Phoenix 0.3 Is Out 433
David Tansey writes "The Mozilla-based stripped down browser has now reached binary release 0.3. They are ripping out all the mail and news functions, composer functions, and IRC functions. The point is to work against the 'monolitic' mozilla trunk and make a browser, not a suite. I've noticed that it now uses considerably less memory than Mozilla uses and loads faster. Check it out here."
moderate (Score:5, Insightful)
Interaction, not Merging (Score:5, Insightful)
This was actually the original UNIX philosopy, lots of small tools interacting to achieve something complex. Let us bring this idea to the desktop and create the most flexible, powerful, easy-to-use desktop ever seen.
good idea and (Score:4, Insightful)
Phoenix is cool and all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Monolith (Score:3, Insightful)
The goodness that is Phoenix (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But I *like* those functions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, I'm running Phoenix right now (after it was introduced to /. last week). Its much more (less?) than the mozilla browser by itself. I'm not clear on the technical details (it runs too well for me to need to dig into it), but they've apparently sacrified flexibility and over-abundant options for speed/compactness. There's no preference option to install new GUI themes, for instance, so possibly lots of XUL stuff has been simplified/eliminated. Also things like download manager & password manager have been removed, at least for now.
Re:Soon there will be nothing left (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a bit more to it then that. They are also recoding a lot of the browser interface, for speed enhancement, but also to bring new functionality. Configurable toolbars, for one. A pop-up blocking whitelist, opposed to blocking pop-ups from every site in Mozilla. An extensions manager, just click to install the extension you like (mousegestures, prefbar...no uninstall yet). It's a browser worth watching, IMHO.
Re:But I *like* those functions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interaction, not Merging (Score:5, Insightful)
And is still continued today ... the difference? The components are no longer split along process lines and don't communicate using pipes and stdin/stdout. They use the fantastically more powerful mechanisms of XPCOM/CORBA etc.
I've seen this a lot. Out comes a new GNOME/KDE release, people moan and say "What happened to the unix philosophy of small tools?" They are alive and kicking, but those tools have now transcended the arbitrary limitations of text streams.
I've even seen this in reference to Emacs! People kick Emacs for its bloat, but at least if you get XEmacs everything is modular and packaged. You just pick the functionality you want right off. It's all componentized along lisp functions.
Why do people think modularity stops at the command line? It's alive and well, especially in Linux which has to be the most modular OS in history.
It should be noted that DCOP is hardly an advanced rpc protocol. In particular, it's tied to Qt, and is text based (iirc). Something like CORBA is better, but unfortunately is much harder to setup and understand. Hopefully some day somebody will build an object model that doesn't suck.
And as a side note, at least on Windows, Mozilla has been just as fast as IE for ages now. Using QuickStart makes startup instant, although here at work I never bothered switching it on as it starts quickly enough for me anyway. Pheonix is worth more as a test bed for experimental UI design that a "light" browser, as it'll end up becoming heavy as time goes on anyway.
Re:good idea and (Score:5, Insightful)
My prediction then was that Mozilla would have no chance on Mac OS if it didn't use native widgets nor would it be looked upon too kindly by Windows users. I was right. Chimera (Mozilla using native widgets) is about as popular as Mozilla on OS X and it's only at 0.5.
Developers, pay heed! You must use native widgets or you are doomed to look bad everywhere! You can't just create a skin and expect it to look and feel right.
Oh and yes, I agree WinAMP should be shot for starting that craze (though otherwise it's not a bad MP3 player).
Re:But I *like* those functions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Netscape INVENTED the suite bandwagon, which is why they couldn't get themselves off it for Mozilla.
Microsoft never had the audacity to think that Outlook Express had to run in the same process space as IE anyway, and neither did anyone else. But for some bogo-strategic reason, Netscape just had to cram it all into one big process and ignore your system-wide URL handler prefs. Having 1 borked page take down all 9 other browser windows AND your mail wasn't too bright, and lots of folks said so early on (here and elsewhere).
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ray
Re:Interaction, not Merging (Score:4, Insightful)
and while you are correct that DCOP is fairly simple and less featureful than something like CORBA (which, given the context for DCOP isn't necessarily a bad thing), it can and does send/recv binary data
Re:Phoenix is cool and all... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Phoenix doesn't follow the Microsoft/AOL-style version inflation. If it would, we would have version 3.0 final by now. Bug fixing and polish will start in the next version. See also the roadmap [mozilla.org].
