Galeon Web Browser: The Best Of Mozilla? 187
Motor writes: "The very excellent weekly newsletter NTK (Need To Know) tipped me off about galeon - a desperately needed attempt to build a mere browser (as opposed to an entire operating system/xterm/game console) using the best bit of the Mozilla project: gecko." I wondered how long before someone did this. Very excellent looking.
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
Is this a reason to write Moz off as bloated? How about a "browser only button?"
BTW NeoPlanet added Gecko [internetnews.com] a while back.
Re:I want a browser (Score:1)
Re:Features I want in a web browser (Score:1)
Speaking of images, it would be nice to be able to unload an image after it's been loaded, say if it's an advertisement or something.
I have my Internet Explorer rigged [microsoft.com] to do just that.
Whenever I see an image I don't like (such as an ad), I just right-click the image, then choose "Hide" from the context menu (or press H). Voilá! The image is gone. Very handy when I want to print something sans junk.
BTW, the JavaScript required to implement this is extremely simple: five lines, including full error-checking.
Browser extensions [microsoft.com] -- I've got a ton of 'em.
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Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
The mozilla widgets themselves aren't deal with. My complaint is WHY THE FUCK are the toolbars blue. Come on, if I wanted bright I'd have bought an iMac. A good cross platform interface shouldn't be too outrageously different. On my Linux Desktop I have QT, Motif, and GTK apps, and while not quite the same the default appearence is similar enough that nothing stands out too horribly to make it flat out ugly.
Mozilla supports themes, but supposedly Netscape 6 will be a pain to get themes in out of the box, and I'd like to have support for things like plugins and Java that may not appear in mozilla in a full featured state for a while. Netscape needs to rethink the default theme before release and consider going with a more muted theme, kind of like the classic theme that shipped with a recent build of Mozilla.
treke
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
From what I can see, the problem with mozilla is that the developers have put all their energy into producing stupid widget add-ons to the interface and 1000 popup sidebars, buttons that don't work properly and a whole lot of other crap that makes the browser bloated in every sense. Instead they should be putting more time into getting their support of standards right.
On standards, they're on the right track, but c'mon with the XML people! (please!) Get rid of the crap features that nobody needs (email in a web browser? Composer? Inherent frames?!?!) and get your bread and butter stuff polished.
I don't want to seem ungreatful, but we are all placing our hope in mozilla. We want it to save the web platform from being captured by internet explorer, because it affects the flexibility we will have with operating systems into the future. If mozilla fails, we're all screwed, and it's so frustrating to see them destroying the browser with the crap they're bogging it down with.
When slashdot readers bag you, we criticise out of love. Please guys, just get your shit together and get a browser out there which renders the goods in a single, untainted window.
Re:Some suggestions (Score:2)
I'm still running Netscape 3.01. Why?
- Easy to turn image autoload off, and I can click the "images" toolbar button to load 'em when I need 'em.
- Javascript on/off is two keystrokes away. (Options->Preferences-> and it comes up with "Languages" if it's the last thing I fooled with. No burying the Javashit checkboxen in a 3-layer hierarchical menu that has to be navigated every time.)
- It's a web browser, not a marketing tool for "My Nutscrape", "People who've paid us to tell you where to shop", or "People who paid us to get space on a 'Personal Toolbar'" program.
(Aside on that damn personal toolbar - you KNOW it's designed to be annoyware when the way to turn it off - at http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/commun
What I want:
- Javashite is togglable via a menu button.
- Image autoload togglable via a menu button.
- Cookie control togglable via a menu button.
- Preserve the "bug" for Windoze builds where a write-only COOKIES.TXT results in all cookies, whether accepted or not by the user, being ignored
- Proxying on/off from a menu button. Why? Because the Internet Junkbuster and other banner-filtering and cookie-eating products run as proxies. Sometimes you have to turn 'em off and accept "everything". It should be maximally easy to turn things like this off and turn 'em back on again. As another poster said, lots of these things are dynamic preferences, not static prefs.
It's funny - the only real thing I can think of to improve Nutscrape's feature list that could reasonably be considered "bloatwaresque" would be to build in a banner blocker. I don't want a development environment, mail client, or newsreader. Already got those. The only thing I'm *still* missing after all these years of "development" is a better web browser.
Re:For those who segfault when typing 'galeon'... (Score:1)
Re:hooray for simple and flexible. (Score:1)
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
and I still got moderated down coz I'm going against the grain of
sheep.
GUIs are alike enough as it is to allow any reasonably competant person to move from one to another without too much trouble. I dont see why I should be forced to have my GUI behave like one I didn't choose to use.
