Best web browser for *BSD systems

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Here is a poll for what you think is the best web browser currently for *BSD systems. Feel free to express why you do or don't think certain web browsers are good for the *BSD community and what improvements need to be made in certain browsers to better them.



NOTE: I can't possibly list each and every browser out there. I am going off of memory and if I unfortunately neglect your favorite browser, select 'other' and tells us all about it.

[cajunman4life]

Elinks - because I just don't run X on my BSD systems (all servers).

[lvlamb]

Voted for w3m as it supports many functions not in other image capable browser.
Opera, if you need to access sites blocking non-flash.
Text only users will have other meaning :)
But, if you need UTF-8 on a server, you almost have to use X. (if not Linux or Windows).
This said, I use almost all gecko's, each to access a specific range of sites.
Some other sites are just cUrl'ed and de-html-ized/imported in postgreSQL: saves some bandwidth and CPU time if just looking for specific info.

[BSDfan666]

Why exactly is Internet Explorer on the list?

[DrJ]

Best for what purpose? I mostly use Epiphany, but regularly use Firefox (both native and in Wine for Flash9) and Linux Opera. Once in a while I use Galeon and Internet Explorer (in Wine). All have their uses and different quirks.

[TerryP]

Flock, because it's better then Firefox (when like me, you don't use extensions to add missing features; just trinkets), almost as much fun as Opera, and offers some useful service integrations (webmail, blogging, photos, news, etc) that every other browser is missing out of the box.


However, if this poll was for the best _browser_ in general, I would have to say Lynx -- other browsers only best it in rendering pages, nothing else.

[anomie]

Why exactly is Internet Explorer on the list?

I was wondering the same. :D

[TerryP]

wining about it won't get it ported.

[anomie]

Well, I already voted for lynx (same reason as cajunman4life -- I usually do not run X on a server).

But this evening I just started playing around with Opera 9.5 on my laptop. Very slick!

[Carpetsmoker]

Opera 9.50 seems to have caught the "sleak" black virus ... I don't know why so many applications use a skin like that ...

Anyway, you didn't really phrase the question very well, do you mean what the best browser is, or which browser you use the most?

Many people seem to use another OS (Windows, Linux, OSX) as their desktop, and BSD only as server, while other people also use BSD for their desktop ... Some people are saying they use lynx, elinks, w3m, etc, which is probably not what they're using from day-to-day (But only on their non-X servers)...

[drhowarddrfine]

And I doubt any of us have used all those browsers to be able to rate them. I mostly use Firefox because of the excellent dev tools. Otherwise, Opera and Lynx. I've used Epiphany, K-Meleon, Flock and some others but it's going to be like your favorite editor. You stay with one that fits how you work and you build your life around it.

btw, Amaya is for development and not an every day browser. Netscape has been killed off by AOL.

[cajunman4life]

For the record - I've used all of these with the exception of Flock and Skipstone.

Now let me re-phrase... my favorite browser is Opera. Use it on my Mac at home. Got it on my work PC. Hell, I'll usually install it anywhere I go (even on public computers, although with 9.5 it forces you to have admin rights to install for some aweful reason - maybe I don't want all users of the system to have access to it!).

But - for command-line only, it's Elinks (but I dink around with w3m every now and then also).

[Oliver_H]

>And I doubt any of us have used all those browsers to be able to rate them.

-Mosaic
-Netscape (up to 4.7x)
-IE at work
-Mozilla
-Opera (former payware)
-Phoenix/Firefox

And always lynx or links on most machines. So most browsers suck, but my favorite sucks less ;-) But sometimes I just try some new browser (midori/webkit at the moment).

[tuck]

The poll is like every other "what is the best..." poll...
It _depends_. You can't compare a browser on your cli to irefox.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

I am looking for best _general_ overall browser.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Why exactly is Internet Explorer on the list?

I was wondering the same. :D

Because it is a browser and it can run on *BSD (if one is so inclined to set it up with the proper emulation software).

And, because I am an equal opportunity offender. :D



Note: I didn't actually expect it to get any votes for it, but I thought if I excluded it I'd hear "where's IE?!" :rolleyes:

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

For those who choose links/elinks or w3m - why those instead of lynx?

[jb_daefo]

iirc with w3m, backspace puts you in history (easy to go back) and
you can cursor to links
....................
tried Amaya, had to deselect "opengl" (make config) or
nothing was installed despite the port thinking that it did. Either that,
or uninstalling thoteditor beforehand

[lvlamb]

w3m ?

aware of other character codes than en_US
may (option) display pictures (some webmaster provide "uncopyable" data in png format, never heard of OCR)
handles tables
can be used to translate html/tables to plain text
can be used as a pager as less/more
...