Re:good idea and (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Soon there will be nothing left (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Interaction, not Merging (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I think Mozilla does leave too big a footprint. I remember back in the Good Old Days you could get Netscape Navigator and Communicator as separate packages. I'd actually like a lean Mozilla browser and a separate Mozilla mail app. No webpage creation, no messenger, no chat/irc. I'll definitely keep an eye on Phoenix.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I still like Phoenix, and it does save memory, but make sure you look at the resident set, not virtual pages allocated when you want to judge actual memory usage.
Re:But I *like* those functions... (Score:1, Insightful)
"Now I've got 3 seperate apps that I want to use that take up 133% of what Moz takes up, and more resources due to the redundancy of the same interface..."
That doesn't sound.. right.
What they need to do is simply modularize MOZILLA itself, from the start. Mail, WebBrowsing, IRC should be plugins to the primary function: Browsing the web.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good idea and (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm, actually, they all use native widgets. You can make your app look like that too just by checking a box in interface builder.
Microsoft does it too.. MS Office and WMP don't use the standard Win32 widgets.
There are millions of Office users out there that say Office looks good and definately "feels right".
Two flaws with this - 1. MS make the OS, so any widget they care to make is effectively native, even if it's not available to other applications. 2. Office for at least the great majority of things does use native widgets, there may be a few things that are custom built but certainly not everything.
And where do you get that? Everyone I've talked to says Chimera is very obviously beta software... no polish. You haven't any stats that show Chimera is even half as popular as Mozilla on OSX?
Everyone I've talked to says that Chimera is very good, though still not feature complete. You may wish to check the front page of www.macosxhints.com today for just one such comment.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla is multi threaded, some linux system monitoring tools don't grok multi threaded so it appears that you get number of active threads x process memory allocated. That said the ratio is probably right, althought the actual memory usage is probably a fifth or a sixth of the value quoted. Then again, maybe you have some huge plugins.
Re:here's what browser needs to me to use it (Score:2, Insightful)
Ade_
/
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! I don't want an email program, a news reader, an HTML editor, a chat program or an IM client with my browser. I use separate programs for those. If they can be plugged in to the browser, good. But I don't want a "forced" install of programs I never use.
Usability Problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I like my browser to mesh with my operating system. Not so far to where the OS doesn't let you uninstall it, but to where it blends in with the look of my OS. I use Windows XP, and Mozilla does not look like XP. Sure the GUI is nice, but it looks odd with my Luna style. In addition, IE meshes with Explorer. So I can easily switch between Explorer and Internet explorer. Try typing "C:\Program Files" in Mozilla/Phoenix. Very different.
In addition, there are many usability issues. Click on the address bar, while it's highlighted, click, hold and drag towards the left or right. It attempts to drag the entire address, maybe to drag and drop in the bookmarks menu. Now try it in IE, it's different. It will highlight the portion and allow you to edit it etc. That is very annoying in Phoenix/Mozilla.
Another usability problem is the placement of the Address bar. Why is it at the same layer as the toolbar? (Back, Forward buttons). I believe there is a Bug reported in BugZilla about this in Mozilla, but of course... nobody cares about Usability issues.
Why can't I have "Selective Text on Right". And that "Toolbar Customizer" with the drag and drop has bad usability problems. It's very confusing to use. And having to "Name" your toolbars?? Err..
Also, the Bookmark Management is very sloppy. They need sidebar management for bookmarks.
They are going the other way (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:block images from this server (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors (Score:5, Insightful)
You want everyone else to use the mirrors and at the same time, you're downloading from ftp.mozilla.org? Nice ;)
Re:Interaction, not Merging (Score:3, Insightful)
Would that be the Windows NT microkernel?
Yeah, it is horribly bloated. Imagine how bloated and crap an OS with a (by definition) much larger monolithic kernel would be.
Re:moderate (Score:2, Insightful)
-Kevin
Re:good idea and (Score:3, Insightful)
No?
* Open / Save dialogue
* Find dialogue (part of "open.)
* Toolbars
* Menu bars
How again does it use native widgets?
Still twice the size of Opera (Score:5, Insightful)
Phoenix 0.3 Win: 7mb
Opera 6.05 Win (no java): 3.4mb
Granted, there are a few issues about Opera (particularly that they ship with "Identify as IE" as default, which makes it hell to fix things that doesn't work right in Opera. I've actually got three different things in FAQs, Opera needs to identify as
1. Opera, not IE
2. IE, not Opera
3. Mozilla/Nutscrape, not Opera OR IE
Of course the answer should be easy, it should identify as Opera and web designers program accordingly. And all should use the real HTML standard, not the IE-"standard"... riiiiiight.
Still, I look forward to seeing a streamlined browser. I hated Netscapes "suite", and I don't like the Mozilla "suite" either. The browser's okay, but for the other stuff I certainly know of better alternatives.
Kjella