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Linux Web Browsers Reviewed

Posted by timothy on Wed May 08, 2002 10:00 AM
from the no-matter-transfer-plugins-yet dept.
Software Linux
scubacuda writes: "A while back, Slashdot posted a Rob Valliere's Linux vs. Windows review. Since then, he has posted a 2002 Linux Web Browser Review." This is a great , straightforward round-up of current web-browsing options, as shipped with distributions. Note though that none of these browsers are static -- Konqueror's CVS version, for instance, now includes tabs and other goodies. So bear your own downloading and installation habits in mind.
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  • Galeon is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by diparfitt (219811) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:06AM (#3484509)
    I've been using Galeon for months at work doing web development (Java!), and I don't think life would be sane if I had to use Netscape.

    It's fast, and does some cool things like disable popups, etc. I also dig the Google search boxes at the top.

    This little browser is just AWESOME!

    • Hear hear! (Score:3, Informative)

      by mccrew (62494)
      Galeon is a great example of the Unix philosophy. Find one thing, web browsing in this case, and do it well. There is no mail client, no instant messenger, or extra stuff to complicate things. Though it does depend on Mozilla libraries, it has a refreshing lightweight "feel" that Mozilla and even old Netscape lack.

      Though not the first to implement the feature, Galeon sets the standard for tabbed browsing.

  • What no Dillo? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ed Avis (5917) <ed@membled.com> on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:06AM (#3484512) Homepage
    A shame that the very fast and neat Dillo [cipsga.org.br] wasn't mentioned.

  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yoda2 (522522) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:08AM (#3484523)
    And it looks like even if you remove these web browsers, Linux will still work.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

      by PeterClark (324270) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:12AM (#3484547) Journal
      But if you remove either KDE or GNOME, you will be unable to access your files. :)

      My two cents: I'm using Galeon with KDE (or, in the words of a fellow LUG member at an InstallFest, "You're doing what?) The reason being, of course, is that I love Galeon's tabs. I mourned the lack of tabs in Konq, but will most definitely go try it out once KDE 3.1 is out.

      :Peter

  • Old software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM (7445) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:08AM (#3484525) Homepage
    That's the problem with these kind of reviews; Mozilla is at RC1 and Galeon is at 1.2 - I assume the other browsers are similarily updated. A review of such software needs to be done almost literally within a week or two, or it will be obsolete and/or wrong by the time it reaches its readership. Reviewers really should take note of that, and maybe include a small section on what is happening to each product in developer-land.

    /Janne

      • Re:Slow down, reliability (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rick_T (3816) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @11:11AM (#3485006) Homepage
        > Why are browsers so bloated, anyway? My poor
        > 133 MHz Pentium with 64 Mb RAM [...] is barely
        > able to cope with Netscape 6.

        You might want to try a more lightweight browser with the same rendering engine - say, Galeon.

        My main workstation is an IBM Thinkpad model 760XD. That's a P166MMX / 80M RAM / 3G HD. Right now I'm running Gnome (minus nautilus), Galeon (to respond to this post), Star Office (to do my actual work), and several smaller apps. I may update to 104M, but my system's quite usable now.

        One thing I do is to use Dillo (http://dillo.cipsga.org.br/) for quick browsing. It's very light, depends only on GTK, and loads in a second or so - even with the apps I'm already running.

  • Somewhat off-topic, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:12AM (#3484546)
    The only way I've been able to convince Windows IE users to use Mozilla is by introducing them to the pop-up blocking feature. Once they see that, they're in awe, and once you show them things like tabs, they're sold. Try it with your favorite IE user and see what happens!

    (And yes, there are extra programs to provide this functionality, but the people I've done this with were happy to dump them.)
    • I think the pop-up ad killing capabilities are great, but there seem to be workarounds for web developers. Everytime I go to the NY times [nytimes.com], I still get Orbitz pop-ups from ad.doubleclick.net. Obviously, I can block ad.doubleclick.net in /etc/hosts, but for less technically minded users, there has to be a better solution. You can test out the specific ad in mozilla, here. [doubleclick.net]

  • 256 MB? No way! (Score:4, Funny)

    by oever (233119) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:15AM (#3484563) Homepage
    While all of the browsers run surprisingly fast on slower CPUs, you need 256MB of RAM for Red Hat 7.2 with the KDE desktop.

    This is nonsense.
    198 MB is enough to work comforably.
    • I can't speak for the reviewer, but even on Windows I prefer Mozilla for two reasons: Pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I can't live without either of those features any more.

      • Pop-ups will return (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mblase (200735) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:47AM (#3484807)
        I use Mozilla to disable auto-popups, and I love it. But it occurs to me that if/when IE integrates this feature, it won't be long before it's worked around.

