Slashdot Mirror
Too Good To Ignore — 6 Alternative Browsers
bsk_cw writes "With the exception of Google's Chrome (which got attention because it was, after all, Google), most of the alternative browsers out there tend to get lost in the shuffle. Computerworld asked three of their writers to take some lesser-known browsers out for a spin and see how they do. They looked at six candidates: Camino (for the Mac), Maxthon (for the PC), OmniWeb (for the Mac), Opera (both the Mac and the PC versions) and Shiira (for the Mac)." It would have been more interesting if they included some popular open source, Linux-friendly browsers like Konqueror or Epiphany, as well.
Finally I can browse the internets on the Mac, it was the one thing missing from that experience...
I find it interesting that they checked out 4 for the Mac and only 2 for the PC. Isn't there at least one other PC browser they could have looked at? Maybe not, I'm unsure. Interesting read either way.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
At my work, I'm forced to use a SLOT-A Athlon running XP with 32mb RAM. K-Meleon allows the machine to function. All other graphical browsers bring it down to its knees.
opera
ie
mozilla (firefox/ netscape)
webkit (safarit/ chrome)
am i missing any (competitive, comprehensive) engines?
aren't all of the browsers here variations on these engines?
maxthon, for example, is ie based i believe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
6 more browsers that all do the same things the mainstream ones do.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Maybe a better approach is to take the engines they use (ie/webkit/gecko/opera/khtml) and show what makes different from the best known browser using them.
The interface gives bells and whistles mainly, but the engine in the end is what makes a site you need work or not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The other day I saw this browser on a friend's machine. I think it was called Internet Explorer, but I'm not sure. I've never used it before. Is it any good?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Maxthon, Camino or Epiphany browsers in their own right.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
I love opera, its a fast light weight but feature rich and rock solid browser that doesnt require endless tweaking and fiddling with extensions like firefox does.
there are still few people who intentionally (or without any option) use text based browsing ;-)
"With the exception of Google's Chrome (which got attention because it was, after all, Google),
True, but not the only reason: it's also a damn slick piece of technology and surprisingly intuitive in its initial phase.
The straight product is only one component of the experience; the community also plays a huge role. I know that the real reason I've stuck with Firefox for so long is because of the massive amount of support I can get from Greasemonkey and Userscripts.org, just goes to show that communities can build up around almost any given browser or piece of open-source software to really make the user experience unique and add value to the product.
Honestly they all seemed worthless except for Opera; and maybe Shiira 2.2, which isn't even done.
I say nothing to see here. No wonder they are so unknown.
"maxthon, for example, is ie based i believe"
I believe it is too. I noticed that one of the system requirements is IE 6. What other reason to have IE than to use the render engine?
First of all, Opera is not a forgotten browser and has quite a big following. Maxthon outlived its usefulness as "IE with tabs" when IE7 came out. Chrome was interesting because of its threaded design (ie individual tabs can't crash the whole thing, in theory), its specially-developed V8 JavaScript engine and its focus on making web apps part of the desktop. Slapping a different GUI on Gecko/WebKit, along with a general lack of support for add-ons and other crucial pieces of the browsing experience, does not persuade a lot of people to switch to something "new." Especially when that "new" thing is just a downgraded version of what they're currently using.
Dear OP (bsk_cw):
With regard to your summery, it seems that you have made a slight mistake: confusing advertising with reality. Please examine the system specifications for a new Dell and a new Mac - you will find that the hardware architectures, minus a few proprietary components, are identical. In essence, a Mac is now a brand of PC, much as Ford is a brand of Car. If all PCs ran one operating systems EXCEPT for Macs, the distinction you make would still be valid. However PCs, regardless of brand, are capable of running a variety of operating systems, and THAT is the significant difference. So, next time, please, say "Windows", "OS/X", "Linux", or "all platforms", or, if its something else, say so.
Thanks,
A Reader
Avant is another good one, if you include one that borrows IE's renderer. I'm sure there's a ton of other ones that these Slashdot articles always miss. Lynx is always a good choice to avoid web bloat.
lol: You see no door there!
I'd rather talk about Chromium's nascent plans for extensions, which will hopefully bring AdBlock and NoScript (or at least similar functionality) to Chrome.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
6 more browsers that all do the same things the mainstream ones do.
Unless I've missed it there is one thing that none of them do as well as Firefox and that is block ads. The browser extensions like this are the one thing that, at least for me, puts Firefox head and shoulders above the rest.