Actually I now use cURL and scripts to read tables and order the data as I want to.;)
Typical html page with tables 66K if saved as html, all the data 1833 Bytes! once cvs or tab delimited.

w3m's interface is less polished than Links+ (a bit heavier, almost same functions but not all) or Dillo (GTK+1 or do they really switch to FLTK, yet another graphic tool ?).
Find w3m a better candidate on OpenBSD to add browsing with tables and images on FVWM.

[drhowarddrfine]

Hello,

I am looking for best _general_ overall browser.

With that qualifier, then you have to remove most of the browsers in the poll, leaving only these:
Firefox
Mozilla
SeaMonkey
Opera
Konqueror
Galeon
Epiphany
Flock

That list comes about because they are easily installed on BSD, not needing wine, and can display the same various mime-types. And many on that list all run the same rendering engine as Firefox.

[aleunix]

I think the best browser is firefox.

I hope that in the future are available minimal browser based on Webkit.

I saw some projects on the network but are still in experimental phase. (I have tried Arora (http://code.google.com/p/arora/) on Ubuntu Hardy).

I would like a minimal browser with few dependencies but complete for X.

[TerryP]

There is more to web browsing then just the rendering engine drhowarddrfine.

A web browser also provides the user interface and niceties of surfing the web. While the rendering engine takes care of the formating and layout of the content.


Even if Gecko comes in shape usable to compile and surf with, I doubt using it and nothing else would be very much fun for most people ;-)


PS

Lynx forever.

[lvlamb]

Best overall browser should also read the dumb flash player sites.

Which leaves your list with?

Opera under Linux emulation?

That is not even *BSD, so not in the list neither. :D

[TerryP]

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years :-P

[hydra]

I use Firefox, opera is fine too, any of these two :)

[drhowarddrfine]

There is more to web browsing then just the rendering engine drhowarddrfine.
Well, duh. I was just pointing it out.

[anomie]

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years

Flash is a nasty, horribly misused application. I avoided it for a long time, but now I use it strictly for Google Streetview (which can be handy when traveling to unfamiliar terrain on vacation or even within your own city). Ok, and I occasionally watch music vids on youtube.

[BSDfan666]

I have not used Flash/Java, They're a horrible disgrace to the Internet, as are sites that use Javascript excessively.

[algkalv]

Opera 9.50 seems to have caught the "sleak" black virus ... I don't know why so many applications use a skin like that ...

It was done to meet the demands/tastes of the main user group, who are using vista, or are on their way to using it.

It's, um, not very attractive to many, but if it helps take humans off the IE/Win horse, then it pays off, or such is the hope.

There is of course no reason to not customize it to tailor one's own wishes, even on systems where "native skin" doesn't really mean anything ;) e.g.:

http://files.myopera.com/Moose/files/recent.png

Ultimately, it's the core rendering engine that matters to many, and 9.2x is far behind 9.5 in that regard...

[algkalv]

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years :-P

Not the only ;) There are some who have everything off, including JS/cookies, selectively enabling them only for sites which require them, via site prefs - banks etc.

The nothing-on mode makes for truly fast browsing.

[roddierod]

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years :-P

No sites that I frequent require the use of flash. But lately friends who use windows send me links to youtube, so i installed py-clive to handle that.

I've been using Opera since version 5 on BSD exculsively.

[lvlamb]

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years :-P
Maybe :D
First page at my ISP is Flash.
So I either have to grap a Windows machine or I can't for support or billing info.
Note that, tech supports goes no futher than asking you to run winipcfg or guide you clicking through the connection icon. :o
But, with my subscription I am entitled to 1/2 day of "free" Intermet hands-on.
I was happy.
Also happy to get my Windows installation CDROM. Need it to correct the level of my terraxe wooden tiles.

[Carpetsmoker]

Why does every discussion even vaguely related to the WWW turn in to an anti flash/java discussion?

Anyway, here are the browser stats for DaemonForums ... seems firefox is by far the most popular ...
Browsers Grabber Hits Percent
Firefox No 442207 59.7 %
Opera No 117979 15.9 %
MS IE No 92265 12.4 %
Safari No 24795 3.3 %
Mozilla No 24712 3.3 %
Konqueror No 19892 2.6 %
BonEcho (Firefox 2.0 development) No 4850 0.6 %
Unknown ? 2887 0.3 %
OmniWeb No 2249 0.3 %
Galeon No 1852 0.2 %
Others 6388 0.8 %

The "Others" broken down:

Camino No 1554 0.2 %
Epiphany No 1290 0.1 %
K-Meleon No 1093 0.1 %
Links No 577 0 %
Akregator (RSS Reader) No 191 0 %
Plagger (RSS Reader) No 154 0 %
Dillo No 149 0 %
NewsGator (RSS Reader) No 140 0 %
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader) No 92 0 %
LibWWW No 92 0 %
w3m No 87 0 %
Liferea (RSS Reader) No 64 0 %
Phoenix No 39 0 %
RSSOwl (RSS Reader) No 34 0 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) No 34 0 %
Lynx No 28 0 %
iCab No 26 0 %
Acrobat Webcapture Yes 12 0 %
MultiZilla No 12 0 %
FeedDemon (RSS Reader) No 4 0 %
NetPositive No 4 0 %
Wizz RSS News Reader (RSS Reader) No 2 0 %

