Phoenix 0.4 Released

Clark Kent writes "Mozilla's little brother browser, Phoenix, has reached version 0.4. New enhancements include themes support, type ahead find, and number of improvements to pop-up blocking, toolbar customization, and tabbed browsing, as well as the usual bug fixes. Get it here."

Comments

Missing the most important feature...

[rabiteman]

...Google toolbar! I'm helpless without it.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[billybob]

Um.. well see, it comes with one BUILT IN, in case you didnt notice, in the upper right hand corner.. of course, it doesn't have all the features that I personally never used in the "real deal" google toolbar (pagerank, highlight, etc), but maybe that's what you crave. But for a quick search it's certainly handy.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[Yuioup]

There is a small textbox top right next to the address bar with a looking glass. If you click the pull down icon, you can select google.

I think it's an excellent concept ;-)

Yuioup

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[asa]

...Google toolbar! I'm helpless without it.

You get one built in and you can populate it with about 150 additional search engines by going to mozdev.org and installing additional mycroft plugins (they're very tiny, give it a try).

--Asa

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[nadaou]

If you are of the linux persuasion, try the googlizer.

Utility to search Google via your GNOME menu/panel

This is a very simple and very handy utility that just spawns the configured GNOME browser with a Google search on whatever you have in the X clipboard (whatever you last selected). It's not even an applet, just a program with a launcher that's nice to put on the panel - drag it there from the menu. It also includes support for a command line option -u/--url, to specify an alternative URL to which the search should be appended before opening.

(c) Copyright 2000-2002 Alan Cox, Robert McQueen

apt-get install googlizer
or
http://packages.debian.org/googlize r for the .tar.gz

Slight modification to make it work for everything2 compliments it well.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[WWWWolf]

..Google toolbar! I'm helpless without it.

Screw the Google toolbar - I'm helpless without multiple search engines, and that's what bookmark keywords are for. (I type "g something" and it searches google for that, "e2 something" to go to node at everything2, "imdb something" to search iMDB, and so on...)

Not sure if this feature is in Phoenix, but Mozilla has it.

And I'm sure there's a Mozilla/Phoenix toolbar .xpi somewhere for this if you absolutely insist, but I think bookmark keywords rule.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[TheOriginalH]

The main thing peeps use the toolbar for is quick search - that's built right into Moz and baby broth. Just type yer search string into the address bar and either down arrow and enter or the "search" icon. More advanced features (such as PageRank and Backward link finding) are useful for web developers (like myself), but can be pretty easily used still. For backward links, type "link:http://www.whateversite.com/" and hit search. You could even set up a favelet to deal with this for you. For PageRank, you can browse the directory - but obviously that is more cumbersome than the toolbar. I will try and find a way of finding pagerank more quickly without it... Mozilla really is a pleasure to surf with when you get used to it - I couldn't return to IE now unless MS did something amazing, it feels like using NS 4.7 used to when I test on it now...

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[WowTIP]

Agreed. Keyword searching beats the living crap out of all "bars"... :)

How to make a keyword search? Simple!

Search for a word on google (or any other search engine). Our word ="xyzzy".

When you get the results, add the resulting page as a bookmark.

Open "Manage bookmarks". Open properties of your new Google bookmark. The Location will look something like:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=xyzzy

Now replace "xyzzy" in your bookmark with "%s". The result should look something like:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%s

Now you just add your keyword in the bookmark/properties field saying "Keyword:". We put "g" there.

Done! Click OK.

Now you can search google for xyzzy by entering "g xyzzy" in your location field.

This works in both Mozilla 1.1+ and Phoenix 0.3+. It might even work in earlier versions.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[diesel_jackass]

What are these "other" search engines you speak of?

Seriously, what search engines do you need besides google?

You just have to love their Zeitgeist stats, as well as the extended features in the toolbar ("Highlight" is my favorite, and that button to go up a folder).

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[Walles]

... or try the Googlebar.

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[asa]

mycroft.mozdev.org

There are plenty of specialized searches that are not google and are quite useful.

--Asa

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[asa]

http://texturizer.net/phoenix/ has tips and tricks, FAQs and common keyboard shortcuts for Phoenix.

--Asa

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[WowTIP]

Nah, ever played "Collosal Cave"? :)

Re:Missing the most important feature...

[WowTIP]

Don't know about IE, but Opera has had this as a built in feature for years. The Mozilla way is more flexible though. Opera's keywords seems to be locked to certain words.

Speed?

[chrysalis]

Has anyone noticed a real speed improvement over Mozilla (when only the browser is compiled in)?

Re:Speed?

[asa]

My "clock on the wall" tests seem to confirm what the early automated performance tests suggest: that Phoenix is about 30% faster at startup than Mozilla and about 40% faster at creating new windows. Phoenix developers have also made tweaks to lots of other interface items to improve UI responsiveness and even the rendering engine has been slightly tweaked which improves perceived performance and give Phoenix a some "zip" that's lacking in Mozilla. Not only that but the developers cut the download size by about 40% while adding a bunch of new features like toolbar customization and pop-up blocking whitelists.

--Asa

Re:Speed?

[asa]

like galeon, if this thing will introduce more features, it will slow down even a bit more.

Actually, they're adding features and performance together. Phoenix is getting smaller, faster and more featureful all at the same time.

--Asa

Re:Speed?

[Citizen of Earth]

Actually, they're adding features and performance together. Phoenix is getting smaller, faster and more featureful all at the same time.

So, are any of the performance enhancements being ported back to the mother ship?

Re:Speed?

[mccrew]

> Actually, they're adding features and performance together. Phoenix is getting smaller, faster and more featureful all at the same time.

So, if we follow this reasoning, pretty soon now Phoenix will shrink to zero size, infinite performance, and have all possible features.

-Steve

Re:Speed?

[ealar dlanvuli]

I haven't seen it increase the total memory allocated on a windows box more than 5 megs at startup + 1meg a tab (I don't use multiple windows, so dono how they are).

If you have seen different results I'd love to hear them :)

The way things are going...

[pyrros]

I think that by the time that phoenix reaches 1.0 it will be bigger than mozilla.

Re:The way things are going...

[Anonymous Coward]

From their FAQ: (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/phoenix-r elease-notes.html)

*************

17. "Phoenix is getting bloated. I knew it would happen."

Phoenix is not getting bloated. Its download size is going down, for one thing. As stated earlier, the time to do the heavy lifting, feature work and redesign is early in the development cycle. That's where we are now -- this is 0.4, folks!

We're working hard to improve our support for extensions to reduce bloat. Without extensions support, we'd be pressured to include the add-ons in the default build.

Convince Me

[Weffs11]

Why should I switch from IE?

(Because it is Microsoft is not a valid answer)
What makes Phoenix so cool that I should bother with it?
Compare things like features, security, and resource usage.

Re:Convince Me

[jericho4.0]

Well, because microsoft doesn't release code _is_ a vaild answer. It'd be great to have a fast, full-featured, OpenSource browser.

That said, I'm typing this on ie on OS X. I also use ie on my windows box. I use it 'cause it works, mostly. One interesting place it doesn't work (at least on os X) is a link I discovered last night. It's a test page for png files. Instant segfault, heh.

Re:Convince Me

[tunah]

Tabbed browsing, for one.

Personally, I cannot use IE anymore because I am so accustomed to this feature.

Re:Convince Me

[The Original Yama]

Because IE is full of bugs and holes. It's probably the most insecure piece of software on the planet. And since MS were dumb enough to tie IE in with the OS, an IE hole can threaten your whole system. Use it at your own risk...

Re:Convince Me

[chrispl]

Well lets see, as a Mozilla (phoenix sounds good too) user I havent seen a popup in MONTHS. Makes me wonder what all you IE users are complaining about...

Other cant-live-without-it features include:

A 3rd mouse buttons click opens a link in a new TAB. Very handy.

The tabs have the icon from this site on it. Cool!

Download manager. Much more useful for tracking downloads than IE's....nothing.

Skins are nice. I know you can skin IE with windowblinds and the like but this is no 3rd party software to (possibly) mess up and slow down your system.

I could go on and on about the subtle improvements that made me swear off IE. Im no fan of M$ but even if Mozilla (or phoenix) was made by THEM I would prefer it over IE simply due to the many added useful features.

Re:Convince Me

[asa]

Why should I switch from IE?

You'd switch because Phoenix has a better feature set. Phoenix makes the web enjoyable again by sparing you from pop-ups and giving you tabbed browsing for a much more organized browsing experience. You'd switch because you're concerned about people using IE to steal your files or execute arbitrary code on your machine. You'd switch because Phoenix is an easy migration. You'd switch because Phoenix works and there's just something "right" about using a free and open solution especially one that works well.

--Asa

Re:Convince Me

[ism]

Alright, I'll bite. I switched from a combo of IE/Mozilla to Phoenix exclusively with 0.3 and that's what I'm using right now. The reasons I switched:

1) Fast startup time
2) Tabbed browsing
3) Radial Context menus (Optimoz component)
4) Mouse Gestures (Optimoz component)
5) Popup blocking and *whitelists*
6) Finegrained control over Javascript
7) Sherlock plugins (using Mycroft)
8) Preferences toolbar extension (remove fonts, colors, images, disable javascript, change useragent on the fly, etc.)
9) Extensive toolbar customization
10) Download manager
11) Better security than IE
12) Gecko rendering engine is more DOM-compliant

The only thing missing that I need is cookie blacklists. But IE doesn't have that either.

Re:Convince Me

[WizardofWestmarch]

As someone who converted from IE 6 at the .2 release of Phoenix I thought I'd chime in.