Maxthon was originally named myie2, and was basically a way to "skin" Internet Explorer. They have added more features, but they're still using IE under the hood. I used to use Maxthon exclusively before tabbed IE7 came out, but now I use Firefox. :0)
Please don't use the term "PC" when you mean to say "Windows." It's bad enough that Apple continues to push this belief that PCs inherently run Windows in their marketing (as well as being inherently different from a hardware standpoint, something that was one true but stopped being so after 2006), but on Slashdot?
It is a commonly accepted term and frankly it's way too late to change it now. Basically all you're going to do is confuse people for the benefit of... wee... being literal to the acronymn.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't use the term "CSMatt" when you mean to say "pedant".
you want people to be more PC about using the term PC
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Honestly, while apparently Opera isn't the fastest renderer anymore, the UI /feels/ so much faster. Also, moving back and forth with the 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons are faster in Opera because it does not send out another HTTP request each time you click the button, while apparently other browsers do.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Please don't use the term "PC" when you mean to say "Windows."
I chose not to bring tis up, however, because the writers and editors of the article didn't choose to differentiate. In the context of the article, I believe my comment was on target and my choice of working precise. Had they chosen to review, say, Konqueror then I would have been more specific as to OS.
I'm quite aware of the difference between platform and OS. I have various distros of *nix running on some of my PCs in addition to Windows and even a Mac. I suppose I could point out that Intel based Macs are, in reality, nothing more than a PC running OS X. Heck, even old Macs are essentially PCs. The old PowerPC architecture even says so in its very name, yet Mac fanbois often tried to disclaim that they were PCs and, therefore, akin to Windows at all. Yes, I know that technically the PC in PowerPC stood for "Performance Computing" but try to explain that to the average Joe or Josephine and see ho far you get.
'nuff said, I think.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Taken from their overview page:
Sleipnir uses the same Trident rendering engine as Internet Explorer, so it will display just about any web page perfectly.
recently i was tasked with upgrading a bit of inhouse web 2.0 data entry software, and i had to add spellcheck, which of course is extremely easy: just use firefox. which floored longtime msie users
but then, upon further research, i found out about dynamic textarea resizing, a useful little feature for lots of data entry, while using chrome. you just click and drag the corner of the textarea to make it bigger (or smaller). very nifty
and upon even more research, i found out safari supports both dynamic resizing and spellchecking, AND a grammar checking feature (underlines green, as well as red for misspelt words like in firefox)
all of the mac users in my office were all smiles when i proposed we switch to safari company wide
so, for data entry with lots of textareas on the webpage, i summarize the following for you:
firefox: spellchecking
chrome: dynamic resize
safari: spellchecking, dynamic resize AND grammar checking
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Useless.
No linux coverage at all.
I just wish there was a linux browser besides firefox that supported extensions. With the design decisions being made by the firefox team lately, I'd love to switch. :P
Says you. I say IE is the alternative, and a poor one at that.
I see people switching from Firefox to IE nowadays and with a bit more polish on the UI I could see myself switching to IE8 from Firefox.
Opera, Chrome, etc, aren't vastly superior to IE7 for the common fool anyway,
We must be using different Operas here. To be more prone to troyans that IE you need at least support ActiveX, you know. And yes, I'm from Russia.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
I care about two things in my browser - speed and ad blocking. I usually use Firefox 3.0.4. I have just installed Maxthon: noticeably slower, and the adblock feature leaves traces of where the ads were. I'm trying Opera next.
Oh bother. Look at you all. There's a good reason for calling them PCs. Of course Macs are personal computers, but for many years up until around the Windows 95 days, a lot Windows and DOS software was marketed as running on "IBM-PC and 100% compatible computers" and then just as "IBM-PC Compatible. That's where it comes from. It's simply an evolution of a marketing slogan.
Please don't use the term "PC" when you mean to say "Windows."
It is a commonly accepted term and frankly it's way too late to change it now. Basically all you're going to do is confuse people for the benefit of... wee... being literal to the acronymn.
Nonsense, you think it would have confused people if it said:
"They chose six candidates: Camino (for Mac), Maxthon (for Windows), OmniWeb (for Mac), Opera (both Mac and Windows versions) and Shiira (for Mac). Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser."
???
Note I changed it from "the Mac" as Mac is the operating system primarily used on Apple computers and so "the Mac" sounds the lame to me.
You'd be amazed how much you can do with them, apart from most news sites and forums they also work with yahoo-mail and gmail.
