on Mon, May 07, 2001 at 07:54:39AM -0400, Hall Stevenson (hallstevenson@mindspring.com) wrote:
> >> Note, however, if you're shifting to the dailies, that the 0.9x
> >> series is rumored to be less stable than the 0.8x line.
> >
> > NOOOOOOOO
> >
> > /me sobs
> >
> > <rant>
> > why don't they just throw away that entire XUL, irc, news, mail,
> > whatever-other-useless-cruft and concentrate on the rendering
> > engine, let galeon and the other frontend projects deal with the
> > rest. then maybe we could have a decent browser before the
> > next millennium.
> > </rant>
>
> If you're a gnome user, why not try galeon ?? It's site is here:
> http://galeon.sourceforge.net/. I've used it in the past and it's
> quite nice...
A GNOME environment is not required for galeon, though some gnome libs
are. I've had more than one exchange with the developer team over this
issue. Gratuitous and deep dependencies are a Bad Thing®.
My experience with Galeon is that it's an attractive option, but
currently unusable. My two platforms are a PPro180MHz/256MB desktop
running Sid and a PIII600/128 laptop running Woody. On the desktop my
primary browsers are w3m and Netscape, on the laptop w3m and Mozilla
(M18-3).
I've got Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon, and Skipstone installed on the
desktop, Mozilla and Konqueror on the laptop (dependencies don't allow
installing Galeon and Skipstone). Galeon and Skipstone are both based
on Gecko, the Mozilla HTML renderer.
My experience with Galeon and Skipstone is that they're both slow on the
PPro180, as well as unstable. Unfortunately, Netscape is simply the
better solution at this point. However, *if* the speed and stability
issues can be addressed, the fundamental philosophies behind
Galeon/Skipstone are very attractive. Quick, light, one-purpose
applications.
On the laptop, Mozilla is pretty good, it's occasionally unstable, but
far better than Netscape. My beefs are that there's too much cruft. I
want a browser and *only* a browser. No mail, no editor, no news. I'm
constantly raising various other apps with hotkey combos, and it's
frustrating as hell. Mozilla has an auto-rise feature that simply sucks
beyond belief. It's also annoyingly conversant when images don't load.
I've locally declared DNS SOA over several advertising domains, Mozilla
loudly proclaims it can't find images from them if I bypass Junkbuster.
Just fucking ignore the image already.
Konqueror is something I try occasionally. It's a nice basic system
though it's not in my frequent habits list. The default decorations are
a bit loud (I like the Gtk look, Galeon, Skipstone, and the "thinice"
Mozilla chrome are favorites). Startup is a bit slow on the PPro.
Konqueror is (thankfully) not dependent on the full KDE environment,
though some setting changes (fonts, etc.) appear to require using KDE
configuration tools. OK. Play with the "Settings" dialog. Problem is
that it's not possible to override site font settings, and fnord knows,
most sites manage to completely fscking shoot themselves in the foot
with broken font configurations.
I've documented my experiences with several browsers at:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/browsers.html
...unfortunatly, the picture ain't pretty, but there are options for how
you want browsing to suck.
Biggest browser beefs:
- Stability. Quit with the fucking crashing already. Don't lose my
stuff (this includes state). ***STABILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL***
- Speed. Render. Quickly. Load. Quickly. Stop. Quickly. Ties
strongly to lightweight code as well.
- Standards compliant. Support standards. Don't promote
proprietarysms..
- Dependencies. Codependency sucks.
- Bloat. A browser. Not a fucking kitchen sink, thank you very
much.
- Privacy. Allow me to control cookies, Java, Javascript. Support
SSL. Default mode should maximise privacy. Don't do shit behind
my back.
- Security. Strong overlap with above.
- Plugins. Suck. Third party apps should launch as same. They
should *NOT* launch within my browser. Flash sucks. Period.
- Unobtrusive. Stay out of my face. Do what I say.
- Configurability. Allow my to configure: fonts, scaling steps,
colors, animation handling (none), proxies, cookie/java/javascript
handling (none, by default), preferred mail/news/telnet/ftp apps.
> I also found "gzilla", http://www.gzilla.com/, at the gnome website.
gzilla is very not-prime-time.
Personal recommendations:
- Text: w3m + screen
- Faster system (PIII/300+): Mozilla M18 or 0.8x.
- Slower system (PII or lower): Netscape 4.7x or 3.x.
- Keep an eye on: Galeon, Skipstone.
Cheers.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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