Some people need to upgrade .... badly ... O.o

Firefox 0.5.6 No 25 0 %
Netscape 4.0 No 108 0 %
Msie 2.0 No 12 0 %

[BSDfan666]

Yes, Off topic, sue us Carpetsmoker ;)

People who send me Youtube links are instantly removed from my contact list... ;)

[drhowarddrfine]

Netflix online movies and now Hulu, along with the occasional YouTube stuff, forced me to put Win on my notebook; but I'm really hating it. But I like to watch movies sitting in a chair or in bed.

[DrJ]

Flash is also a practical necessity if one wishes to keep up with the current US presidential campaign. Much of the rhetoric, pointy elbows, slime and (yes!) interesting stuff comes out as flash videos. You can see the memes developing from the original incidents. I grant that not everyone is a junkie of political campaigns like I am, but if you are, you need Flash.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Flash is also a practical necessity if one wishes to keep up with the current US presidential campaign. Much of the rhetoric, pointy elbows, slime and (yes!) interesting stuff comes out as flash videos. You can see the memes developing from the original incidents. I grant that not everyone is a junkie of political campaigns like I am, but if you are, you need Flash.

Or, if you're like me, you can do it the old fashioned way via newspapers and TV. (isn't it sad that TV is becoming old fashioned :p)

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Am I the only fool who has been perfectly happy enough to live without need of flash for the last 10 years :-P

There is some good and interesting stuff on youtube (but you really need to search for it, most of it is just plain junk) - but yeah, I agree that flash is way too overrated.

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Anyway, here are the browser stats for DaemonForums ... seems firefox is by far the most popular ...

Thanks for the stats!

[DrJ]

Or, if you're like me, you can do it the old fashioned way via newspapers and TV.
IMHO, you can't really do it this way, unless you read a dozen or so well-chosen papers and spend way too much time on TV. That is, if you wish to have anything more than a cursory understanding of how event have developed.

That said, I do read five papers a day and a couple of weeklies (like the Economist). I don't have much use for television and their terrible reporting (with a very few exceptions).

[JMJ_coder]

Hello,

Doesn't Opera require you to pay to get rid of all their advertising?

[Carpetsmoker]

No, not since Opera 8(?), about 4(?) years ago.

[anomie]

... and a couple of weeklies (like the Economist).

OT, but: great magazine. Lots of thoughtful articles / editorials. I had to cancel my subscription after realizing I couldn't keep up with the rapid content delivery, though. ;)

[DrJ]

OT, but: great magazine. Lots of thoughtful articles / editorials. I had to cancel my subscription after realizing I couldn't keep up with the rapid content delivery, though. ;)
Not to go too far OT, but what the heck. I've read the Economist for over 20 years, and it is one very useful datum. It has a decided point-of-view, but every publication does. As long as you keep it in mind, you can get stories that you would not get easily here otherwise.

[fbsduser]

MY picls for best browser are:
For BSD: Links2, ELinks, Links, Lynx and/or w3m.
For Linux: Galeon and Firefox.

[mfaridi]

I like Firefox and for site have flash I like Opera

[mdh]

Seamonkey ftw. Konqueror is surprisingly decent, too. Firefox is lacking some configurables that seamonkey still supports, so I haven't really adopted it for general-purpose browsing. Konqueror has some configurables that neither Seamonkey nor Firefox have without additional add-ons (like changing your User-agent string to get around retarded websites: www.comcast.net, I'm looking at you..)

I also REALLY like being able to middle-click on the new tab button in seamonkey to open the URL in my paste buffer in a new tab. Something Firefox sorely lacks, even with the new tab button add-on.

[Carpetsmoker]

I also REALLY like being able to middle-click on the new tab button in seamonkey to open the URL in my paste buffer in a new tab. Something Firefox sorely lacks, even with the new tab button add-on

Yet another feature Opera had for ages that the Mozilla people copied (and then act like they invented the whole thing).

Btw, here's a site I came accross some time ago:
Firefox Myths (http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html)

[ai-danno]

According to that site you linked your comment should be deleted, your IP banned from the forum, and gross and ulgy defamatory comments should be made about you.

Of course, since you run this site, I'll leave it to you - LOL!

I ran the acid tests it mentions and found that while firefox performed to the expectation that the author claims, IE's results were completely incomprehensible (I'm using IE7-32-bit.) It just seems a bit misleading in some ways, meant to stoke the fires of evangelists on both sides, though for a calm group such as ourselves it's quite enlightening (and, in fact, a comfort on that whole "memory-leak bug".)