First off, tabs, greatest thing on earth. Run one copy of Phoenix, view as many pages as you want. And with .4, you can use ctrl- and 1-0 to alternate quickly among your first 10 tabs (on top of ctrl-page up and down to just go back and forth) so if you are more keyboard oriented you can cycle around quickly still.

Secondly, resources. My pc (mind you it's an old p2 300 with 416 megs of RAM) used to slowly go down to almost no resources until I had to reboot, now since I switched to phoenix (no other changes) I live in the 40+% range (usually 50+).

Third, as someone else said but can't be reiterated enough, popup killing, as well as ad image blocking. Wonderful tools in the horrible overjavascripted web of today

fourth, speed. It seems to flow a lot faster for me then IE... probably in the seconds range, which in many instances even on a modem like I'm on, can be a LOT.

All in all, phoenix is just a solid piece of software that has nowhere to go but up.

Re:Convince Me

[bvankuik]

My favorite feature is that images can be blocked with a right-click.

I bet IE will never implement this.

Re:Convince Me

[rseuhs]

• faster
• tabbed browsing
• better bookmark handling
• popup blocker
• no security problems so far (the only browser with perfect security track record, AFAIK)

Re:Convince Me

[Mr_Silver]

Tabbed browsing, for one.

I use CrazyBrowser which is just the IE engine with tabbed browsing, pop up killer and a number of other useful things.

I actually prefer the way it does pop-ups too, they go into a new tab rather than actually popping up. Makes it much easier to kill them (as you can just double click on the tab). I don't think Moz does this (or if it does, I didn't find it).

My only complaint is that some (Microsoft) applications insist on firing up IE despite the fact that CrazyBrowser is my default browser.

Oh yes, and it's a silly name.

There is also a commercial version called Netcaptor too which has a few more features, but CB is free (as in beer).

Re:Convince Me

[gazbo]

The only thing missing that I need is cookie blacklists. But IE doesn't have that either

Oh, really? Looks like it has blacklists and whitelists. Although you can see I don't bother with them.

Re:Convince Me

[Jugalator]

Ok let me ask something. In Windows there is what we call "The task bar (tm)". With "The task bar", every window has a tab. Now what is the use of having these tabs in a bar in the browser window, instead of having them in "The task bar" hmmm ?

You mention part of the problem yourself. In the Task Bar, Windows put all windows that it has opened, while the Phoenix/Mozilla tabs only contain actual web pages. Microsoft tried to fix this slight mess in Windows XP by grouping the tabs by task, but even with this feature turned on, you first need to find the Phoenix tab among the sometimes rather large amount of tasks, then click on it and then look up the web page you wished to access in the sub menu that pop up.

Navigating through your tasks with Alt-Tab also becomes a hassle since there are usually so many tasks active -- much easier to navigate with Ctrl-Tab / PgUp / PgDown in Phoenix to switch between the open web pages only (what you intended to do in the first place).

And, as the Anonymous Coward mentioned, Phoenix also allow you to save and restore groups of tabs.

Re:Convince Me

[Darren Winsper]

Because some people often have an awful lot of tabs open at the same time. I more often than not have 20 or more at a time. Try fitting all that in the taskbar when you've got other applications running, along with the Start button and a fair few systray applets.

Re:Convince Me

[CProgrammer98]

A lot of people dont like to see their task bar cluuttered with a bazliion buttons for every window their app has opened. You could end up with half a dozenbrowser windows, a few word processing windows, debuuger windows, code editing windows, emaail windows, all with their own space on the task bar - it;s a nightmare. I much much prefer keeping related windows from the same app under an application tabbed window toolbar than on the generic toolbar. I use UltraEdiot an awful lot and UE also has tabbed windows. When I'm developing, it's not unusual to have ten source/header files open in UE and half a dozen browser windows (help pages or whatever) - without the tabbed system, that would put 16 buttons on my taskbar instead of 2. I know which I prefer...

Re:Convince Me

[Darren Winsper]

"it does everything that IE can do"

I didn't realise they'd released the new rendering engine yet. Tell me, what's its DOM support like? I hope its better than Opera 6s.

Re:Convince Me

[edremy]

Because some people often have an awful lot of tabs open at the same time. I more often than not have 20 or more at a time. Try fitting all that in the taskbar when you've got other applications running, along with the Start button and a fair few systray applets.

While I love tabbed browsing in general, this really isn't a problem if you know how to work around it. I've got my taskbar on the right side of my 1600x1200 monitor: I can fit something like 45-50 tabs as well as the start button, five rows of systray applets and five rows of one click buttons. (And I can still read the text on every tab since they are all constant width.)

I run out of memory long before I run out of space on the task bar, but then again running Mozilla, IE, Photoshop, Emacs, Access and Flash all at the same time tends to run you out of memory in a mere 6 tabs.

Re: Convince Me

[bunratty]

There are more tests available through the parent of that link. The latest version of Mozilla seems to do very well on the tests. IE 6 for Windows does poorly on many.

Re:Convince Me

[Mr_Silver]

Phoenix (and Mozilla) doesn't need this feature, as you don't get unrequested pop up windows.

Neither do you on CrazyBrowser.

But there are plenty times when I want *requested* pop-ups to appear in a new window - rather than as an actual pop up.

So yes, Phoenix (and Mozilla) do need this feature.

Re:Convince Me

[Darren Winsper]

A few things:
1) I hate having my task/icon bar anywhere but the bottom of the screen. This harks back to my RISC OS days.
2) I have a lot of applets and a 1024*768 screen. The tab-bar is very handy. It also allows me to change to another "window" in one click instead of 2 (Click on taskbar icon->click on menu item).
3) I don't normally run as memory intensive things as Photoshop, but I rarely run out of memory, and I have a lot of stuff running at once. Now that I think about it, I can't remember my last OOM problem, and if I do, I'll probably just add a new swap partition.

Re:Convince Me

[Broken Bottle]

"5) Popup blocking and *whitelists*"

Dumb question time: what's a whitelist?

Chris

Re:Convince Me

[mlong]

However, IE does not have the same popup blocking abilities Phoenix does. The suggestion you provide, to disable Active Scripting, does stop popups, but it also stops *all* scripting. That is a lot different than what Phoenix does, which specifically stops popups but allows other scripting to work. This finegrained control is a godsend for me, as some sites with popups require other scripting to work. Now I can use them and not see the popups. Also, the ease of whitelisting a site involves nothing more than two mouseclicks. So I stand by my statement on popups; IE does not compare to Phoenix in this regard.

True it does not have it natively, but there is a freeware app called adshield that works great. I use IE at home with adshield, and Phoenix at work. Though I do wished Phoenix had a similar ad blocker (there is one based on site, but not by URL...so if the contents and ads come from the same server, you're out of luck)

Re:Convince Me

[Drakonian]

4) Mouse Gestures (Optimoz component)

OK I finally figured out how to get Gestures in Phoenix: (Preferences -> Themes and Extensions -> Extensions -> Get New Extensions)

But can anyone tell me how to configure them?? I want to use the middle mouse button instead of control+left button. Thanks!

Re:Convince Me

[Drakonian]

OK to reply to my own post, I partially figured out how to do it. Is there a GUI for it though? I did it by editing (adding) a user.js with:

user_pref("mozgest.delay", 500);
user_pref("mozgest.grid", 15);
user_pref("mozgest.modifier.alt", false);
user_pref("mozgest.modifier.ctrl", false);
user_pref("mozgest.modifier.shift", false);
user_pref("mozgest.mousebutton", 1);
user_pref("mozgest.navigator", true);

Re:Convince Me

[Darren Winsper]

I have bad news, it's not. Well, unless you take rendering speed above all else, in which case I recommend Dillo. Anyhow, Opera 6s DOM support is next to useless and IIRC Gecko has better CSS support too.

Re:Convince Me

[ealar dlanvuli]

lol I have the same thing happen. The worst part of using a public terminal is middle clicking and going "Damn I have to right click move left click wait 3 seconds minimize".

Yes

[billybob]

Mozilla is plenty fast on my systems, but phoenix absolutely SMOKES any browser I have ever seen, by a very, very long shot. Seriously, wow. They're doing something right.

Re:Yes

[Daniel Phillips]

Mozilla is plenty fast on my systems, but phoenix absolutely SMOKES any browser I have ever seen, by a very, very long shot. Seriously, wow. They're doing something right.

I like Phoenix a lot - it's going to be my main browser pretty soon if it keeps going the way it's going. However, there *are* faster browsers out there, Opera for one. Dillo is probably the fastest browser in the universe, you really have to see it to believe it.

Re:Yes

[fault0]

> phoenix absolutely SMOKES any browser I have ever seen, by a very, very long shot.

really? lynx, links, w3m, dillo, and elinks all seem to be much faster.

Re:Yes

[dimator]

I think by "any browser" he meant "any browser worth giving two shits about."

Re:Yes

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

really? lynx, links, w3m, dillo, and elinks all seem to be much faster.

I've always found lynx seems to take forever to load images. ;)

Try it yourself

[Russellkhan]

I can't really tell you about Phoenix's features, etc as I'm about to start my download after I finish typing this comment, but I've been running Mozilla as my primary browser for a couple months now and it's quite nifty.

What I can tellyou is that no matter what anyone tells you about a browser, you won't be able to really appreciate what makes it great without trying it yourself.