And you can use them on an ssh session tunneld through the https port to your home server for a bit of sneaky reading from work.
"They chose six candidates: Camino (for Mac), Maxthon (PC), OmniWeb (for Mac), Opera (both Mac and PC versions) and Shiira (for Mac). Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser."
That version is shorter and it doesn't call for the ban of a term that's been in use for 10 or so years.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It depends somewhat on your geographic location, but these days the breakdown is something like
IE - 70-80 %
Firefox 15-20 %
Safari - 3-7 %
Opera - 1% or less
With some others thrown in.
Opera is a fine and often innovative browser, but its share of the market is negligible. Luckily, it's standards support is good, so it works with the same pages that Firefox and Safari work on.
Being the premier browser on a gaming platform doesn't do much for market penetration.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, who would ever use a browser like Firefox when it's just the Mozilla browser and Gecko engine with reduced functionality.
I noticed Lynx was not on the list but then I remembered they were listing alternative browsers, not mainstream ones.
"PC" (Personal Computer) is a form of use, not related at all to hardware nor software.
Luke-Jr
Apples have only been PC-compatible for, what, 3 years now? GOD FORBID you use a term a whole 3 years out-of-date! (Frankly you'll be lucky if people aren't still saying "PC" in 20 years, it's so established.)
Comment of the year
Well, everything is the same except for the menu layout (drastically different in OS X) and the window handling.
Opera on all platforms other than OS X uses MDI for window handling, so all tabs were in one window, and could have different window sizes. (This is different from most browsers, which make all tabs equal to the window size, and if a page needs to be a different size, needs to be broken out into a separate window.)
OS X has no concept of MDI (well, actually, it does, but it implements it very differently from every other OS.) Therefore, all tabs behave like other browsers - permanently maximized, and for differently sized pages, they come up as different windows, requiring an Apple-~ to switch between them, instead of an ordinary Ctrl-Tab. Kinda confusing.
The term was out of date more than 3 years ago. I used a PC, with linux on it, 10 years ago.
Does IE version 2.1 count as an 'alternative' browser?
Christ.
Look, "PC" means "PC-compatible." As in, "compatible with the IBM 5150 computer." Among other things, to be PC-compatible, a computer needs to have a x86 CPU on it. Until very recently, Macintosh computers did not have x86 CPUs, and thus were not PC-compatible. What part of this is difficult? And what the hell does Linux have to do with it?
Comment of the year
properly render this particular entry. The last two lines got overlaid with the 'keywords'. Surely we need the alternative browser, just to browse Slashdot. Eh?
Where WebKit came from.
"They chose six candidates: Camino (for Mac), Maxthon (PC), OmniWeb (for Mac), Opera (both Mac and PC versions) and Shiira (for Mac). Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser."
That version is shorter and it doesn't call for the ban of a term that's been in use for 10 or so years.
I don't understand what you mean by "call[ing] for the ban of a term that's been in use for 10 or so years"? I'm not asking anyone to stop using the term PC (Personal Computer) but I would expect an IT journalist to use it correctly.
I didn't realise brevity was the problem:
"6 options. For Mac: Camino, Omniweb, Opera or Shiira. For Windows: Maxthon or Opera. The best? It depends."
That's about half the length and uses the correct terminology. Those extra few bits must really have been burning up the bandwidth.
For those looking for a go-between between lynx and other heavy-duty gui browsers like firefox: give dillo a try.
I'm not asking anyone to stop using the term PC (Personal Computer) but I would expect an IT journalist to use it correctly.
Right, you don't want anybody to stop using the term PC except IT journalists.
Those extra few bits must really have been burning up the bandwidth.
Effective communication is important, especially for journalists. Your pedantry, not so important.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
We're talking about people that say PC when they mean "Windows". It has nothing to do with Macs being x86 or PPC.
Since when did effective communication preclude accuracy of information?
PC has a quite well defined meaning which should be assumed to be narrow when addressing issues in the field of IT. If an IT journalist can't communicate the difference between a genericised computer hardware arrangement and a specific companies operating system then they should seek alternative employ, IMO.
I guess I simply made the mistake of thinking ComputerWorld.com address issues in computing. They must be a capacitor wholesalers, 'coz, y'know, you get them in computers.
