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.'"

Comments

But why not just use Dillo

[Anonymous Coward]

Dillo

It's small, (300K), fast, and free. What else could you possibly want?

I like it too, but...

[fireboy1919]

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).