Russ

Theme support isn't exactly new

[asa]

The post suggests that theme support is new to 0.4. That's probably my fault for a not-as-clear-as-it-could-have-been release note. Phoenix uses XUL. Part of XUL is that the browser GUI is styled using images and CSS. That makes any XUL-based product "skinable". This is the first release of Phoenix where there were a number of completed themes available but it is not the first release with support for themes. Theme support is a byproduct of the decision to build the UI with images and CSS (XUL). For more information and discussion of Phoenix themes and other Phoenix issues check out the MozillaZine Phoenix forums.

--Asa

I Love It

[mirko]

• 5 minutes ago : I find the announcement
  
• 4 minutes ago: It is downloaded (no sensible /. effect)
  
• 3 minutes ago: It is decompacted and 0.3 is overwritten
  
• 2 minutes ago: It runs again with my numerous tabs reopened
  
• 1 minute ago, got here and started this eumeration
  
• now: well, let's click submit and hope people will understand this is not only easy and quick to use but also to acquire and install !
  

Re:I Love It

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have taken the time to read the release notes. You are supposed to delete 0.3 and then unpack 0.4, not just overwrite 0.3.

Re:I Love It

[mirko]

If I RTFM, computing would not be that funny :)

Re:I Love It

[image]

> 3 minutes ago: It is decompacted and 0.3 is overwritten

Cool. But you forgot something. Read the release notes for 0.4.

I'll quote it here:

PLEASE NOTE: You MUST create a new profile for Phoenix 0.4. We made changes to several items including pop-up whitelisting which are not compatible with the 0.3 and even recent nightly profiles. To create a new profile start Phoenix by running phoenix.exe -ProfileManager and click on the "Create Profile" button. You must also delete your old Phoenix directory rather than just overwriting the files there. Not doing so WILL result in problems and you should not file any bugs on Phoenix unless you've first done a clean install and tested on a new profile. As Phoenix stabilizes more this will not be necessary but until then these steps are absolutely necessary.

some simple reasons

[tanveer1979]

1.Your privacy can be assured. Tommorows EULA may want you to do a lot of things which you may not like. if you dont like privacy, then ignore this point.
2.Free. Well since you bought win, it dosent apply maybe
3.Popup Blocking. If you say it dosent annoy you to have popups i think you are lying. I know you will say that third party programs are available, but many of those programs have spyware.
4. Security -> This was your question right? Well mozilla also may have some security issues, but going by record IE security issues have been far more alarming.
5. Conscience-> We all have one. I think you also do ;-). you will be making so many people on slashdot happy. They have given you +interesting karma. C'mon pay some back. Use phoenix. Better still use beta find bugs, report them. By helping in this effort you will be helping the common user. You will be helping freedom.
6. Cool ness -> you gf comes and sees the dragon, my o my after boring netscape and IE logos you will show people u use the cool new browser.
7. Ego kick -> ever tried compiling a tough to compile software and see it run. I did kde 3.0beta, that to on solaris with most libraries missing. was real pain... but when it worked the ego kick was great. IE cant even come close to it.

Re:some simple reasons

[rseuhs]

1.Your privacy can be assured. Tommorows EULA may want you to do a lot of things which you may not like. if you dont like privacy, then ignore this point.

Actually, the really scary part is that the EULA can change anytime and that Microsoft will take your system as hostage to push DRM down user's throat.

I don't think Microsoft will offer any non-DRM patches very long. (That is patches that don't require DRM being already installed and don't contain DRM)

Reason #1 for installing Mozilla and/or Phoenix

[Plug]

The Realistic Internet Simulator (Macromedia Flash required)

Re:Reason #1 for installing Mozilla and/or Phoenix

[CoolVibe]

*click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* ... [a short time later]

NYAAAAAAAARGHHHHHH!!!!!

You killed 319 popups. Yay.

You're right, that's so creepingly realistic.

Googlebar for Mozilla/Netscape 7

[ism]

googlebar

I tried it on Phoenix 0.2 and it worked. Not sure if it will on the newer versions. I heard there are problems with installing it on certain platforms as well.

Re:Googlebar for Mozilla/Netscape 7

[EricWright]

I tried it on the nightly build of phoenix from 10/28, and it screwed things up royally. It did work with the official 0.3 release, though.

Re:Googlebar for Mozilla/Netscape 7

[ImaLamer]

No need for it.

With 0.2 you can customize your toolbar, and then add a dmoz/google search box. Also find on this page option which is essential.

Getting it to work on Gentoo

[Idaho]

People using Gentoo should check this link, it works great on my computer after I created a link to the 'missing' libc6-library.

As for memory footprint and speed: Yes, Phoenix *definitely* is a lot better, even compared to optimized builds (i.e. homecompiled with optimalisations, as Gentoo does)

Re:Look at them go!

[asa]

What a fast release cycle this has, certainly compared to Mozilla!

Phoenix is young and moving fast. The release cycles have averaged a couple weeks. Development is progressing really fast, though. That's because XUL is an extremely easy and fast environment in which to build applications and the two or three developers building Phoenix are the top XUL hackers on the planet (the guys that invented XUL). The Mozilla application framework has also seriously matured, making it much easier to build these kinds of appa. Scores of great reusable widgets, an awesome rendering engine, a top notch neyworking library, and a great security library give you all the pieces you need to assemble a variety of web-enabled apps. Check out mozdev.org for dozens of great XUL-based projects.

--Asa

Re:Themes support?

[asa]

I don't think themes should be included in a lean & mean browser.

"themes" aren't included in Phoenix. Phoenix has one UI (which is defined in part in images and CSS). The nature of the UI makes it possible for other people to easily create new styles or themes (images and CSS). Phoenix contains a trivial amount of code to manage the install and uninstall of themes but the themes themselves are 3rd party components and are not "include in" Phoenix.

--Asa

Re:Reopen tabs onload

[rseuhs]

The tabbrowser extension has that feature.

Phoenix should really ship with that extension, it's just great, you can do *EVERYTHING* with tabs with that extension.

Maybe some numbers will convince people?

[Idaho]

A small comparison on my computer, which is an AMD Duron 750 with plenty (768 MB) of SDRAM-133. I'm running Gentoo 1.4 (GCC 3.2), so the Mozilla build is optimized. I'm running Phoenix 0.4 and Mozilla 1.1.

Startup, when both programs have been started before (e.g. large parts are probably cached in memory). Used my digital clock for this so, it's not that accurate, but a good indication:

Mozilla: 5-6 seconds
Phoenix: 1-2 seconds

Memory usage after startup, using google.com as homepage (measured using top):

Mozilla: Physical memory in use=24 MB (of which 15 MB is shared)
Phoenix: Physical memory in use=19MB (of which 12.5 MB is shared)

After browsing some sites which I will mention here so people can reproduce this if they want:

nu.nl, slashdot.org, tweakers.net (which is heavy on javascript), kde.org, tomshardware.com, cnn.com

FYI I don't have Java or Flash plugins installed, so Flash banners do not have influence on the Mozilla memory footprint.

memory usage is:

Mozilla: RSS=33 MB
Phoenix: RSS=25 MB

Not to mention that Phoenix feels a lot faster and more responsive.

So yeah, even an optimized Mozilla can't beat Phoenix by far. Go try it sometime if your biggest gripe about Mozilla is that it's a) slow and b) uses too much memory.

Re:Maybe some numbers will convince people?

[tongue]

I'm running Phoenix 0.4 and Mozilla 1.1

not to dispute your numbers (they're in line with my experience as well) but if you're using phoenix, you're using moz1.2 vs moz 1.1--not really sure its a fair comparison. it may be as much a statement as to how much mozilla has improved between versions, although i think phoenix is a much tighter browser in general. also from looking at both codebases (the xul/js/css, anyway) phoenix is a LOT cleaner and easier to follow.

Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[SlashChick]

It's not really that I really love IE. A browser is a browser. That said, there are a lot of people posting on why they switched from IE to Mozilla, so I thought I'd offer the top reasons why I stay with IE. (Note: I've used Mozilla 1.0 and 1.2.)

1. Mozilla interface feels "heavy" and slow. The buttons just feel "heavy" to me. IE6 feels light and it looks like a Windows program. Plus, it loads more quickly.

2. Google toolbar. Yeah, I've used the mozdev one... and it's just not as impressive. I cannot do the following with the Mozdev bar:

• Search images/newsgroups with one click. With IE, I type in a search term and click the image button and voila, I'm searching images.google.com. This might have been fixed recently in Mozdev, but it wasn't the last time I checked.
• Of critical importance is the search word and highlight feature. Often I'll search for something like "Linux sendmail configuration." What comes up? Newsgroup posts, and often several LONG pages of them. I search via the toolbar and then click the "sendmail" button on the right, and IE scrolls down to the first occurrence of that word. Put simply, this rocks. It nearly eliminates the need for Ctrl-F and makes my searches at least 10 times as fast (since I don't have to scroll down manually or Ctrl-F and type in the word again.)
  
• Highlight/PageRank. I don't use these as often as the find word feature, but they're still a consideration. I don't want to switch browsers and lose functionality.

3.Edit button. Again, a feature that rocks. I'm not sure how many people use this, but as a web developer, I do on pretty much a daily basis. Example: I need to pull a table from a website I'm working on. One click and the whole HTML source is loaded up in Dreamweaver MX and I'm working on editing the HTML. No FTP'ing the file down and then finding it on my hard drive. I just pull it straight from IE.
4.View Partial Source. Once again, mostly a web developer tool, but an invaluable one at that. I highlight any part of the page, click "View Partial Source", and I'm staring at the source code that created that part of the page. This is part of the IE5 Web Developer Tools add-on, and it works fine with IE6. I also use Images List to see all the images and their sizes in a certain page. (Not sure if Mozilla has that.)

