Phoenix 0.3 Is Out

David Tansey writes "The Mozilla-based stripped down browser has now reached binary release 0.3. They are ripping out all the mail and news functions, composer functions, and IRC functions. The point is to work against the 'monolitic' mozilla trunk and make a browser, not a suite. I've noticed that it now uses considerably less memory than Mozilla uses and loads faster. Check it out here."

Comments

moderate

[10 Speed]

if only I could moderate the guys doing this...a browser that only browses, small, lean and fast. Such a great idea...(+5 sensible)

Re:moderate

[khuber]

The silly thing is that they have to work backwards. If the developers would have done a better job up front it would have been easier now.

-Kevin

Interaction, not Merging

[e8johan]

Great work! I think that this is the direction to move - lots of small(?) apps, one for each purpose. What is needed is a smart way of letting applications interact (DCOP anyone?), instead of merging them into huge projects.

This was actually the original UNIX philosopy, lots of small tools interacting to achieve something complex. Let us bring this idea to the desktop and create the most flexible, powerful, easy-to-use desktop ever seen.

Re:Interaction, not Merging

[IamTheRealMike]

This was actually the original UNIX philosopy, lots of small tools interacting to achieve something complex. Let us bring this idea to the desktop and create the most flexible, powerful, easy-to-use desktop ever seen.

And is still continued today ... the difference? The components are no longer split along process lines and don't communicate using pipes and stdin/stdout. They use the fantastically more powerful mechanisms of XPCOM/CORBA etc.

I've seen this a lot. Out comes a new GNOME/KDE release, people moan and say "What happened to the unix philosophy of small tools?" They are alive and kicking, but those tools have now transcended the arbitrary limitations of text streams.

I've even seen this in reference to Emacs! People kick Emacs for its bloat, but at least if you get XEmacs everything is modular and packaged. You just pick the functionality you want right off. It's all componentized along lisp functions.

Why do people think modularity stops at the command line? It's alive and well, especially in Linux which has to be the most modular OS in history.

It should be noted that DCOP is hardly an advanced rpc protocol. In particular, it's tied to Qt, and is text based (iirc). Something like CORBA is better, but unfortunately is much harder to setup and understand. Hopefully some day somebody will build an object model that doesn't suck.

And as a side note, at least on Windows, Mozilla has been just as fast as IE for ages now. Using QuickStart makes startup instant, although here at work I never bothered switching it on as it starts quickly enough for me anyway. Pheonix is worth more as a test bed for experimental UI design that a "light" browser, as it'll end up becoming heavy as time goes on anyway.

Re:Interaction, not Merging

[stilborne]

dcop is not tied to Qt. there is a C implementation of dcop that has nary a trace of Qt in it distributed with kdelibs.

and while you are correct that DCOP is fairly simple and less featureful than something like CORBA (which, given the context for DCOP isn't necessarily a bad thing), it can and does send/recv binary data

Re:Interaction, not Merging

[richie2000]

The Microsoft approach you mention is a bit misleading - all of those apps use the same basic functionality that's built into the OS kernel - one large, stinking glob of code. What you percieve as different apps is little more than different front-ends for the API/DLL-hell that's Windows. But, they still need each other - try to uninstall OE but keep IE and Messenger. Or completely replace OE with the full Outbreak from Office. The dependencies are just hidden from plain view.

That said, I think Mozilla does leave too big a footprint. I remember back in the Good Old Days you could get Netscape Navigator and Communicator as separate packages. I'd actually like a lean Mozilla browser and a separate Mozilla mail app. No webpage creation, no messenger, no chat/irc. I'll definitely keep an eye on Phoenix.

Re:Interaction, not Merging

[gazbo]

all of those apps use the same basic functionality that's built into the OS kernel - one large, stinking glob of code.

Would that be the Windows NT microkernel?