[drhowarddrfine]

That website is by a MS advocate and should be ignored. The stuff he listed was generally wrong when he posted it and over 3 years and 2 versions out of date now.

IE8, the best IE Microsoft has come up with, is 10 years behind web standards and it isn't even out yet. It's new features and capabilities only approach what every other browser could do years ago.
Opera and Safari's nightly builds are bleeding edge in standards compliance.
Firefox and Chrome are not far behind. Firefox has the most add-ons that are very helpful.

Firefox 3.1 will be released soon and it's javascript engine is blazingly fast.
Chrome's engine is also on hyperdrive.
IE8s javascript engine is 6x slow than everyone else.

Firefox's so called "memory leak" issues were ancient history when 3.0 came out.

Passing the ACIDx test is good but not a good indicator of standards compliance. That said, IE8 gets a 13, I think, while FF3 is 85? or 58? Opera/Safari nightly builds pass Acid3.

IE8 will still be the only major browser that cannot do XHTML and SVG graphics.

No one would cry if IE went away today.

[vermaden]

Firefox 3.1 will be released soon and it's javascript engine is blazingly fast.

... but disabled by default :)

[Oko]

Could anybody be so kind and tell me when Internet Explorer and Safari were
ported to *BSD? I must have missed something.

To stay on the same note, I don't know what was criteria used to list browsers but I find it funny that two main stream browsers were left out from the list: Midori and Kazehakase. Obviously Google Chrome also has far more chance to be ported one day to *BSD than Internet Explorer.

Personally, I can not stand Gecko engine so for me the choice is clear. It is either Opera (Presto engine) or Midori (WebKit). Since, I am OpenBSD user I would have to give slight advantage to Midori. There are no native Opera binaries for OpenBSD and I do not like to turn on Linux compatibility layer as it is against my religion.

In my point of view Midori is far more promising project than Opera (Unless Opera goes open source). Obviously Midori has still problems with stability.

I also want to say for the record that potentially the best web-browser by 10 fold is Dillo2 but unless developers move quickly to get OpenSSL really working and get support for Java Script (I hate JS as all of you but it is unfortunate reality of the Net) it is going to remain just a joke. Based on past experience (two years freeze) I am not confident that would ever happen. The fact that tabular browsing was
higher priority for Dillo2 developers than OpenSSL is a very bad sign. So go Dillo2 but in the mean time I am trying to stick to Midori.

Speaking of text browsers I really like Lynx but I unfortunately need JS support. Apart of that Lynx ROCKS. Elinks is on the another hand almost full featured web-browser. It needs mostly code fixing when it comes to JS as its
support for it is VERY limited. Unfortunately the elinks is on OpenBSD pre-compiled without Java Script support
(spidermonkey).

Links developers seems lost. instead of fixing usability problems they started adding GUI and CSS support. That is just the death of Links browser in my book.

[TerryP]

Just for the record, using Operas "small screen" view to display pages as they would on a phone, the difference between Opera and Lynx?

The colour pallet is wider and images can be displayed.


I was shocked, when comparing several websites I use daily in Operas "small view" and Lynx in Terminal -> almost identical. So I would say, Lynx is at least as good for surfing the web as a smart phone or PDA :=)

[Oko]

Just for the record, using Operas "small screen" view to display pages as they would on a phone, the difference between Opera and Lynx?

The colour pallet is wider and images can be displayed.


I was shocked, when comparing several websites I use daily in Operas "small view" and Lynx in Terminal -> almost identical. So I would say, Lynx is at least as good for surfing the web as a smart phone or PDA :=)

Opera supports Java Script unlike Lynx. In an ideal world people who use Java Script would be jailed but I live in an imperfect world where support for OpenSSL and Java Script for me is must.

Unfortunately for people who must have Flash and Java the life is even more miserable.

Best,
OKO

[BSDfan666]

Could anybody be so kind and tell me when Internet Explorer and Safari were
ported to *BSD? I must have missed something.
This might be a troll, but considering OS X *is* BSD in some way or other, the question is fuzzy.

As for I.E, Microsoft *did* port it to Unix a few years back... proprietary Unix though, not sure if any of them were BSD descendants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

To stay on the same note, I don't know what was criteria used to list browsers but I find it funny that two main stream browsers were left out from the list: Midori and Kazehakase. Obviously Google Chrome also has far more chance to be ported one day to *BSD than Internet Explorer.
Google will get Chrome on Linux, at this time.. it's using the Win32 API.. it'll take a lot of work.. ;) (See above about I.E..)