        The problem is that many pages create JavaScript popups when you click on a link, and for this reason Mozilla allows you to enable or disable this separately. There are many reasons you would want to enable click-triggered popups, so most folks will want/need to leave this on.

        Well, I've written a couple of sites where a user clicks on a link, and JS triggers a popup as well as opening up the desired page. This is done intentionally and for functional reasons; but it's only a matter of time before someone at Geocities or Angelfire figures out how to rewrite a user's page so that every single link triggers a popup in addition to opening the desired hyperlink.

        It would only take a few lines of server-side scripting; a Perl regexp could do it in a second. And then we'll all have to contend with unwanted popups again, opening on the second page of a site instead of the first; only this time we'll have to disable the good popups as well as the bad ones.

        Towards that end, I dearly hope that MS never, ever decides to add pop-up blocking to their browser. As long as they have over 50% usage 'net-wide and lack this feature, no one will see the need to do any of the above. See, unjust monopolies can be a Good Thing....
    • 1) Tabbed browsing - it's worth all the hype it receives. Mozilla can be configured such that almost any action will just generate a new tab. I middle click on a link, new tab. If a link has a _TOP target, new tag. Tabs are much easier to navigate especially if your like me and tend to have 15 web pages open at once.

      2) Scripting security customization. Almost all the annoying aspects of JavaScript can be individually blocked with Mozilla. This includes disabling pop-up ads or pop-under ads or those stupid things that resize your window. The nice thing is that Mozilla is smart enough to differentiate between an action that occurs onLoad or something verses one where you actually click a link.

      3) Sidebar. The mozilla sidebar is pretty neat for two reasons. On the one hand, it provides easy access to things like bookmarks, history, and searching. On the other hand though, the sidebar is built on Mozillas XUL technology such that any webpage can install a new sidebar (well, you have to allow the page to install the sidebar). Freshmeat, CNN, and a few other sites have great sidebars that provide headlines and search facilities (in a compact, easy to use manner).

      4) Integrated everything. Mozilla has a built in mail client, WYSIWYG editor, and address book. The WYSIWYG editor doesn't get the attention it deserves. Its really evolved from the horrible Composer of Netscape fame into something that rivals any editor that I've ever used. The mail client is really nice too with all sorts of searching and filtering capabilities that I am not aware of in Outlook (although I only use Outlook at work).

      A lot of these things are just showing up in the newer releases (in a usable state at least). When the 1.0 milestone is released, I would really recommend checking it out. The release candidates so far definitely have changed the way I use the internet.

      • You forgot that it also allows you more non-work time while you wait for the damned thing to load and it increases computer memory sales, helping other geeks out there.

        Seriously, Moz is a great browser, but its *bloated*. Horribly so. Opera has a brief loadtime on my Win98SE/AMD 1.33Ghz/256M memory home machine, but Moz takes a relatively long time to load. In fact, I'm guessing if I decouple IE from Explorer [winguides.com], IE would still load faster.

        Sure, I'm patient enough to wait for Moz to load, but OTOH, I don't expect bloat from any of my web browsers.

        And no, I don't want to use the quick launch. I like to conserve my memory.

      • Tabbed browsing - it's worth all the hype it receives.

        I use Mozilla on Windows and Linux - and I love tabbed browsing, it is the killer feature for me as I don't tend to visit sites with popups.

        However I find one thing lacking in Mozilla's tab browsing - it isn't possible to switch tabs via the keyboard. To switch to a new tab you have to use the mouse. I've downloaded the source to see how hard it would be to add this, but I've not got round to unpacking it yet.

        It's all very well to open new tabs with the mouse, or Ctrl+T but until I can cycle through them with Ctrl+Tab, or similar, I'm gonna be a little grumpy ;)

        • Yeah, IE has this for a while, OE and FrontPage Express can be downloaded with IE, or they can be skipped. OE is my mail client of choice, with very nice searching and filtering capabilities, and any serious webdev is not going to use something that came with their broswer to create sites.

          FrontPage is not free though. I don't care about serious web development. There are many circumstances where it is necessary for a real programmer (note: web page designer are not programmers) to generate HTML for various reasons or another. It's nice to have a WYSIWYG editor that is low bloat, and that allows for complete extension via source modification.

          Yeah, and IE has customizeable sidebars as well, including sites like Google (actually a top bar) MSNBC.

          These things require programming extensions though. That is insecure and generally not cool. The Mozilla sidebar is based on XUL (which is an HTML-like language) so its pretty safe to install sidebars from any site.

          I only reason most folks use IE is because its already there. You would be making the same argument if IE had better features than Mozilla but Mozilla was already installed. Simply put, it's laziness. I don't care if you use it or not, but don't knock it and give people a false impression of it's quality.