As far as popup blocking goes, I use AdSubtract. Once again, I cannot recommend this highly enough. In addition to blocking popups, it blocks ALL advertisements. Plus, you can tell it to turn on/off Javascript, cookies, referrers, and pretty much anything else on a per-site basis. Just add the URL to the list and check which things you want to block, and you're set. It's configurable via your systray. This program is awesome.

Here's my page that demonstrates exactly what AdSubtract does. It's so much more powerful than what Mozilla does that I'm amazed more people don't talk about it. ;)

I suppose I should add the usual disclaimer that I don't work for any of the above companies, etc. I'm just a PHP/web developer. I thought I should add my reasons for not using Mozilla, though, just so you can have both sides of the story. I'd also hope that any Mozilla developers reading this (Asa?) will take this story into account when it comes time to figure out what features should go into the next version of Mozilla. The features I use in IE may be some of the more obscure ones, but until I see functional equivalents in Mozilla, I won't be switching.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[asa]

View selection source is available in Phoenix (and Mozilla). Just make a selection and context click on it for the menuitem.
Google toolbar fir IE is nice. I prefer Phoenix's search field with about 15 search engines (from mycroft.mozdev.org) including google groups, news and images. It has a nifty find in page feature too (but that's as useful as the "highlight" bookmarklet that actually styles every instance of the term on the page like google cache does).
Phoenix (the topic of this discussion is Phoenix, not Mozilla) has a UI that's a lot snappier than Mozilla.
Edit coming soon (use the system default editor).

You should give it a try. It's a 7MB download. You just unzip it and double-click on the Phoenix app icon. If you don't like it then drag the folder to the trash.

--Asa

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[SlashChick]

Thanks for replying.

First of all, I'd recommend that the Edit button be implemented with a click/drop-down list like IE's is. You click on the button and it opens in the default editor for that filetype. Click on the arrow next to it and it displays all the editors on your system that can edit that type of file, and you can choose one from the list. It's useful.

Secondly, I don't know about this Google toolbar replacement thing. Google is pretty much my sole search engine, though I wouldn't mind having dictionary and translate buttons. I'm not convinced that Phoenix's replacement can compare (Mozilla's couldn't.)

Third, a "snappier" UI does not necessarily mean a better UI. A faster UI I can appreciate, but honestly, Mozilla felt clunky to me in more ways than one. I hope Phoenix strives to eliminate this.

A couple of other things I forgot to mention that I also hope Mozilla/Phoenix can rectify:

Use the damn built-in Windows MIME types! Jeez! I shouldn't have to tell Mozilla how to open a .zip file. I think that was the #1 thing (besides the UI) that really turned me off to Mozilla. They're all sitting there in the registry. Please use them. (I sincerely hope this has already been fixed.)

Ctrl+scroll wheel should size text a la IE. I know this was an open bug for a while. Has this been fixed? In my build of Mozilla (which is the original 1.0, I think) it hasn't... although I do appreciate the ability to resize text even when the web developer specifies a point size (something which IE can't currently do.)

And honestly, to be a little evil, I'd like to see a "Windows XP IE clone." I mean, something I could throw at my mother and say, "This is the new version of Internet Explorer!" and she would really believe it. If I'm going to get on the evangelism bandwagon with web browsers again (and I've been off that bandwagon since I stopped being a die-hard Netscape fan in 1998), I want to get people to switch. Obviously, they want something that looks similar to IE. (Keep in mind that IE on XP looks radically different from IE on previous versions of Windows.) I'd welcome a theme like that as well.

I'm rambling. I'm going to stop this and head to bed now. At this point, I hope you have a better idea of what at least one interested party is looking for in a web browser.

Good luck with the Phoenix project, by the way. I think it's a great idea, no matter how it turns out. This market needs a bit of competition. :)

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[tswinzig]

Google is pretty much my sole search engine, though I wouldn't mind having dictionary and translate buttons. I'm not convinced that Phoenix's replacement can compare (Mozilla's couldn't.)

What exactly can't you get done in mozilla with google? I have google set as my main search engine, so when I type keywords in the URL bar, hit enter, it searches google. I have a special bookmark for google's "feeling lucky" search, so that I can type "gl " followed by keywords, and I go right to the first google search result. I have similar bookmarks for google groups, google images, google news.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[_xeno_]

She was talking about the Google toolbar, and not searching Google. It appears that the current Mozilla Google toolbar does not contain the useful "highlight and jump to first occurance" feature that the IE Google toolbar contains (the little highlighters with words next to them on the right).

Personally, I find that I can't live without my mouse-gestures, so I wind up using Mozilla as may daily browser now; plus when I tried the Google toolbar I didn't find it to be that useful.

As an endnote, I tried installing the Googlebar on my copy of Mozilla 1.2 beta, and it didn't work. Although it appears that in the process of uninstalling it I screwed something up, so I'm going to get to reinstall Mozilla anyway (yay...).

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[Eil]

1. Mozilla interface feels "heavy" and slow.

Excercise more. They "feel" fine to me. Mozilla is only slow for me on bringing up some of the dialogs and windows, everything else is just as speedy if not speedier than IE especially in the stable builds.

2. Google toolbar.

This answer probably won't satisfy you, but I personally hate extraneous toolbars. For a normal google search, I type my query into the address bar and an entry pops up in the combo box that lets me run a Google search on that string. For everything else, there's bookmark keywords. For an image query, I set up the appropriate bookmark, type into the address bar something like "img foo" and a Google page of images matching "foo" comes up. Likewise, I have mine set up that "fm" searches freshmeat and "bug" queries the Mozilla bugzilla database.

As far as the Mozdev Googlebar itself goes, you might want to take another look. They're constantly tweaking the thing and it wouldn't surprise me if your features are there already. I'm downloading it now, but I don't want to jeopardize this session by installing it right this second.

3.Edit button.

Mozilla comes with its very own web authoring component called Composer. Click on File --> Edit Page and you're there. Source is one more click away.

If it's web developement you're looking for, you're in luck as Mozilla specifically caters to web developers. Composer is a good WYSIWYG editor with the option of playing with the source whenever you please. Mozilla also comes with a handy DOM inspector and indispensible javascript debugger. Just about the only thing it lacks is a built-in HTML validator and it wouldn't surprise me too much if there were someone working on adding one.

4.View Partial Source.

Mozilla's got it. No add-on needed. Highlight what you want, right click, select View Selection Source.

I also use Images List to see all the images and their sizes in a certain page.

View --> Page Info, click on Media tab. Voila, a list of all images/icons/whatever that the page loads inline. Page Info also reveals all kinds of other stuff including, but not limited to, meta tags, header info, form components, links, and security.

As far as popup blocking goes, I use AdSubtract.

If AdSubtract is a filtering proxy, I suspect you can use it with Mozilla just fine. If not, there are other solutions that work just as well. I personally install Junkbuster (now Privoxy) on my gateway machine and have all web browsers proxy through that. Works extremely well for me.

Here's my page [simpli.biz] that demonstrates exactly what AdSubtract does. It's so much more powerful than what Mozilla does that I'm amazed more people don't talk about it. ;)

I'm sure it's a fine program, but it's third party software. It didn't come with IE, so why do you expect Mozilla to come with that kind of functionality? Mozilla might not have the flexibility of AdSubtract but then neither does IE. While Mozilla can give you some control over cookies and ads, I don't use them. I use a third-party program, Junkbuster, which is compatible with every web browser that can connect to a proxy.

The features I use in IE may be some of the more obscure ones, but until I see functional equivalents in Mozilla, I won't be switching.

I've responded to almost all of your feature requests with, "yes, Mozilla can do that." Perhaps now would be a good time to reevaluate your opinions, both on IE and Mozilla. I've been using Mozilla full-time for at least 2 years now (long before it was stable, anyway) and haven't looked back since.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[llin]

1. Mozilla interface feels "heavy" and slow. The buttons just feel "heavy" to me. IE6 feels light and it looks like a Windows program. Plus, it loads more quickly.

No Argument here. Part of the reason why Phoenix exists...

2. Google toolbar. Yeah, I've used the mozdev one... and it's just not as impressive. I cannot do the following with the Mozdev bar:

I agree a real Google toolbar would be nice. Almost all my searches are mapped onto Mozilla keywords though, which works pretty well. Along w/ the search sidebar and background tabs, I think overall, Mozilla still wins on searching.

4.View Partial Source. Once again, mostly a web developer tool, but an invaluable one at that. I highlight any part of the page, click "View Partial Source", and I'm staring at the source code that created that part of the page.

Mozilla does this. At least mine does, it may have been an extension I installed a long time ago. As a web Developer, here's my list of favorite Mozilla features (I will never do web development in a browser that doesn't have an equivalent to these):

• DOM Inspector" - omg, this is the best thing ever
• Venkman - built-in JavaScript Debugger / Profiler
• Mozilla Source Generator - view the generated source from the DOM
• Gecko - the most complete standards support of any existing browser. I can trust Mozilla's CSS output instead of assuming it's wrong.

Overall, the tabs, sidebars, tools, and other interfaces make Mozilla by and large my favorite development browser. Here are some of my big nits:

• HTTP logging / browser - wish I could see this stuff without having to go to a separte network sniffer/logger
• Better Info - would like to see all HTTP headers, cookies, source, dom from one centralized interface. there is a 'web developer' version on Mozilla being worked on... that might be way cool
• Crash Recovery for Tabs - Total Recall gets broken, Multizilla only records one window's tabs
• Form Ranging - it's still broken, part of the larger problem...
• ...that Content Editing is weak sauce. Whatever browser has significantly improved form/editing capabilities will definitely have my endearment - stuff like inline editing, or for forms, basic stuff like better local form input capture/caching, integration of editing commands, etc.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[jacobito]

Ctrl+scroll wheel should size text a la IE. I know this was an open bug for a while. Has this been fixed? In my build of Mozilla (which is the original 1.0, I think) it hasn't... although I do appreciate the ability to resize text even when the web developer specifies a point size (something which IE can't currently do.)