How dedicated they are to ensuring it works well on BSD, unknown.. but they chose the BSD licence, that's some indication right? :)

Personally, I can not stand Gecko engine so for me the choice is clear. It is either Opera (Presto engine) or Midori (WebKit). Since, I am OpenBSD user I would have to give slight advantage to Midori. There are no native Opera binaries for OpenBSD and I do not like to turn on Linux compatibility layer as it is against my religion.
I also can't wait to try Midori, would be nice.. I've been using Gecko based browsers out of necessity. (I also will not enable any of the binary compatibility layers..).

Still, the poller probably included all those options out of fairness... some wackos use BSD on servers, not workstations. :(

[drhowarddrfine]

I was shocked, when comparing several websites I use daily in Operas "small view" and Lynx in Terminal -> almost identical. So I would say, Lynx is at least as good for surfing the web as a smart phone or PDA :=)
Most/many developers use Lynx to check the flow of their pages before adding styling.
Opera is the dominant browser for phones.

[mdh]

As for I.E, Microsoft *did* port it to Unix a few years back... proprietary Unix though, not sure if any of them were BSD descendants.

I actually played a dirty joke on a co-worker one time by replacing all of her web browsers on her (Sun) workstation with IE. Pretty funny stuff.

[Carpetsmoker]

To stay on the same note, I don't know what was criteria used to list browsers but I find it funny that two main stream browsers were left out from the list: Midori and Kazehakase. Obviously Google Chrome also has far more chance to be ported one day to *BSD than Internet Explorer.

What is a mainstream browser? From the top my head IE has ~75% market share, Firefox ~20%, and 5% is all the rest ... Opera (A ``mainstream'' browser) for example only has a ~.5% market share ...

There are no native Opera binaries for OpenBSD and I do not like to turn on Linux compatibility layer as it is against my religion.

slightly off-topic, but can't OpenBSD run FreeBSD binaries?

That website is by a MS advocate and should be ignored.

Ah yes, of course, I forgot!
if (Microsoft())
{
Evil();
Ignore();
}

How is it possible people don't see this highly intellectual and open-minded position!

The stuff he listed was generally wrong
Such as?

over 3 years and 2 versions out of date

It includes Firefox 2, so it's just one version (And FF3 is rather new).

Firefox 3.1 will be released soon and ...

Yes, this is the firefox motto:
firefox <next version> will be released soon and it will fix problem x, y, and z.
Been hearing that one for years.

Chrome's engine is also on hyperdrive.

Chrome is alpha and years from a stable and usable state.

IE8s javascript engine is 6x slow than everyone else.

IE8 is a beta, so it's not really fair to judge it by that.
Also, as far as I've noticed it's not really that slow, but I haven't seen any benchmarks (Do you know of any?).

Firefox's so called "memory leak" issues were ancient history when 3.0 came out.

Yes, 1.5 whole years ago!
In any case, it does make a point about the general quality of FF.

IE8 will still be the only major browser that cannot do XHTML and SVG graphics.

Actually, plugins for IE SVG support have existed for quite some time.

And the IE people are working on XHTML for IE ... I would not be surprised if the release version of IE8 will support it.

No one would cry if IE went away today.

Only about 75% of the web, but who cares about that minority?

[drhowarddrfine]

Ah yes, of course, I forgot!
if (Microsoft())
{
Evil();
Ignore();
}

How is it possible people don't see this highly intellectual and open-minded position!
Simple. That guy was well known among us web developers and was dissed years ago. He's full of BS.

Such as?
Oh, sigh. I did this a year or two ago but I'll look again.

Yes, this is the firefox motto:
firefox <next version> will be released soon and it will fix problem x, y, and z.
Been hearing that one for years.I would hope so. Mozilla constantly works on their code. Unlike Microsoft who took five years to work on theirs and still get it wrong.
Chrome is alpha and years from a stable and usable state.Yes it is but that doesn't make its engine less so.
IE8 is a beta, so it's not really fair to judge it by that.But you just dissed Chrome as being alpha. In any case, IE8 is virtually done and there is nothing more significant to come of it.
Also, as far as I've noticed it's not really that slow, but I haven't seen any benchmarks (Do you know of any?).Go to ArsTechnica. They posted results within the last week. So have one or two others.

Actually, plugins for IE SVG support have existed for quite some time.Those plugins do not work in IE7, I believe, and definitely don't work in IE8. Adobe abandoned that plugin a couple years ago.

And the IE people are working on XHTML for IE ... I would not be surprised if the release version of IE8 will support it.They are not and have stated so on the IEBlog. Where did you hear that?
Only about 75% of the web, but who cares about that minority?
Those 75% are mostly users who wouldn't know the troubles of developing for it. It is by far the worst browser on the planet and IE8 won't help much. No web developer worth his salt has any respect for IE. It is the only browser that has tens, if not hundreds, of web sites dedicated to fixes for it.