Yeah, it is horribly bloated. Imagine how bloated and crap an OS with a (by definition) much larger monolithic kernel would be.

good idea and

[i_luv_linux]

Getting rid of unrelated stuff may help, but I believe they should also get rid of that skinnable interface thing. It just makes everything slower. I don't think that people give any importance to skins on their browsers. It is certainly not a plus at all, but it is a negative because it makes the browser a little bit more unresponsive because it redraws every detail there.

Re:good idea and

[TheAJofOZ]

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I got into a discussion/argument with a Mozilla developer over the benefits of native widgits, versus rolling your own when OpenOffice first came out (it started as a discussion on whether OpenOffice should use native widgets or not).

My prediction then was that Mozilla would have no chance on Mac OS if it didn't use native widgets nor would it be looked upon too kindly by Windows users. I was right. Chimera (Mozilla using native widgets) is about as popular as Mozilla on OS X and it's only at 0.5.

Developers, pay heed! You must use native widgets or you are doomed to look bad everywhere! You can't just create a skin and expect it to look and feel right.

Oh and yes, I agree WinAMP should be shot for starting that craze (though otherwise it's not a bad MP3 player).

Re:good idea and

[i_luv_linux]

WinAmp thing is a totally different issue. WinAmp is about entertaining people. You look at it and while the music is playing the skin looks cool. But on the internet, you don't really care about your browser's skin. Why do we have full screen mode in the browsers if the skin issue was that important. Full screen idea undermines the claim that skin is important. Obviously people don't want to see the skin of the browser. While I am reading slashdot I don't remember really how my browser looks like, and I don't care about it.

Re:good idea and

[TheAJofOZ]

And yet Apple does just that. Quicktime, iCal, iChat, iTunes.. all Brushed Steel, not Aqua. IE 5.5 on the Mac sure as hell doesn't use native widgets either.

Erm, actually, they all use native widgets. You can make your app look like that too just by checking a box in interface builder.

Microsoft does it too.. MS Office and WMP don't use the standard Win32 widgets.

There are millions of Office users out there that say Office looks good and definately "feels right".

Two flaws with this - 1. MS make the OS, so any widget they care to make is effectively native, even if it's not available to other applications. 2. Office for at least the great majority of things does use native widgets, there may be a few things that are custom built but certainly not everything.

And where do you get that? Everyone I've talked to says Chimera is very obviously beta software... no polish. You haven't any stats that show Chimera is even half as popular as Mozilla on OSX?

Everyone I've talked to says that Chimera is very good, though still not feature complete. You may wish to check the front page of www.macosxhints.com today for just one such comment.

Re:good idea and

[Planesdragon]

Office for at least the great majority of things does use native widgets, there may be a few things that are custom built but certainly not everything.

No?

* Open / Save dialogue
* Find dialogue (part of "open.)
* Toolbars
* Menu bars

How again does it use native widgets?

Phoenix is cool and all...

[Longinus]

...but I hardly think we need to a new story notifying us of every new release (especially in these early alpha stages of binary only stuff). This is the forth Phoenix story (1, 2, 3, including a repeat) since its release, so how about we give it a break until a big milestone is hit?

Re:Phoenix is cool and all...

[Jugalator]

- Phoenix is neither in alpha, nor beta stages AFAIK. Note it just says "Phoenix 0.3". I could be wrong here though if I missed anything saying it was alpha/beta.

- Phoenix doesn't follow the Microsoft/AOL-style version inflation. If it would, we would have version 3.0 final by now. Bug fixing and polish will start in the next version. See also the roadmap.

Monolith

[yellowcord]

Whats up with the monolithic Mozilla anyway? My understanding is that the UNIX philosophy is/was supposed to be to design programs to do one thing well. Admittedly Mozilla (Netscape) is aimed primarily at windows users but why is it that Mozilla has all that crap? Mail (and Address book) I can understand, but Composer and IRC Chat? Come on now. Why don't the core group work on a stand alone browser instead of having to wait for Galeon and Phoenix to catch up?