I assume this is fixed in Mozilla. This certainly works in Phoenix (which, after all, is the topic of discussion). And, as you said, the CTRL+scrollwheel feature doesn't balk at fonts specified with pixels or points, making it genuinely useful.

Do give Phoenix a try. The difference in polish and overall feel is dramatic.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[IamTheRealMike]

Ctrl+scroll wheel should size text a la IE. I know this was an open bug for a while. Has this been fixed? In my build of Mozilla (which is the original 1.0, I think) it hasn't... although I do appreciate the ability to resize text even when the web developer specifies a point size (something which IE can't currently do.)

Actually, it does :) For some reason it's not on by default though. Go to Preferences, Advanced, Mouse Wheel, then choose Ctrl key modifier from the drop down list and set it to alter the size of text. You can control quite a bit from this panel actually.

Secondly, I don't know about this Google toolbar replacement thing. Google is pretty much my sole search engine, though I wouldn't mind having dictionary and translate buttons. I'm not convinced that Phoenix's replacement can compare (Mozilla's couldn't.)

Hmm, I haven't used the Google bar much, but in Mozilla from where I type this now I can hit Ctrl-L "mozilla vs ie" down enter and it'll search. That's remarkably few keypresses, and no mouse movements. If I then wanted to do an image search on it instead, I'd just type "Im" (link typeahead) and hit enter. For keyboard users such as myself, I can't really imagine what could be faster.

And honestly, to be a little evil, I'd like to see a "Windows XP IE clone." I mean, something I could throw at my mother and say, "This is the new version of Internet Explorer!" and she would really believe it. If I'm going to get on the evangelism bandwagon with web browsers again (and I've been off that bandwagon since I stopped being a die-hard Netscape fan in 1998), I want to get people to switch. Obviously, they want something that looks similar to IE. (Keep in mind that IE on XP looks radically different from IE on previous versions of Windows.) I'd welcome a theme like that as well.

Yeah, IE for XP does look pretty nice. But, a few things:

• A true evangelist wouldn't try and trick their own mothers! *gasp* Instead they'd point out that it's a different product, with different strengths. If you're trying to make it exactly like IE, why bother using it in the first place?
• There is indeed an IE theme, but I don't like it much. Default (non-XP) IE is butt ugly. I prefer Orbit, which is very nice indeed.
• When on XP Mozilla will adopt the XP style widgets, ie so the buttons/tabs/etc look the same as in IE6. No, this doesn't extend to icons, I guess somebody could make an XP-style theme pretty easily by adapting classic though.

Third, a "snappier" UI does not necessarily mean a better UI. A faster UI I can appreciate, but honestly, Mozilla felt clunky to me in more ways than one. I hope Phoenix strives to eliminate this.

Well, I know UI is very much personal, but I think you'd need to be a little more precise for the Mozilla/Pheonix team to address your concerns - I find IE to be pretty clunky myself, there are god knows how many buttons, especially as every-app-and-its-dog installs a new one.

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[breon.halling]

As far as the IE Google toolbar goes, I've whipped up a some Javascript (granted I don't think this is original) for doing the same thing.

You can check them out here.

I've bookmarked the individual links and added them to my Phoenix Personal Toolbar folder. This allows me to search google/images/groups/news with just one click. They'll also search for highlighted words on click, too!

Hope you enjoy them!

Re:Why I won't switch from IE (yet).

[Misch]

Try a different theme. I personally recommend Pinball, but if you are stuck to IE, then try IE as a Theme.

Re:Debian packages?

[den_erpel]

There is an ITP on de debian bug database, dunno what the progress is...

For my convenience [TM], I made a quick-n-dirty debian package with alien
(basically extracting the package in /usr/lib, putting the right links, tarring it into a new archive and running alien on it).

[marc@scorpius delaunay]$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list |grep lesbos
deb http://lesbos.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~mleeman/debian unstable/
deb-src http://lesbos.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~mleeman/debian unstable/

Re:Reopen tabs onload

[CoolVibe]

Galeon has that.

re: cookies

[ism]

Thanks for pointing this out. I currently have IE 5.5sp2 installed and can't find this per site privacy dialog. Is the screenshot from a newer version?

In any event, it would be unfair to pit the newest Phoenix against an older IE version, so I concede that point. Also, I would like to add that I just installed Phoenix 0.4 and it does have cookie white/blacklists now. I'm satisfied.

Re:I used Phoenix until

[Jugalator]

I used Phoenix until 0.3 when the home button on mine started taking me to mozilla.org instead of the homepage I set in the preferences. Did that bug get fixed yet?

This problem can usually be resolved by performing a clean install of Phoenix by deleting any previous profiles. See also Bugzilla Bug 174880. Additionally, in Bug 176549, Asa mentions it works in 1026 builds, so I take that as the bug might even be gone in 0.4 without erasing the profiles?

So I'd suggest you install Phoenix 0.4 on top of 0.3 to see if the bug is gone before doing anything drastic.

Re: cookies

[gazbo]

IE6. It has default settings for cookie protection (I leave mine at the default of medium). I won't go into the various settings, but it differentiates between first and third party cookies, checks privacy policies and user consent. You select how strict it is from 'allow all cookies' to 'block all cookies'. The white/blacklist is applied on top of one of these levels.

If you want privacy, it's worth upgrading for that alone (plus all the exploit fixes). Then Tools:Internet Options:Privacy and you're free to play.

Real sign of success is...

[horza]

That I was testing some of our sites with a fellow employee, when after a while he seemed puzzled as to why one of the buttons didn't seem to click (Mozilla doesn't seem to like myform.button.value, you have to put document.myform.button.value). He seemed visibly surprised when I told him I wasn't using Explorer. Then I showed him reading down a web page, right clicking on links where they loaded in tabs in the background... then going and reading each of the pages afterwards. Plus right clicking on tabs to instantly close them. He was very impressed.

Even though Phoenix is faster and more stable than Explorer, I found the only real way to switch was to delete all the Explorer icons from the desktop and the taskbar. Otherwise some old habits are too hard to break!

Phoenix combined with Privoxy (plus the occasional run of AdAware)... the currently unbeatable combination on WinXP.

Phillip.

Re:Real sign of success is...

[Mr_Silver]

Even though Phoenix is faster and more stable than Explorer, I found the only real way to switch was to delete all the Explorer icons from the desktop and the taskbar. Otherwise some old habits are too hard to break!

Actually at the moment, there is no truely real way to switch. This is because some programs (mainly Microsofts) insist on firing up IE for a URL even when some other application is registered as being the default browser.

It's in the MSKB as a bug, until thats fixed, I still have to deal with occasionally IE loading when I don't want it.

(Of course I'm ignoring the fact that the IE dlls are almost in constant use - before anyone points it out)

On the other hand...

[Jugalator]

The release notes says that since Phoenix is still not mature, you should always delete your old installs of Phoenix, including profile, before installing a new release. I guess you should do that -- sorry for any confusion. :-P

Mac Guyver

[stud9920]

So when Phoenix 1.0 is finally released, we will be able to fight communism in covert operations, counter the plans of the evil Murdoch, get to save our clumsy friends and build bombs with a refrigerator or a flamethrower with a vibrator ?

Cool ! Phoenix Foundation really rules.

Side joke :

Q:how many 't's are there in "MacGuyver" ?
A: 76 : "ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
tatata
tatata
tatatata ta ta ta
tatatata tatata tatata tatata tatata tata..."

Looks good to me...

[hattig]

Easiest ever installation of a web browser on Linux :) Untar and run, nice.

It is quicker than Mozilla by far, and the rendering looks to be equally good as you would hope. I haven't used it for long, so I don't know about stability, but it can't be that much worse than Mozilla 1.1 which I have been using exclusively for the past month or so.

Now how do I enable anti-aliased text? And how do I import my Mozilla bookmarks...?

I will be keeping my eye on this one for sure.

Naw, FDISK + Format...

[brunes69]

... is the unbeatable combination for dealing with WinXP :P

tabs as a temporary advantage

[StrawberryFrog]

First off, tabs, greatest thing on earth.
They are cool. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that IE7 has them.

Re:tabs as a temporary advantage

[Shelled]

And that it will result in a ton of Slashdot posts claiming IE had it first.

Google toolbar for Mozilla

[Walles]

Secondly, I don't know about this Google toolbar replacement thing. Google is pretty much my sole search engine, though I wouldn't mind having dictionary and translate buttons. I'm not convinced that Phoenix's replacement can compare (Mozilla's couldn't.)

I don't know what Phoenix has built in, but a Google Toolbar clone for Mozilla is available here.

From the web page: The Googlebar project was initially created to address the widespread desire in the mozilla community for the Google toolbar to support Netscape 7/Mozilla [...]. Our current release emulates all of the basic search functionality of the toolbar

Judging from the screenshots they look quite similar.

The toolbar has its bright sides.

[Dog and Pony]

The "Page info" button is *really* handy as you can get to the google cache from there... even while you realize that the page isn't gonna load because it is slashdotted.

The "Move up one level" is the button that browsers has lacked for years. It is amazing that this isn't in all of them.