There's four links to start with, but I've got a million of 'em:
The new IE8 is still 10 years behind web standards or wrong. (http://www.webdevout.net/browser_support.php)
IE is a cancer on the web (http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/47208/windowspaulthurrott_47208.html)
But it works in IE! (http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/)
Security experts advise to not use IE (http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0412.html#10)

EDIT: Adobe last worked on the SVG viewer in 2005. It does not work in Vista. Adobe announced (http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/) they will discontinue support for it in January.

[vermaden]

Anyway, here are the browser stats for DaemonForums ... seems firefox is by far the most popular ...

Also post operating systems used.

[drhowarddrfine]

Here are some myths that is more up to date and by someone respected in the industry:
Firefox Myths (http://www.webdevout.net/firefox-myths)
IE Myths (http://www.webdevout.net/ie-myths)

[drhowarddrfine]

This one (http://lifehacker.com/5065192/chrome-speeds-up-zips-ahead-of-still-behind-firefox) is not the test I saw but I can't find the ArsTechnica one with the best graphs. This one shows 4x over IE8. John Reisig has some good graphs. As do others if you google for browser javascript.

[Carpetsmoker]

drhowarddrfine, I'll search for the benchmarks and replies to that FF myths page later ... But I do know two things:
o The fact that IE sucks doesn't make Firefox a good browser.
o Opera feels like BSD, it's stable, solid, and engineered. Firefox feels like Linux, it's unstable, disorganized, and a sloppy mess.

Also post operating systems used.


Windows 318478 40.3 %
BSD 265911 33.6 %
Linux 144301 18.2 %
Mac 42733 5.4 %
Unknown 12390 1.5 %
Solaris 4884 0.6 %
Unix 259 0 %
OS/2 59 0 %
BeOS 46 0 %
HP UX 35 0 %
Others 35 0 %

[BSDfan666]

slightly off-topic, but can't OpenBSD run FreeBSD binaries?
Not natively... and if he doesn't feel good about toggling kern.emul.linux, why would kern.emul.freebsd be any different? :p

Also, I don't believe it's been worked on in some time... compat_freebsd still mentions FreeBSD 5.0.. :)

[ephemera]

Me thinks it doesn't really matter whether your Firefox is better than my Opera. What matters is that we have good browser alternatives.

If everyone were to use IE then that would give MS the freedom to churn out mediocre, bug-ridden, non-standard/non-compatible, insecure by default crap ... and in this MS utopia we would all be running the same browser along with the same spyware/worms/viruses. :D

[drhowarddrfine]

o The fact that IE sucks doesn't make Firefox a good browser.

I'm not talking usability alone. My main complaints are technical abilities. IE is incompetent. Based on technical proficiency, Firefox runs rings around IE and spits in its face.

As far as Opera goes, it was Firefox that was brought up but Opera is an excellent browser; as is Safari and Chrome. I mostly use Firefox because of its developer tools but also some other add-ons I like.

[TerryP]

Me thinks it doesn't really matter whether your Firefox is better than my Opera. What matters is that we have good browser alternatives.



To each their own, be it telnet or FooBar6000

[mdh]

Another thing on the seamonkey front - xkcd's (http://www.xkcd.com/) long tooltips. Last I checked, firefox still cuts them off, seamonkey doesn't.

[drhowarddrfine]

They work fine in FF for me.

Interesting what he's doing. He's going through the whole XHTML thing, with xml stylesheets, declarations and so on, yet serves it as html which negates everything he's done and he uses the wrong doctype.

[Oko]

slightly off-topic, but can't OpenBSD run FreeBSD binaries?





Theoretically speaking yes


$ more sysctl.conf | grep kern.emul.freebsd
#kern.emul.freebsd=1 # enable running FreeBSD binaries


but in practical terms the answer is no. In order to run FreeBSD binaries
on OpenBSD one needs FreeBSD libraries from ports. This is the comment
about freebsd_lib


These libraries are part of the FreeBSD compatibility options
for OpenBSD. These libraries provide support for binaries built
on FreeBSD 2.2.x, 3.x and 4.x systems.


Obviously, FreeBSD is long way from 4.x. I think that the FreeBSD compatibility layer is more of legacy which was very important in late nineties when there was very little third party software ported to OpenBSD. I personally do not know of anybody who is running FreeBSD binaries on OpenBSD.

Linux compatibility layer might have very soon the similar faith. As more and more software is ported to OpenBSD and as the Linux is moving completely towards 2.6 kernel and ALSA there is little interest among developers to catch up with those changes. Linux compatibility layer was important because of Flash for instance but as Flash 9 for Linux requires ALSA there is no real interest in keeping compatibility alive.
Linux-Opera 9.6 is ported thanks to the efforts of Nikolay but I am not sure how long will that last. The major kernel work will be needed to make Linux binaries compiled on 2.6 kernel run on OpenBSD. As you saw from couple comments most OpenBSD users share my sentiment when it comes to turning on existing Linux compatibility layer (It is off by default and that how it should stay:-) )

Personally, I would really like to see Midori stable and Dillo2 taking off.
Dillo2 with working OpenSSL and possibly JS engine would be an ideal browser for people who use OpenBSD on their desktops.