Re:But I *like* those functions...

[ProfessorPuke]

Have you tried Phoenix? It seems that you're not quite sure what it is. I use Debian, and it's mozilla packages are broken up into separate mozilla-browser and mozilla-mailnews components that can be installed independently.

Yet, I'm running Phoenix right now (after it was introduced to /. last week). Its much more (less?) than the mozilla browser by itself. I'm not clear on the technical details (it runs too well for me to need to dig into it), but they've apparently sacrified flexibility and over-abundant options for speed/compactness. There's no preference option to install new GUI themes, for instance, so possibly lots of XUL stuff has been simplified/eliminated. Also things like download manager & password manager have been removed, at least for now.

Re:Soon there will be nothing left

[Sn4xx0r]

They are ripping out all the mail and news functions, composer functions, and IRC functions.

There's a bit more to it then that. They are also recoding a lot of the browser interface, for speed enhancement, but also to bring new functionality. Configurable toolbars, for one. A pop-up blocking whitelist, opposed to blocking pop-ups from every site in Mozilla. An extensions manager, just click to install the extension you like (mousegestures, prefbar...no uninstall yet). It's a browser worth watching, IMHO.

Re:But I *like* those functions...

[Graymalkin]

You'd have more of a point if Mozilla wasn't already a huge framework of code. The parts of the Mozilla that make it a browser, mail client, or IRC client are very small compared to the rest of the Mozilla system. If you want just a browser load up Opera or Athena. Complaining about Mozilla being bloated is silly. It is an entire application framework, not merely a web browser app with a mail client.

Re:But I *like* those functions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape jumped on the suite bandwagon; now that that fad is over, why can't they get off?

Netscape INVENTED the suite bandwagon, which is why they couldn't get themselves off it for Mozilla.

Microsoft never had the audacity to think that Outlook Express had to run in the same process space as IE anyway, and neither did anyone else. But for some bogo-strategic reason, Netscape just had to cram it all into one big process and ignore your system-wide URL handler prefs. Having 1 borked page take down all 9 other browser windows AND your mail wasn't too bright, and lots of folks said so early on (here and elsewhere).

Re:Is it worth it?

[NightRain]

Yeah, fair enough, I'm not the target audience. But my point is it doesn't render any faster that I've been able to see, and only really has a noticeable difference in load times. But you load the browser once, and that's it. I don't see the issue over a couple of seconds. So what IS the selling point? I mean 90% of the people that use it will have Mozilla installed anyway, so it doesn't save download bandwidth or the like. I guess I just don't see why it's compelling enough to bother with. If I'm missing something obvious, I welcome the correction.

Ray

Re:Soon there will be nothing left

[RayOfLight]

I just hope that nice things such as a pop-up blocking whitelist will be backported to Mozilla ...

Re:Is it worth it?

[vidarh]

With those memory amounts, it sounds to me like you're quoting the number of virtual pages allocated for the processes... Notice that that includes things like shared libraries that are used across processes, and also a lot of stuff that never will get paged into RAM unless you actually use it. So a lot of the size difference between Mozilla and Phoenix will simply be shared libraries that aren't mapped in, but that you'd never load in Mozilla either unless you actually use one of the features that have been stripped out.

I still like Phoenix, and it does save memory, but make sure you look at the resident set, not virtual pages allocated when you want to judge actual memory usage.

Re:But I *like* those functions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, it may be just me, but that sounds.. silly. using the same components, you might as well just use.. Mozilla.
"Now I've got 3 seperate apps that I want to use that take up 133% of what Moz takes up, and more resources due to the redundancy of the same interface..."
That doesn't sound.. right.
What they need to do is simply modularize MOZILLA itself, from the start. Mail, WebBrowsing, IRC should be plugins to the primary function: Browsing the web.

Re:Is it worth it?