This display of the search words, clickable so you can searh the document for the mtaches without bringing up an unfriendly search box that doesn't wrap the search. And highlighting of the words, too.

"Search this site"-button.

History (clearable, if you are worried about someone seeing your searches for pr0n ;-)).

And if I understand this correctly, you can choose to help google with their data by letting them "spy" on your searches. Before anyone cries out, go try install it and see the size of those warnings, the privacy statements, and realize that it is something they ask you to do if you wish. You don't have to. I have this turned on.

Some of this is stuff that browsers should already have without plugins. If I could choose, it'd have em all.

Light Browser?

[OverDrive33]

themes support, type ahead find, and number of improvements to pop-up blocking, toolbar customization, and tabbed browsing

Is this really light? I mean sure the pop-up blocking is nice... but is the rest really necessary?
I downloaded ver. 0.3... and it crashed the first time I opened it... not generally something I look for in a browser. IMHO they should fix bugs... not add new features.

Re:Light Browser?

[tswinzig]

Is this really light? I mean sure the pop-up blocking is nice... but is the rest really necessary?

Good point! I feel a light browser should just be a plain window with an unmarked bar where you obviously type the URL and hit enter to continue. No fancy GUI or any of that nonsense!

This browser is not 'light', it's just different. It does things which use less memory and are quicker than mozilla. It has slightly different features. It has less geek stuff in your face. It is simpler, not lighter.

I downloaded ver. 0.3... and it crashed the first time I opened it... not generally something I look for in a browser. IMHO they should fix bugs... not add new features.

I'm sure you reported the bug, right?

Do you think the browser crashing when it opens is something that happens to most people that use it? I mean, do you honestly think they'd be adding features if they had well known bugs that crashed it that easily? I'm thinking no...

Here's a more subjective comparison:

[abe ferlman]

I have a 200mhz laptop w/ 96 M ram, and a 1.4 ghz desktop w/ 256M ram.

On the laptop,

Mozilla: Painfully slow
Phoenix: Usable

On the desktop:
Mozilla: The best browser I have ever used
Phoenix: Not sufficiently faster to make up for the fact that I can't search google straight out of the address bar.

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[seanmeister]

Phoenix: Not sufficiently faster to make up for the fact that I can't search google straight out of the address bar.

But you can! Quick Search bookmarks let you search any site you want from the address bar.

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[cymen]

Phoenix: Not sufficiently faster to make up for the fact that I can't search google straight out of the address bar.

Try typing something like "linux rocks" in the address bar and hit enter. You should be redirected to a google search page with those terms. I noticed there are some problems. If you try to search for "xxx.yyy zzz" then it assumes xxx.yyy is server address. Due to the use of private DNS inside corporations, I don't see how they could get around that. But if there are spaces in there, you would think one could enable a setting that says, "if spaces, it's a google search."

Or they could copy Konqueror, making it possible to use gg:google.search stuff.

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[tongue]

actually, when i type a keyword into the url bar, if it doesn't resolve to an url phoenix does a google search right off the bat. plus there's a a search bar right next to my urlbar on my version of phoenix (0.4)

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[image]

> Phoenix: Not sufficiently faster to make up for the fact that I can't search google straight out of the address bar.

You can in 0.4 if you are willing to type "google <search string>" into the address bar. Is that good enough?

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[abe ferlman]

is that good enough?

well, no it's not:)

everyone has been pointing out lots of useful ways to do my searching, but I just like mozilla's way best- it appears as a completion option from the main address bar, the first one if it doesn't match a url I've been to recently. This turns out to be the optimal behavior for me.

Yes, I could use the search bar next to the address bar (Which is partially obscured on my 800x600 laptop display some of the time, but anyway). I could type google first (but how would I have known this if you hadn't told me? How will anyone else not reading this discussion know?) I could just go to google and search from there, it's only a couple clicks away, esp. if I bookmark it right? with autcompletion, it's probably like this:

"g" "o" --ooh, there it is in the completionbar-- "tab" "enter" --page has loaded-- "tab" --ooh, now I'm in the search bar and I can search!--

I know I'm splitting hairs here, but I search google 10+ times a day and the differences between these strategies both in terms of time to actually type/click the commands, and how much I have to think to make the browser do my bidding, directly affect my suspension of disbelief that the browser is actually a direct extension of my brain.

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[Masem]

You can create bookmarks in P that take arguments just like you can with Moz. I believe you use "%s" as the argument string, so name a bookmark "g", use "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s", save, and then go "g whatever you want" in the address bar. (I'm not absolutely sure on the details, but I know the same trick works both in Moz and Phoenix.)

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[Suppafly]

Or they could emulate the addons for IE and the newer versions of IE and allow you to type any user assigned letter and then your search string such as 'g searchstring'

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[mooman]

Here's my Mozilla Google bookmarklet:

javascript:q=document.getSelection();for(i=0;ifr am es.length;i++){q=frames[i].document.getSelection() ;if(q)break;}if(!q)void(q=prompt('Keywords:','')); if(q)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?q ='+escape(q,1)+'&hl=en&safe=off'

[Slashdot adds a space or two to the above code.. strip those out when adding this to your bookmark list]

I just add it to my toolbar folder so it's right under the URL line. You can either click it and type your search in the popup, or highlight some text first, then click the bookmark, and it will submit that text to google...

[Footnote: on some complex pages it does not always seem to respond, but I've been too busy to test why]

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[Junta]

Easy, manage bookmarks, go to the quicksearch section, select properties for google search and change 'google' to g. There you go. Poke around that subsection of the bookmarks for good samples for stuff that works with Phoenix and mozilla. Bookmarks are very very powerful...

Re:Here's a more subjective comparison:

[crumley]

Mozilla has done this for ages. Check the bottom of this page for details.

What happened to Thunderbird (e-mail client)?

[Lumpish Scholar]

0.3 (Lucia) release notes:

Did you say something about a standalone mail client?... Yes. We did. Thank you for listening. It's called Thunderbird, and more information will be available later

It'not mentioned on the current (0.4, Oceano) release notes. Anyone know why?

Re:What happened to Thunderbird (e-mail client)?

[fault0]

Yes, Thunderbird 0.1 will probably be out at the same time as Phoenix 0.5 gets out.

See here

Re:What happened to Thunderbird (e-mail client)?

[fault0]

Does it run on win32 or OSX?

Awesome Tab Improvement over Mozilla!

[tswinzig]

Did any other mozilla users notice tabs behave consistently in Phoenix? You can not only middle-click on links to open them in a new tab, but also on bookmarks!

Now I'd just like the same behavior on form buttons...

Re:Awesome Tab Improvement over Mozilla!

[Greg W.]

middle-click on links to open them in a new tab [...] Now I'd just like the same behavior on form buttons

Drooool. I've been wishing for that for about 4 years now. (I might actually participate in more Slashdot polls if I didn't have to destroy my copy of the main page to do so.)

And why oh why can't I hit ESC to stop animated GIFs? Netscape 4.x can do this. Debian's versions of Mozilla can do it. Yet upstream Mozilla, for some reason, cannot. (And I can't get Phoenix 0.4 to run, so....)

Re:Awesome Tab Improvement over Mozilla!

[spitzak]

I think the request was for middle-click on form buttons to bring up a new tab. I have always wanted this (back in Mozilla where I wanted it to just open a new window). I would also like it if this was done for javascript "buttons". It would also be nice if middle-mouse click on something that changes another frame would instead put the new frame contents in a new tab. Basically, as much as possible, middle click should mean "new tab".

Conversely it would be nice if left-click *never* brought up a new tab or window, even if the program tried to do it with javascript or frame tricks. Instead it should replace the current window all the time.

My experience with Phoenix 0.4...

[Akardam]

Just for reference, the computer I'm using is a Thinkpad P2-233, 288mb RAM, 512mb pagefile and a 10gb IBM 4500RPM HDD, running Windows 2000 Pro SP2.

All times are the average of three or four tests, eyeballing the clock.

Startup Time

Netscape 4.79: 4s
Phoenix 0.4: 10s

Slashdot Homepage Load Time

Netscape 4.79: 1.5s
Phoenix 0.4: 2.5s

RAM Usage (with only Slashdot Homepage loaded)

Netscape 4.79: 8012k
Phoenix 0.4: 20,182k

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that the fact that the Phoenix people are trying to make a slim browser is great! ... but when it reacts more sluggishly still than Netscape 4.79, I think I'll wait a while before using it as my primary browser.

(BTW, this is the main reason I don't use Mozilla... it's a DOG on this machine. Even IE's kinda slow.)

Why I won't switch from Mozilla (yet)

[tswinzig]

I just tried Phoenix 0.4, and really like it, even over Mozilla. But because I really like Mozilla's email program, I won't switch to Phoenix until and unless Mozilla Mail is offered standalone from the browser. There's no sense in using Mozilla Mail and not using Mozilla's web browser... most of the stuff needed is in memory, so I might as well use it!

Here's hoping Mozilla is split up into separately installable components in the future. I have no desire to go back to any of the other email programs I've ever used (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora mostly).

Good job on Phoenix though, very cool!

bug report

[Yarn]

I can't double click the system menu to close ;)

Doesn't start on Win95.

[Greg W.]

This is the fourth time I've downloaded a Phoenix build, and the second time that running it does nothing visible. My machine is a Pentium II running Windows 95. (I think it's Win95B. Not sure. "VER" says "Windows 95. [Version 4.00.1111]".)