          If you felt a need to reply, you should of simply said, "I use IE because I'm too lazy to download Mozilla. Mozilla does have better features, but I'm just lazy."
    • From personal use of Mozilla I prefer it over Internet Explorer for many reasons but mostly because of the all the features for power users. As has already been mentioned by the reviewer it has tabbed browsing that is great but aside from that it has a plethora of other great features I will list in point form.

      • Complete control over Javascript, you can disable it all together, or just popups, the resizing of windows etc
      • Powerful search tools, you can choose the search engine of your preference while as far I know in it only uses MSN for searching in the URL bar. On top of that you can also select a bunch of text in a webpage and then bring up a context menu and do 'Websearch for "xxxx"' very handly for looking up things from articles.
      • The blocking of images from servers of your choose, get for getting rid of ads
      • The blocking off cookies from sites, again great for stopping those Doubleclick and Cnet cookies etc

      That's atleast I handful of things that I know Mozilla RC1 has that Internet Explorer version 5 doesn't have. But hey at the end of the day it doesn't come down to features, just personal preference.

  • How far these browsers have come (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:23AM (#3484611)
    since February, huh?

    I can't wait to get the new Redhat 7.1. Anyone have a review?

  • Acrobat plugin with Mozilla/Galeon (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ender Ryan (79406) <[ ] ['' in gap]> on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:24AM (#3484624) Journal
    To get the adobe acrobat plugin working with Mozilla/Galeon, simply copy the netscape4.x plugin file, nppdf.so, into $HOME/.mozilla/plugins.

    note: I guess if you didn't read the review you will not understand this post...

  • Missing (Score:4, Funny)

    by 4of12 (97621) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:25AM (#3484632) Homepage Journal

    My browser is missing!

    Even though the rendering engine could use some work, they didn't bother to review

    telnet sitename 80
    • You've got to be kidding! This browser sucks. It doesn't have tabbed-browsing, themability, popup ads, cookies, branding or even a pull-down for reporting bugs! Clearly this browser is for those losers who wish to see that *shudder* "content" stuff.

      Go back in your hole you accademic hack! ;-)

      PS: It doesn't render CNN.com correctly. Crap, just like I said.
      • I sort of laughed until I realized that's how I check my e-mail at work (as someone pointed out on slashdot the other day). Check your mail anywhere - no browser, mail client, or window enviornment needed.

        That's highly inconvenient when you get a VBScript virus. You have to pull out your paper address book manually step through the code to figure out who to forward it to. Then you have to tediously type in the multiple commands to propagate the message. Correctly handling the binary attachment payloads is a bitch, as well.

        Computers were invented to automate things and make things easier. Your life would be much easier if you got some modern software!

  • Printing Problems (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Famous Brett Wat (12688) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @10:50AM (#3484829) Homepage Journal
    I'm fairly happy with the range of Linux browsers, except for one significant gripe: they all suck at printing. Konqueror's pagination is screwy: it overlaps from one page to the next and can crop pages halfway through a line. Galeon and Mozilla seem to have a problem with bold fonts: they treat them as though they have the same pitch as their non-bold counterparts, and thus bold text tends to overlap the following characters. This is visible even in "print preview" mode, so it's not a printer-specific matter.

    I experienced these issues using the versions of the browsers supplied in Mandrake 8.2. It's possible that these are distro-specific problems, but I doubt it. Reply with your related experiences, if any.

  • Pointless illustration award (Score:4, Informative)

    by j_w_d (114171) on Wednesday May 08 2002, @11:04AM (#3484948)
    The "review" provides a remarkably useless screen image of the "preferences" or setup screens for the three browsers of choice.

    Regarding Opera, he reviews the "static" build which has a download about twice as large as the "shared." I registered Opera years ago. It has always been superior to IE with multiple pages displayed, speed, and price, since the "adware" ads are pretty much indistinguishable from the eye clutter on the standard web page these days any way. However, for less than $40 you can still let MS know there is web software that is really worth the price. It is worth noting that many of us who use Opera register it. The company has survived in a market where ALL the competition is free, which I believe really speaks to the browser's quality.

    The biggest Opera handicap is programmers of secure webpages that test for browser versions rather than available security services and send you messages to "upgrade" to something more secure - like IE.

    Regarding IE, there was an article on CNET a couple of months ago where the writer, Robert Vamosi, asserted that IE had an increasingly dated interface due to the appearance of tabbed browing (which was pioneered by Opera.)

    • Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zapdos (70654)
      Maybe I missread "Linux Web Browsers Reviewed"

      I must say it is very hard to install ie 6 on linux so you are very OT.

      So you had your opinion. Here is mine.

      IE 6 stinks at tabs, java, security, popups, popunders, browser hijacking, etc, etc, etc.

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