[Carpetsmoker]

Me thinks it doesn't really matter whether your Firefox is better than my Opera. What matters is that we have good browser alternatives.

Indeed, a free, open, en competitive market is best for everyone, at it's height in 2000 IE had about 95% market share, which is far from a free market ... Things are improving on this front (Thanks to Firefox).

Interesting what he's doing. He's going through the whole XHTML thing, with xml stylesheets, declarations and so on, yet serves it as html which negates everything he's done and he uses the wrong doctype.

Many people do this, mostly for two reasons: 1) Their documents are not quite 100% XHTML compliant, meaning Opera/Firefox/etc. somtimes fail to parse them, and 2) IE compatibility.
It is trivial to detect the browser capabilities and use text/html or application/xml+xhtml appropriately.
`IE compatibility' and text/html is often used as an excuse to hide the fact that the document is not 100% valid XHTML ..

[drhowarddrfine]

Many people do this, mostly for two reasons: 1) Their documents are not quite 100% XHTML compliant, meaning Opera/Firefox/etc. somtimes fail to parse them, and 2) IE compatibility.
I find most people use XHTML because they want to use the latest and greatest yet are unaware that just setting the doctype to xhtml does not mean it gets served that way. Using xhtml and serving it as html doesn't make any sense. XHTML vs HTML (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=393445#q5)

The modern browsers don't have any problem parsing XHTML if it is written correctly.

[Oko]

I just want to let people know that I have been using the latest Midori 1.0 (it is still in alpha stage) for the past week or so on the OpenBSD 4.4 current (it is actually in the snapshot of the packages). I personally have not have any troubles although some people had troubles with starting OpenSSL. IMHO we might be just a months away from the release of another major stable browser. Hopefully this would be a motivation for Opera to come out finally open source.

[vermaden]

I just want to let people know that I have been using the latest Midori 1.0 (...)
Its 0.1.0 actually ;)

Hopefully this would be a motivation for Opera to come out finally open source.

I doubt that this will make them open source Opera, but Midori is indeed a great minimalistic browser.

There also arora browser (something like Midori but QT4 based):
http://code.google.com/p/arora/

[Carpetsmoker]

I played around with Vimperator a bit today, it's nice, too bad the crappy firefox backend shows so often through the neat Vi(m) UI.

[JMJ_coder]

Its 0.1.0 actually ;)



I doubt that this will make them open source Opera, but Midori is indeed a great minimalistic browser.

There also arora browser (something like Midori but QT4 based):
http://code.google.com/p/arora/

I might have to give Midori a try. But, why - oh why - does every browser have to be gtk or qt4 based!!!

[JMJ_coder]

I played around with Vimperator a bit today, it's nice, too bad the crappy firefox backend shows so often through the neat Vi(m) UI.

Does that work like a Firefox plugin - or is it a separate application?

[Carpetsmoker]

It's a firefox extension.
Although in this case `extension' is something of a understatement ... More like a firefox UI makeover.

[TerryP]

I might have to give Midori a try. But, why - oh why - does every browser have to be gtk or qt4 based!!!

Try http://www.dillo.org/ , now based on FLTK IIRC.

GTK, Qt, and WxWidgets are what? Like the most popular gui toolkits that are _not_ platform specific! I don't count AWT/Swing/SWT since I rarely see these used outside Java; things like the common Windows and OSX gear are more popular, but less portable ^_^.



Personally, I don't care whether a program is GTK or Qt based, unless it sucks in a lot of Gnome-related or KDE libraries. What render the web browser uses, and how well the java script engine (if any!) deals with common surfing -> is important ;-)

[drhowarddrfine]

how well the java script engine (if any!) deals with common surfing -> is important ;-)Firefox's javascript engine, coming out in the soon to be released version 3.1, will be up to 40x faster than IE8's engine and the fastest of all. Google's Chrome is only slightly behind that.

[JMJ_coder]

Try http://www.dillo.org/ , now based on FLTK IIRC.

They just completed the conversion over from GTK+.

[JMJ_coder]

I just installed Midori 0.1.0 and Dillo 2.0 - I will be testing them between now and the first of the year.

Initial thoughts:

Dillo loads blazingly fast - within the blink of an eye. Midori takes longer to load - about half a second. Firefox takes anywhere from 1-4 seconds to load (longer on loading the first time after bootup) - just for comparison.


Dillo still has no support for JavaScript or HTTPS - big drawbacks for usage. It also doesn't render some pages correctly (i.e., FreeBSD and NetBSD homepages) - I think CSS still isn't fully implemented - and many others are rendered sub-optimally (i.e., Google). Images don't always display (even when IMG ON is selected).