PHOENI~1.ZIP 8,691,111 09-26-02 4:01p phoenix-win32.zip
PHOENI~2.ZIP 7,806,796 10-04-02 9:47a phoenix-0.2-win32.zip
PHOENI~3.ZIP 7,360,073 10-16-02 9:55a phoenix-0.3-win32.zip
PHOENI~4.ZIP 7.396,544 10-30-02 8:14a phoenix-0.4-win32.zip

The first one (a nightly build somewhere around 0.1) and the last one (0.4 milestone) do not run. They both give me the same behavior: after typing "PHOENIX", the mouse cursor changes to the arrow-plus-hourglass for a few seconds, then changes back to normal. There is no new task in the task manager after that. For all visible purposes, phoenix crashed with no errors and no core file. (Of course, there's no core file. This is Windows. Why would we be able to debug it? No strace, no gdb, no truss, ....)

Phoenix 0.2 and 0.3 both run perfectly well on this same computer. So I've gone back to 0.3.

"PHOENIX -ProfileManager" also does nothing. Same symptoms. I've even tried deleting the 0.3 profiles using Phoenix 0.3's ProfileManager before running Phoenix 0.4. No change.

Re:Doesn't start on Win95.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always try reading the release notes
Its knows issue # 2

Use Dave's quick search deskbar

[McCart42]

Disclaimer: I'm not Dave, just a very impressed user.

The Google toolbar was a big plus for IE, until I found Dave's quick search deskbar. It's much like the google toolbar, but it is always open on your taskbar, and you can run searches from other sites by typing in a short character sequence--i.e., do a dictionary lookup by typing "phoenix::". Do Yahoo searches with a "yh question", get Merriam-Webster definitions with a "colon:", get Bloomberg stock quotes like this "msft intc csco$", and find Switchboard phone numbers by saying "Lois Lane#". You can search real "news." search "newsgroups," check "weather*", or "comparison shop$$". There's a built in calculator when you need to know "pow(1.0625, 30)" is 6.1640785. Additionally, you don't need to remember these shortcuts--you can select them from a menu, or you can even do a search for the search shortcut for "newsgroups". I've never installed the google toolbar since I found this tool. It's windows only (though it's open source - somebody can port it to Linux in future), but so's the google toolbar.

Windows 9x system resources

[yerricde]

With "The task bar", every window has a tab. Now what is the use of having these tabs in a bar in the browser window, instead of having them in "The task bar" hmmm ?

Under Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition, each window uses a fair chunk of "system resources", Microsoft's name for the user.exe and gdi.exe heaps, each of which is 64 kilobytes in size, a limitation inherited from Windows 3.x, and cannot be expanded within Windows 9x no matter how much physical RAM you have. Browsers with a tabbed interface will typically use less system resources per open page than browsers with a multiple window interface. Windows NT, on the other hand, allows the heaps to grow for win32 apps and runs win3.1 apps in a separate virtual machine.

Another advantage of tabbed browsing is that a user can group tabs by task. For instance, I typically have several Slashdot pages open (pages from slashdot.org, as well as pages from web sites that I use for research for comments) in one window, with other things going on in other windows.

how about xft2 support?

[wifflefan]

running mozilla 1.2beta2 built with xft2 support has spoiled me with its awesome fonts....when will we see xft2 builds of phoenix? thanks!

w|f

MIME types

[yerricde]

Use the damn built-in Windows MIME types!

Often, this is because of a misconfigured web server installation that doesn't recognize the .zip extension and send the application/zip media type. It may send the older media type application/x-zip-compressed or the generic application/octet-stream; Windows doesn't find an association for either of those types.

On the other hand, IE will sometimes ignore the media type and use the file's extension instead. This is part of what led to the <iframe> vulnerability, which Nimda and Klez exploited

Re:MIME types

[IntlHarvester]

Ultimately MS made the right decision in doing client-side MIME-mappings -- Your average (Unix) webserver will never have a completely comprehensive set of MIME-mappings, and from the user's perspective it makes the browser appear "broken".

It took years before common filetypes like DOC were setup correctly. I've seen DOC mapped to application/x-lotus-manuscript for example -- apparently that MIME mapping file was like 20 years old. If they can't get DOC right, what are the chances that a Moz user will ever get a MPEG4 or an AutoCAD file off that server?

Even recently, I couldn't directly download early Chimera builds because Chimera's own host didn't recognize the Mac SMI archive format.

The problem with MS's implementation is that it doesn't follow a sane policy, and uses some obscure combination of MIME-types, extentions, and magicbits sniffing. Confused filetype rules contributed to Nimba, but the real problem was/is a Open() call that didn't distinguish between EXEs and JPGs.

If mozilla could implement this with sane rules and no stupidity, it would make their browser appear much less "broken" to certain users.

Re:MIME types

[scrytch]

> Often, this is because of a misconfigured web server installation that doesn't recognize the .zip extension

Dude, let's imagine you're at a helpdesk. "This is because of a misconfigured web server" ...

Bah. And why should the web server have to recognize every damn weird-ass type by file extension in the world? If they want to do it right, they should make the order configurable, e.g.:

* Use my local type settings
* Use the type given by the web server
* Use type __x-foobar/xyzstuff__

With the usual list widget and up/down buttons that lets you change the order of items And why the hell not have /etc/magic type support in this handler configuration? CDE had this for eons in dtmail.

Are we losing the focus here?

[redNuht]

Wow! Theme support! That's great! That's all a light and fast browser needs! Man, theme support!

Er... wait... who the hell needs theme support?

Let's get small

[bgfay]

Does anyone have or know where to get figures on how small Phoenix is getting. I wondered about this and imagine I could just search the old builds, but wouldn't this be a good thing to have up on a Phoenix page somewhere. I'm imagining a graph that might show the size of the build, the memory usage, and the speed with which the browser loads and creates new windows. Maybe along the bottom could be a note about which features have been added at each milestone. It could make a good "marketing" tool even though the browser is free. Seems like the sort of thing that reviewers would go nuts for.

Another open source fork?

[guanxi]

I understand the motives of the Phoenix community: I'd love a leaner, faster Moz. But aren't we risking losing both Phoenix and Moz if we split into two separate projects?

First, few will contribute to or implement Moz if it looks like (and appearances count) its own developers and users are abandoning it.

Second, does mozilla.org have so many resources that it can be safely split between two projects? Either we have sufficient resources or one gets shortchanged.

Finally, isn't a lack of long term commitment to a product exactly what corporate IT fears about open source? Shouldn't we take extra steps to avoid the appearance of that problem?

Per the FAQ, and in many other places, the Phoenix developers definitely seem to intend to separate themselves from Moz:

it's not Mozilla. It's backed by mozilla.org, sure, but with each milestone you'll see it further diverge from Mozilla. ... We also believe Mozilla, in general, is going in the wrong direction in terms of bloat and UI, and see no reason for our releases to carry those connotations.

Re:Another open source fork?

[forsetti]

I think we will see a productive split:

Mozilla -- development "platform"
Phoenix -- lean, mean, web-page rendering machine, built using the Mozilla platform

I just hope that efforts are concentrated in this direction soon, so as not to waste time and energy creating two web browsers....

Re:Another open source fork?

[egghat]

Dito.

Always remember that Mozilla is NOT targeted at end users!

That's what Beonix and now Phoenix are for.

bye egghat.

Re:Another open source fork?

[brassman]

Would not want to lose 'both Mozilla and Phoenix' -- but losing just Mozilla wouldn't make me cry one tear. Phoenix is exactly what I've been looking for because it understands that a Web browser shouldn't be doing mail and news. If the Phoenix project drives that point home to Mozilla, more power to them! Putting mail and news into a web browser is "a wrong thing," and as we all know...

Phoenix vs. Galeon?

[MicroBerto]

Have any Gnome2 users tried this out over galeon? Which is faster?

Still doesn't *really* block images.

[slothdog]

It's worth noting (again) that when you choose "block images from server", it still *downloads* the image, it just doesn't *show* you the image. This, I think, defeats most of the purpose of blocking images. Cast in a vote for bug 94118 in bugzilla if you think it's worth changing too.

Re:Convince Me [tabbed browsing holds value]

[geoswan]

Ok let me ask something. In Windows there is what we call "The task bar (tm)". With "The task bar", every window has a tab. Now what is the use of having these tabs in a bar in the browser window, instead of having them in "The task bar" hmmm ?

As previous posters have observed, you have obviously never used a browser with tabs.

It is useful. It makes it easier to do more than one thing at a time. If you have a window devoted to your yahoo mail, and one devoted to the main slashdot page, you can open each story that interests you in a browser window of its own. Then the links withing that story you open up into a tab of that window. If you have decided you have had enough of that story, you can close its browswer window, and all its tabs, all at once. This is very convenient. It makes it easy to go back and forth between the article and the sidebar.

Tabbed windows makes it less painful if you still have a dialup link.

I use yahoo mail as my visible mail address. Over a dialup link it can take a while to download my mail. So I download each one into a tab of its own, leaving the list of mail messages in the original tab. Then I can go do something else, like fire up slashdot. By the time I have done that, my mail is ready for me to read. Once I have read them all I right-click on the tab that contains the list of mail messages, and I select "close all other tabs". Easy.

You might think that you could do the same thing, just as easily in IE. But you would be wrong. Sure, IE would let you open up a full window for every mail message. And if you read them in last in, first out order, and closed each one when you had read the message, you would eventually be brought back to the window with the list of articles. But, in IE you would have to wait for the last window to load. And if you visited your slashdot window(s) while you were waiting, the order of your windows would be all screwed up.

Does IE really invoke more quickly?

