10 Oddly Useful Specialty Web Browsers

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE to uncover 10 alternative browsers that offer specialized advantages for 3-D searching, social networking, easy scriptability, powerful page manipulation, and the like. Each provides a targeted browsing environment, enabling users to browse Web tables into spreadsheets, browse leaner, browser in text, browse socially, browse musically, or browse smarter on the Mac. 'A purist might object that these hybrids are not much different from a standard browser with extra plug-ins. There's some truth to this, but not always — some of the unique capabilities can only be done deep inside the software. In any case, the job of parsing the terms and creating an exact definition of the Web browser isn't as much fun as embracing the idea that there are dozens of alternatives.'"

Comments

Re:Browsing in spreadsheets is not new

[alzoron]

You've always been able to load a URL into a spreadsheet...

I must have missed that feature while playing around with Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc back in the 80s.

One page

[Anonymous Coward]

All on one page.

How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[david.emery]

A browser that is specifically set up to completely firewall websites from each other?

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[ya really]

Blocking connect.facebook.net in your hosts file (/etc/hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) will probably take care of any third party meddling related to facebook or if you use Chrome or SRWare Iron (Chrome without the creepy google tracking) this will do what you ask as well.

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[ya really]

add "127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net" (without the quotes) to your host file, just to clarify.

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[pjt33]

It used to, but it doesn't any more. Now you have to, at minimum, block static.ak.connect.facebook.com as well. I've installed AdBlockPro today to take care of it in a more sweeping way.

But I think David Emery was wanting a generalisation and just used Facebook as an example. I don't know how well common sites would work with external content blocked - whitelisting would be necessary at least for things like jquery.

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ghostery addon also blocks Facebook and most other tracking. IME, has worked invisibly; it's never stopped a webpage from working normally.

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[js3]

I put 127.0.0.1 facebook.com (and for www.facebook.com) and it's amazing how much my Back browser button gets messed up because almost every link on numerous websites foward to facebook.

Re:How about a "Facebook Firewall" browser?

[hairyfeet]

The funny part is even NoScript has a downside, as I went to one of those sites that told how easy it was to ID you by string (sorry I can't remember the name) and with NS I was something like 1-24,000 thanks to NS+FF version+OS whereas without anything my odds were something like 1-2.5 million thanks to so many not using NS. But the trade off of not dealing with drive by malware or a bunch of FB crap makes it worth being easier to pick out of a crowd for me, though YMMV.

Re:Browsing in spreadsheets is not new

[WrongSizeGlass]

You've always been able to load a URL into a spreadsheet...

I must have missed that feature while playing around with Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc back in the 80s.

I think it was alt-shift-F3 + ctrl-shift-u + ctrl-alt-insert + ctrl-alt-shift-sys_request ... or something like that.

CSSEdit

[bckspc]

I use CSSEdit all the time. Its core is a Webkit browser that shows a live preview of CSS changes you make. It's great for AJAX-y, DHTML-y dynamically driven sites that don't always have HTML "pages" to debug.

It's a bit like the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox, but a standalone browser / app for OS X focused solely on CSS and, IMHO, a bit easier to use.

No connection to the company. Just a very satisfied user.

Dillo

[jones_supa]

Even though it lacks crucial features like JavaScript and plugins, one should try Dillo just to experience how extremely fast a graphical browser can be.

Re:Dillo

[Jorl17]

No, you can't. I've programmed some features of Dillo myself and I look at the amazing work that the regular developers do. It is fast, memory-efficient and efficiency-centric. You can't compare a fully crazy assed GUIed application like Firefox, Chrome and IE (though Chrome is the least expensive of these three) with Dillo and FLTK. The Fast Light ToolKit makes it *really* fast and responsive -- similar to Chrome before all the fucktards started adopting it. Its CSS is increasing and there are *some* plans for basic Javascript. It is something else and I use it whenever I need real speed.

Of course you can just wget something and even make scripts to only get the text out of it, but then you'd just be "reading" the internet, which isn't enough for some things. Dillo is a much more advanced Links.

Shameless plug

[commodore64_love]

I recommend Mozilla seaMonkey. It has the same core engine as Firefox 4, but with the functionality/appearance of classic Mozilla Netscape, and only half the memory usage of FF (~150,000 vs ~300,000 kilobytes).

Another browser Ive tried is Mozilla Songbird, which is really more of a music player than a browser but it's good for those of us who like noise in our ears all day long.

Lynx?

[gmuslera]

For text mode browsing i would go use elinks, with good (text mode) rendering of pages, ssl support and a lot of other features, but not sure in which state are the latest version of lynx, links or w3m by now. There are plenty of text mode browsers, and speed is just one of the advantages.

they forgot one i know of

[FudRucker]

K-Meleon

it uses mozilla's gecko engine, even more bare bones than firefox, a little rough around the edges but overall an ok browser. (windows only)

Re:No mention of Links?

[Tacvek]

No mention of links, but they do mention its predecessor lynx in the article.

Re:Browsing in spreadsheets is not new

[amias]

no no no , thats a special move in emacs that gives your cursor a rocket launcher

Notepad

[T Murphy]

Notepad is my favorite specialty browser. You name the file (url).txt, and it instantly renders the website as a blank page- think of all the clutter you don't have to deal with! Plus, you can add in whatever text you want- ever wanted to make microsoft.com say "Linux rules!"? Well now you can! I can't imagine how anyone could want anything else.

Conkeror

[djupdal]

I rarely see anyone mention conkeror, my favourite browser: http://conkeror.org/

It is the only browser I have tried I can comfortably use without a mouse. Once you learn the emacs-like keybindings, browsing with keyboard is really fast.