[colinramsay]

It's main selling point for me is that it's a lot more streamlined... smaller install, smaller memory footprint, faster loading and window opening. Plus they've removed everything that I never use- composer, etc. It's simple and so it's beautiful :)

Re:Is it worth it?

[Lozzer]

Mozilla is multi threaded, some linux system monitoring tools don't grok multi threaded so it appears that you get number of active threads x process memory allocated. That said the ratio is probably right, althought the actual memory usage is probably a fifth or a sixth of the value quoted. Then again, maybe you have some huge plugins.

Re:here's what browser needs to me to use it

[ader]

...And you wonder where code bloat comes from.

Ade_
/

Re:Is it worth it?

[wheany]

only really has a noticeable difference in load times.

Exactly! I don't want an email program, a news reader, an HTML editor, a chat program or an IM client with my browser. I use separate programs for those. If they can be plugged in to the browser, good. But I don't want a "forced" install of programs I never use.

Usability Problems

[Anenga]

Phoenix is nice, but the reason I don't use Mozilla/Phoenix is because of cosmetic and usability problems.

I like my browser to mesh with my operating system. Not so far to where the OS doesn't let you uninstall it, but to where it blends in with the look of my OS. I use Windows XP, and Mozilla does not look like XP. Sure the GUI is nice, but it looks odd with my Luna style. In addition, IE meshes with Explorer. So I can easily switch between Explorer and Internet explorer. Try typing "C:\Program Files" in Mozilla/Phoenix. Very different.

In addition, there are many usability issues. Click on the address bar, while it's highlighted, click, hold and drag towards the left or right. It attempts to drag the entire address, maybe to drag and drop in the bookmarks menu. Now try it in IE, it's different. It will highlight the portion and allow you to edit it etc. That is very annoying in Phoenix/Mozilla.

Another usability problem is the placement of the Address bar. Why is it at the same layer as the toolbar? (Back, Forward buttons). I believe there is a Bug reported in BugZilla about this in Mozilla, but of course... nobody cares about Usability issues.

Why can't I have "Selective Text on Right". And that "Toolbar Customizer" with the drag and drop has bad usability problems. It's very confusing to use. And having to "Name" your toolbars?? Err..

Also, the Bookmark Management is very sloppy. They need sidebar management for bookmarks.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Negatyfus]

Forced? You can choose not to install most of those programs with the Mozilla installer. Doesn't make Mozilla much leaner, but still. On a fast computer it's not even luggish.

Re:block images from this server

[Dr. Spork]

This is a Mozilla feature too, and a very nice one. It's also reversible--you can also UNblock images from this server by clicking on the blank space where an image should be. More clever sites like this one and NYT run all their ads from their general graphics server, but most websites still don't. This is an awesome feature. If you use this in conjunction with the plugin that blocks images of specific "banner ad" sizes, you get some pretty clean propaganda protection. I like this much better than setting an ad-filtering proxy becuse the people who run the proxy know exactly who you request packets from. Who knows where this info will end up?

Re:Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors

[pointwood]

You want everyone else to use the mirrors and at the same time, you're downloading from ftp.mozilla.org? Nice ;)

Still twice the size of Opera

[Kjella]

Mozilla: 11mb
Phoenix 0.3 Win: 7mb
Opera 6.05 Win (no java): 3.4mb

Granted, there are a few issues about Opera (particularly that they ship with "Identify as IE" as default, which makes it hell to fix things that doesn't work right in Opera. I've actually got three different things in FAQs, Opera needs to identify as

1. Opera, not IE
2. IE, not Opera
3. Mozilla/Nutscrape, not Opera OR IE

Of course the answer should be easy, it should identify as Opera and web designers program accordingly. And all should use the real HTML standard, not the IE-"standard"... riiiiiight.

Still, I look forward to seeing a streamlined browser. I hated Netscapes "suite", and I don't like the Mozilla "suite" either. The browser's okay, but for the other stuff I certainly know of better alternatives.

Kjella