[geoswan]

IE6 feels light and it looks like a Windows program. Plus, it loads more quickly.

Is this true? Can I express skepticism? A friend of mine asked me to purchase a copy of the most recent MS office suite for her under the academic discount, in the fall of 1999. I stayed with her, and used her computer, over the Christmas holidays. Youch, it was painful. Her computer took forever to boot. And, if you invoked any non-microsoft programs you could hear the HDD thrash like crazy.

I looked into this, and thought I confirmed that the MS office suite was to blame. I thought the reason it took forever to boot was because MS fired up all the office applications first. I thought the reason the HDD thrashed like crazy was that MS gave the office suite products preferential access to the windows swap space, loading them back in, even though they weren't in use, so that the OS could continue to invoke them quickly, in spite of their huge, bloated size.

So, are you really sure IE invokes more quickly?

Re:Does IE really invoke more quickly?

[geoswan]

What does Office have to do with IE.

Isn't IE part of the MS Office Suite?

IE is faster than Moz

Yeah, but the challenge I was mounting was to the previous poster's assertion that IE loaded more quickly. By that I assumed he/she meant the time from invocation to it being ready to do your bidding.

due to disk caching, OS integration,

Cheating, in my books. I want to control which, if any, applications get preferential access to system resources.

etc. But Phoenix is faster than both without any of that. Go take it for a test drive.

Woah cowboy! Let me feel I have mastered Mozilla first, OK?

Custom install

[DGolem]

I think I'll wait until Phoenix gets a little smaller until I consider switching to it from Mozilla. According to their site they plan on reducing it from 9mb to 6mb by replacing certain components with lighter equivalents. The reason I don't see the switch as worth it now is because I can get Mozilla to become browser only simply by running a custom install and only selecting the browser and the security manager (for ssl support). It really does help and seems to cut the load time in half. I recommend to anyone upgrading/installing Mozilla for the first time to try it. In fact most people who notice Phoenix running much faster probably installed Mozilla with the default options. For me it's about a tie right now.

Re: whitelist

[ism]

Something on a blacklist is considered unacceptable, to be boycotted, or censured. A whitelist is the opposite -- something to be accepted. Since Phoenix can be set to block all popups (everything is blacklisted by default), the user then adds sites to the whitelist. A site on the whitelist will be allowed to have its popups show up. This is handy for sites that use popup windows legitimately.

In Phoenix, when a site attempts to launch a popup window, an icon shows up on the bottom. When clicked, the site can be whitelisted.

Try the IE Skin

[ink]

I've found that a lot of the "heavy" button feeling that is generated by Mozilla is psycological in nature. IE's button response times are often slower than Moz's; try out the IE skin for mozilla:

http://mozillako.hypermart.net/ieskin/

After installing it, you'll be surprised at how much "faster" mozilla seems.

Need better home page - like most open source

[mesocyclone]

The Phoenix project may be a wonderful thing, but from the home page I can't tell why, or whether I want to use it. At least it mentions what it is in deep geek.

Too many open source projects assume that those who read their home pages already know what the project is for, or know why they would want to use it.

I would ask open source project folks to at least put a short description of their project (with minimal cryptic references to geek acronyms) and also a list of reasons as to why one might want it.

Computing today is too wide a field for all of use to keep track of every acronym and every open source project, so a web page that says "this is a better BLURP, using FARGLE and the new XVC standard" is pretty useless.

After all, what good is it to put a lot of work into a project if you keep away a lot of users by inadequate "marketing." If you want your work to be used and appreciated by lots of people, tell us what it is and why we want to use it!.

Is this the future of Mozilla?

[psr]

I still use Mozilla most of the time, because I use Mozilla Mail as my mail client, but I have been using Nightly builds of Phoenix from time to time, and I have to say I'm impressed. With the Tabbed browsing extensions and Optimoz installed I think it is the best browser I have come accross.

I think that Phoenix is more than a good web browser though, I think it is nothing less than a complete vindication of the Mozilla project. Pheonix shows that all of the time put into Mozilla has not just produced bloat, it has also produced a code base that is useful enough to make something extremely efficent and effective, extremely quickly.

It is also very good to see something come out of Mozilla that isn't just an unbranded version of Netscape, and I would like to see more of this. Given the work that is going into producing the GRE (Gecko Runtime Environment) which aims to make a distribution of the bits of Mozilla that are used by everything, so that programs can be linked against it without needing the whole broweser suite to be installed, I think that Pheonix and other apps like it (a mail reader and all the rest) could be the future of Mozilla.

Mozilla 1.0 was both a Monolithic Communications Suite and an application framework, and Phoenix has shown the power of that frame work. I would like it if Mozilla 2.0 was just a framework, but it was released with a set of standalone programs that worked well together, but could be used equally well seperately, and I think it would do Mozilla's credibility a lot of good if it was something that definately isn't Netscape.

I wonder if anyone at Mozilla.org is thinking like this.

Re:Anyone know whether antialiasing support planne

[asa]

build witn --enable-xft on a system with the XFT libs (ex. RH8) and you'll get beautiful AA fonts.

--Asa

Yes, and...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

...my son pooped on the potty today. Neither event is newsworthy (well, the pooping thing is, but only in our house)

Is it that slow of a news day that a 0.4 release makes the front page? What, Cartoon Network didn't issue any press releases today?

biggest piece is missing!

[gol64738]

one thing that i am so used to, is being able to cut a URL from somewhere and middle mouse button click on my web browser to launch it.
mozilla and galeon has had this functionality for a long time now, but it appears that Phoenix is missing it.
I also noticed that Galeon2 is missing it as well (although it is currently alpha).

is middle mouse button URL launching popular with anyone else?

Re:biggest piece is missing!

[mzo23]

"Known Issues This is a 0.4 release. If you expect everything to work perfectly, you will surely be let down. This list covers some of the known problems with Phoenix 0.4. Please read this before reporting any new bugs to Bugzilla.
* Phoenix utilizes large hunks of Mozilla code. Many of the problems you may experience in Phoenix are actually problems in this Mozilla core code. If you find a problem with page content or connectivity then it is probably a Mozilla problem and should be reported to the Browser product in Bugzilla and not to the Phoenix product.
* Phoenix 0.4 does not work on Windows95. This is a problem with core Mozilla code and probably impacts all Mozilla-based products created after about Oct. 23rd.
* Opening new location by pasting (middle-click) into rendering area is not working.
* Site icons (favicons) are lost after crashes and are sometimes associated with the wrong bookmark. Clearing your cache (Tools|Preferences|Privacy) will clear your bookmark favicons so they can be redownloaded when next visiting that site.
* If your menubar becomes inactive after toolbar customization then you probably didn't read the install notes and install your new build to a clean directory (and create a new profile for use with 0.4).
* If pop-up whitelisting doesn't seem to work then you probably didn't read the install notes and create a new profile for use with Phoenix 0.4.
* Talkback builds are not available for 0.4.
* The sidebar will persist across new windows, but not across sessions (if you shut down with it open, it will be closed upon restart).
* Quicksearch in bookmarks and history still have a couple of issues. We don't yet support deleting filtered results for bookmarks and history filtering is case sensitive. We expect to have these issues fixed in future releases. For additional issues, FAQs, Tips and Tricks plus general Phoenix help be sure to check out David Tenser's very cool Phoenix Help site and the mozillaZine Phoenix forums."

One can only assume that since it's in the Known Issues section that it's probably on their to-do list.

Use QuickLaunch for more speed...

[LFS.Morpheus]

[ Win32 only, though. ]

As long as this (undocumented) feature remains in the code, you can make Phoenix, like Mozilla, have a quick launch thing so it starts nearly instantly. Have a shortcut in your startup folder that runs "phoenix.exe -turbo" (with appropriate paths). Worry not; this will not start the browser, just the quicklaunch.

Now, Phoenix has the same advantage IE has (grumble grumble).

Mouse Gestures Problem

[SonicRED]

After seeing how quickly the browser loaded and checking out the great new features I was quickly disappointed to find that I could not change any preferences in regard to mouse gestures.

In Mozilla I had my mouse gestures set to use the middle mouse button and I'm completely hooked on that. Now I find there is no way to do this in Pheonix.

*sigh*

a whole lot

[kilonad]

There's a few things I've noticed that are a LOT faster. Creating a new window (and being able to alt-tab back to the first one, since you can't load a new window in the background like a tab) is quite a bit quicker, but that's nothing compared to the speed-up when you're opening a download progress window. (I'm not that big a fan of download manager, I still prefer separate windows). In mozilla 1.1 (unsure about 1.2) this can actually take a couple of seconds on a 1.2GHz Athlon w/768mb ram.

Does anyone know if there's any way of porting some of the UI speed improvements back to mozilla? Or if someone will come along and make a version of mozilla that's been tweaked for windows so it doesn't take forever? The only thing I don't like about Phoenix is that when you shift-click, it opens in a new window instead of downloading the link.

Great! But Bookmarks management sucks...

[aquarian]

I really like Mozilla now compared to IE. Phoenix is even faster, and therefore that much better. But there's one thing I really hate about Mozilla/Phoenix -- Bookmark management. It's clunky, slow, and tedious, and just plain sucks. To be fair, IE's Favorites is a pain these days too. My favorite system was IE's from a couple of generations ago -- where it gave you a simple explorer window, and you managed your bookmarks by drag 'n drop, and/or sorting, like with any other file browser. IIRC, Konquerer still does it this way, and IMO it's the way to go. Phoenix/Mozilla is still a nicer, faster browser overall, but this legacy-Netscape Bookmarks thing has got to go!