me say how I tested it. I am running Gentoo linux on a PIII-500, which is lucky enough to have someone who distributed the source to it for us. So I compiled it and started trying to use it.
My previous browser was (and now is again) Galeon.
Everything worked pretty well: I downloaded mouse gestures (and then changed permissions so that they would work without being root), and advanced tabbed browsing, and was generally impressed.
But then I checked on the speed thing that everyone touts by
1) Opening a bunch of tabs and switching between them.
2) Going back and forward rapidly in the browser history
3) Running some javascript animations
Then I ran gnome-system-monitor (which can detect threads, unlike top), and checked on the memory requirements.
Know what I found with all of this? Its seems to run the same speed as galeon. It takes about 25MB on my system, and runs about the same speed.
Now, both of these two do run faster and with smaller memory requirements than Mozilla, but...we should probably compare it to all Mozilla variations to see if its doing something unique in the open source world.
The reason I switched back to galeon is because Galeon has all of the features that Phoenix does, PLUS it has smart bookmarks (so that you can search google, freshmeat, dogpile, slackware, etc).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I have found Mozilla to be quite sluggish in many areas.
Me too. It's mostly UI slowness. When I type into the URL box, I don't expect latency!
Another thing is the terribly jerky scrolling.
I use Opera. Main things I Opera has that Mozilla lacks, IMO... UI snappiness, smooth scrolling, and the ability to magnify web pages. Don't reply that you can change the font sizes of the web pages, unless you have used Opera's magnify, you won't know what I mean. Opera changes not just the fonts, but magnifies *everything*... graphics, flash plugins, anything. This is a real boon for accessibility, or for people like me that have good vision but hate to squint to read tiny web pages.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
While I agree with a previous poster in that the "light browser" is really a myth and Phoenix will eventually get bloated and there is nothing wrong with that, I also think that the real advantage of Phoenix is that they can improve the old and not so intuitive User Interface that Mozilla inherited from Netscape.
Mozilla, and for that matter Netscape >= 6, was designed as we know from the ground up with a greatly improved, new codebase. But they kept the same UI to make sure the old users wouldn't freak out. I won't argue whether that was a good decision. But I think that Phoenix has nothing to inherit and should go ahead and put all the effort on an improved UI. That by itself will make the effort worthwhile.
My 1.99 cts
I think that's a cool idea. (BTW, I posted the parent to your post... forgot to login.) One other thing that bugs me is not only the speed of opening a new page, but how long it takes me to be able to do a Ctrl-L to go to a new location in that page. Grrr.
Phoenix 0.2 does not feel like a "0.2" release!
... a good choice. Why does Mozilla still default to the ugly old NS look? :) (I say that as someone who like Mozilla a whole lot, but I've never heard anyone say they preferred the NS look vs. for istance "Modern," which also ships with standard Moz.)
I happen to like the Orbitz theme, too --- small, clean, unobtrusive
One thing about Orbitz/Phoenix is that tabs are less distinguishable than they are with Modern (and most other themes) -- it takes some peering to figure out which tab is active, which makes it too easy to close an active tab accidentally.
Phoenix starts fast, stays fast. I've had it freeze up once or twice in the last week, but Hey, I guess that's where the 0.2 comes in. (I remember when Mozilla would freeze a lot more than that, though it hasn't in a long time, for me.)
Also, unlike regular Mozilla, it has smarter tabbed browsing default settings, but I wish they would also include smarter Scripts settings, and *not* allow pages to hijack your browser by default.
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I use the 1.2 Alpha version of Mozilla and it feels faster than the 1.1 stable release. I can't see a browser going much faster...plus this version has so bug fixes that make certain pages scroll smoother.
SIGFAULT
[IE] crashes perhaps once-twice a month on average
Is that a plus or a minus? Mozilla never crashes on me, so I have to wonder why you think a crash per month is good. Maybe you're one of those people who just "accepts the fact that computers crash" to which I say, "I'm very, very sorry for you."
I just saved all three pages you mentioned, and all their graphics, to disk and had my local Apache serve them to IE and Moz. All three pages loaded basically instantaneously in IE, with maybe a 1/2 second lag in Moz. I don't consider this significant, and in real-world use it's not noticeable. Actually, no. A red herring would be, "IE starts faster than Mozilla in Windows therefore IE is faster." My example was a well-controlled test with few variables. Perhaps it didn't test what you'd like, but I think it was fair.
The point seems to be that either you have a wretchedly slow computer, or you don't understand how to test rendering speed.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
99.99% of pages always render right (because designers have to test with it),
99.9% of pages render right on it because in the past they had to use it. My site conforms to W3C standard precisely and as a result it fails to render properly in IE6. Oh well. Mozilla renders my site perfectly (along with every other w3c-compliant browser out there). As long as myself and other fellow web-designers develop with compliance in mind, it appears that MSFT will be the one playing "catch up". Unless of course, they decide to "embrace by abandoning" features of the standard they don't agree with.
and it is extremely stable -- crashes perhaps once-twice a month on average.
Crashes what? The browser crashes, or the browser crashes your system? With IE6 I can see how this is a concern. Hence, another reason why I choose Mozilla. Coupled with all the extra features that it offers and portability, I've finally replaced IE forever. MSFT will likely _NEVER_ offer a popup-killer option because too many of their corporate rapists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H bedfellows wouldn't allow it.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
AFAIK this depends too in the gcc linker, the optimization is broken and that's the reason the binaries are so big, compared to, ms VC++ for example. (1.2 MB vs 300k)
This is a very good project to undertake, and can benefit all the software that uses GCC as compiler (more in the C++ side that C, I think).
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Someone working on the UI of Phoenix must use OS X on a daily basis eh? When you try to customize the toolbar, you get the "Tool Bar Configuration" pane slide down from the menu, just like the way it is in OS X! You can also add extra "flexible space" on either in the tool bar, so you can "float" the buttons in the center. (I always thought this is more efficient) I was surprised to see this sliding pane when I tried out 0.1.
:) Will this make it into 0.3?
Now if they can only do that with the Preference pane as well...
(I'm only using the windows version of 0.2 right now, so I'm not sure if this applies to the linux version)
I have a number of different browsers installed:
* Mozilla - I never use. Way too slow. Takes around 30 secs to open up a browser window first time. Still slow after that on my machine
* K-Meleon - used to use this instead of IE when (a) I wanted something fast and (b) on sites that crash IE (quite a few on my machine). It loads first time in the same time as a preloaded IE. Lightening fast
* Phoenix - definately replacement for above. Loads around 10secs first time but after that it's instantaneous (as opposed to IE still taking around 4 secs each new window).
I'll be gradually moving all my bookmarks from IE to Phoenix and using that for all my browsing, keeping IE for testing the sites I work on and the occasional site that Phoenix doesn't render (if I ever find one). I am *very* impressed with Phoenix.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France