Midori renders pages nicely - it appears to support both JavaScript and HTTPS. Images appear as they should. One bad thing about Midori's UI - no HOME button.


Midori is half the size of Dillo (~260K vs. ~540K) - but Midori relies on libraries that take up more space (at least on Slackware, where I'm testing them). I will be interested in comparing memory usage between the two.

[Oko]

I just installed Midori 0.1.0 and Dillo 2.0 - I will be testing them between now and the first of the year.

Initial thoughts:

Dillo loads blazingly fast - within the blink of an eye. Midori takes longer to load - about half a second. Firefox takes anywhere from 1-4 seconds to load (longer on loading the first time after bootup) - just for comparison.


Dillo still has no support for JavaScript or HTTPS - big drawbacks for usage. It also doesn't render some pages correctly (i.e., FreeBSD and NetBSD homepages) - I think CSS still isn't fully implemented - and many others are rendered sub-optimally (i.e., Google). Images don't always display (even when IMG ON is selected).

Midori renders pages nicely - it appears to support both JavaScript and HTTPS. Images appear as they should. One bad thing about Midori's UI - no HOME button.


Midori is half the size of Dillo (~260K vs. ~540K) - but Midori relies on libraries that take up more space (at least on Slackware, where I'm testing them). I will be interested in comparing memory usage between the two.

Midori is not the half size of Dillo:eek: Midori with all its dependencies
is over 150Mb. Dillo with FTLK2 is much, much smaller but more than 500Kb.

You correctly observed that Midori is full blown browser based on WebKit
engine with full implementation of OpenSSL (https) as well as Java Script engine. Cavities of Midori are few but the major one is that it is alha software. Did you look the comment about problems in starting OpenSSL?
Also Gtk2 graphics library used for its GUI has bugs. Even Firefox 3.0 has serious problems caused by Gtk2.
WebKit is still under development but very promising web-engine.

Dillo2 based on FTLK2 is HTML browser (no CSS implementation at all) but some implementation for boxes.
Dillo2 has only rudimentary support for OpenSSL which is turned off by
default. It has no Java Script engine. In plain English it is not really usable for anything. Dillo2 is most promising and revolutionary browser for Unix like systems but based on past record of long periods of inactivity I am not
big optimist that will get anywhere.

Midori on the another hand is probably couple months of being another major browser on the market. WebKit is the default web-engine for Safari which is probably the most solid WebBrowser ( I like Opera too but Presto engine is a black box so it might be can of worms for all I know).

[BSDfan666]

Midori is half the size of Dillo (~260K vs. ~540K) - but Midori relies on libraries that take up more space (at least on Slackware, where I'm testing them). I will be interested in comparing memory usage between the two.
That's an unfair comparison.. as Oko has mentioned, Midori uses Webkit for rendering.

[drhowarddrfine]

btw, Webkit is far more than just a "very promising web-engine". It's probably the most advanced engine on the planet right now with neck-to-neck pacing with Opera for the lead. It has bleeding edge standards compliance and leads the way in new advancements. It's used by Safari and Chrome. Using Webkit is a very good thing.

[JMJ_coder]

Midori is not the half size of Dillo:eek: Midori with all its dependencies
is over 150Mb. Dillo with FTLK2 is much, much smaller but more than 500Kb.

I only provided their executable sizes. I did state that Midori had heavier dependency requirements.

I really wish that Dillo would provide JavaScript/SSL/CSS to make it more usable. One thing I need such a capable browser for is signing into my Universities wireless network - which requires a login (Cisco something) to access the internet (as opposed to their intranet). After that, I can go back to any browser or other internet program for use.

[jb_daefo]

dillo now has tabs. (version 0.- now /dillo2/ ) One news site
works rather well with it. (If you right click, you can open a
tab in the background. Seamonkey, however, opens it in
the foreground. I prefer the former)

[drhowarddrfine]

With Firefox and Chrome coming out with javascript engines up to 40x faster, and other web methods relying heavily on javascript, not having js support could be a serious blow for those browsers. A lot of functionality is being transfered to the browser and I'm seeing more of that talked about in the web dev world right now.

[TerryP]

You can make seamonkey open tabs in the background by default.

[vigol]

firefox
1. I realy need some of the add-ons (such as all-in sidebar, colourfulTabs, ...)
2. It do what I need.
3. I've opened about 150 page concurrently, sometime ago, without any problem !
....

[JMJ_coder]

Hey, I found out that links (links-2 as found in NetBSD's pkgsrc) comes with javascript and ssl support!!! Why I didn't know that before?

O happy days! Now I don't need to install Firefox in order to access the wireless at the University.

[TerryP]

Has JS support in links improved much?

[JMJ_coder]

Has JS support in links improved much?

It's not perfect by a long shot. Rudimentary may be an apt term to describe it. And it doesn't seem to play nice when coupled with mysql or php. But still, what support there is does what I currently absolutely need it to do.