I suppose you think Ubuntu === Linux too?
aren't you constitutionally required to use the nord browser (opera)?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We might as well just use the terms, Mac, PC, & Linux. Everybody thinks PC means Windows. And when Linux gets mentioned alongside Mac & PC, people will get the impression there's a third one of these things out there. If we get that point across then it will be less difficult to explain how there are a fourth and fifth option, and so on.
Epiphany works perfectly for me: small, clean, with support for custom stylesheets (which I use a lot, primarily to place serif fonts in place of these fscking sans-serif fonts some webmasters seem to be brainwashed in thinking that they are easier to read on screen), and upgradeable through extensions (either the included ones, third-party ones, or your own as it is very easy to build one). It even has support for both gecko and webkit (gecko seems to be working better on Debian GNU/Linux lenny/5.0 so I still use it even though webkit is now considered the preferred engine). A real full-screen view a-la Firefox 3.0 would be great to have by default, but never mind.
Really? Opera is my main browser and I've only set it to identify as IE once, ever, and that was when I purposefully went to a site that I was told checked for IE, to see if anyone actually still did that. Maybe I'm just not browsing the right (wrong?) kind of site.
....Someone gives me my Mosaic back!
And makes it W3C compatible.
Since when did effective communication preclude accuracy of information?
As if they're often mutually exclusive. In any event, you can be very literal and very confusing. You could screw up the terms and still be very clear. In this case, he used a commonly accepted term that even Mr. Data would have no problems discerning. Non-issue.
If an IT journalist can't communicate the difference between a genericised computer hardware arrangement and a specific companies operating system then they should seek alternative employ, IMO.
Ooookay. In this case, the journalist used a term that's universally accepted. What a bad journalist!
I guess I simply made the mistake of thinking ComputerWorld.com address issues in computing.
Yep, they sure muddied those waters. I didn't realize how confused I was until I read your post.
I suppose you think Ubuntu === Linux too?
What are you talking about?!?! Linux is the kernel! I hope you're not complaining about KDE!! I'm going to waste your time posting inane replies because I want you to be so specific that my massive brain has no trouble digesting it!!! You better spell everything correctly, too, because if you don't, I'll go into cardiac arrest and it'll be YOUR FAULT!!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
lolz
Maxthon is based on IE and thus has all of its security hassles (see secunia.com &/or securityfocus.com in that regards to verify the truth of my statement if you wish).
Technically not true. Ad blocking *will* prevent some malicious code from running. Maxathon had a couple of other security features base IE didn't that I forget since it's been years since I ran it. Even so, it's not like I had much of a choice -- see below.
As far as tabbed browsing, Opera had that before IE or FireFox AND Maxthon ... [blah blah Opera is awesome]
Was there a point to this entire rant? Did you miss the part where I *had* to have IE's rending engine because the company had some brain dead internal apps that required it? As long as Opera (and Firefox, my browser of choice) didn't do ActiveX, it was either IE or a shell around IE or running multiple browsers at once.
Opera is underrated and largely due to reviews like this one that short-changed it imo.
Geez, are you blaming ME for that or something? I worked with what I had to. If it assuages your fanboy persecution complex, I had Opera on my phone for years and liked it, and I was fond of Opera when I tried it back before it was free in '99.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
On the 'public internet', IE's a menace... & so are apps based on it I feel.
Yes, I would agree, but...
A) Not my policy call, and not my machine. If it burned my employer, so be it, it was their bad IT policies bed, and they should lie in it.
B) Most of the most dangerous sites, I should NOT be viewing at work anyway. Unless someone hijacked one of the news sites I read, there was no risk (especially with ads blocked).
Call me a "fanboy" all you like, but, the fact remains that since MaxThon is based on IE engines? It too will be as vulnerable as IE is, unless something in its code takes care of hassles IE has, somehow... I am just pointing out facts, NOT 'dumping on you'...
Look, Maxathon had its uses. I never once said it was my browser of choice, but I was impressed by how much it made being forced to use IE suck less. So if you are just "pointing out facts," then why point them out *to me*, and why the big rant about how unfair it was that Opera didn't get a better shake when I *never once* said anything bad about Opera?
I mean, if you wanted to post about how awesome Opera is, fine -- do so. Just don't post it *in response to* someone else saying nothing related, and don't do so in a manner that suggests that your and your product of choice are somehow put upon because it makes it look like you're saying that I'm somehow representative of the people responsible for your favorite product's misfortune.
I mean, I could maybe understand if my post was highly moderated and you were just seeking some karma whoring attention for the issue, but why all of this was addressed to *me* in a post that most other people wouldn't see just boggles me.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").