Re:Lest all you idiots forget... (Score:1)
The point is this. Yes, Mozilla has great HTML-processing ability. Yes, it's cool that now we have an open-sourceish browser with Java. Yes, it's cool that this open-sourceish system is based on Netscape code.
The point is that, minus the fancy eye-candy, Gecko is actually not that bloated. So why add the bloat? It doesn't really make sense to me. Do I need an integrated email client? Not really. Instant messaging? No. Kick-ass themes? No. A Web browser? Now you're catching on.
Not There Yet - Licensing Issues? (Score:1)
You can download an RPM version at http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/software/RPMS/.
To compile from sources you will also need devel package from this site or gtkmozembed.h from another MOZILLA package. Because of license issue I cannot distribute it."
Anyone know what the licensing issues are precisely?
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Re:"bit less memory footprint" (Score:1)
Perhaps you should try compiling without debugging info if you are going to compare them, you'll get a more realistic comparison.
They never claimed it was bug free, but.. (Score:1)
I see all these "tests" that say how great Mozilla is in this and that, but I try to do a simple table or CSS function, and it croaks on me. All said and told, Mozilla only behaves marginally better in processing HTML/CSS than IE 5.x on average in my experience. There are still plenty of things in the HTML spec I don't see support for.
galeon.sourceforge.net and Web Standards? (Score:1)
From galeon.sourceforge.net
I hope that the browser adheres to the spirit of Web standards rather better.
cimlRe:The /. NTK community, what others? (Score:1)
LinuxToday [linuxtoday.com] is good for (mostly) Linux news.
Computer totally locked when using Galeon :-( (Score:2)
Re:I want a browser (Score:2)
Great Another Browser..... (Score:1)
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
CoughDropAddict wrote:
Surely that should read "app's using Web technology", not "web apps".
Any developer of user agent software who tries to make the Web look the same to everyone has forgotten what the Web's about, and should go visit the W3C Web Accessibility initiative [w3c.org] for a reminder.
cimlRe:Excellent! (Score:1)
You mean there are "the best of them" in HTML sk1llz?
Seriously, now. It's a bloody mark-up language. And a poor, limited one at that. It's been a long time since I've seen someone gloat at their LaTeX sk1llz, y'know what I mean?
What the heck, at least you're not trying to claim that it's a programming language...
Re:Excellent! (Score:1)
What about those of us who's day jobs depend on writing HTML by hand?
Re:I hope.. (Score:1)
Saying that a table in a table is a bit of a kludge is true, but claiming I'm abusing HTML is dead wrong. If you want to see abuse of HTML, go look at the homepages which lack head tags, a dtd, have tags missmashed, have invalid entities, etc, etc.
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Re:Excellent! (Score:1)
Re:The future default Web Browser for GNOME? (Score:1)
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Re:They never claimed it was bug free, but.. (Score:1)
I'm sure I could find more tags that Mozilla fails to support/implement properly, but I don't have a "test suite" handy.. although I'm assuming someone will write one soon (I might event take a stab at it).
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Some suggestions (Score:5)
1) do something about those crappy ads, a filter, perhaps like the orbs list would especially be nice. Another nice feature would be a "wipe out" option, where if I find a banner too annoying I could just click on it and get rid of it.
2) do something about those cookies, especially for the sites that don't even need one cookie, but flash you 5000000 before you can see the content. (ps I like the feature on lynx that requests once and allows the option of never accepting from that site again during the session). I really want better and easier control of my cookies other than having to manually edit the file or relink it to
3) give me easier and better font controll, i am sick and tired of sites fonting me to death with every immaginable size and shape, and color, of fonts accept for the type that are easy to read. It would sure be nice if I could highlight sections, and change the font on the fly.
4) give me some more "crap" controll. Have you ever been to a home page and waited for 50000000TB of useless "pretties" to download before you can even so much as click on a link. It would sure be nice if there was a skip-crap button that would just fill in the pretties with asthetically pleasing "blanks" and grab all the juicy content first.
5) take off the bullshit buttons. I don't know who else has netscape, but I don't need a special button on my browser telling me where to shop, or any of the other netscape propaganda - thankyou
6) give me a password and login reminder list. After having 500billion logins and passwords for every immaginable website, it would really be nice to have some simple (encrypted??) id storage file that could show me (or prompt me) for my password and login when I click a button, and even better not half to rely on those damn cookies. (if authentication methods were more standardized, you could even have it login automatically per my pre-settings - but nowdays that would probably be asking too much.
7) allow me a selective delete or select. Have you ever been to a site where you have 50 pages of refferal links and other crap before you get to the one paragraph or so of content that you were really after. It would sure be nice if I could highlight that and click on something that wipes the other crap off the page (if I find i need it later i'll bush the back button).
8) make it so I can get arround easier using the keyboard. I mean, cmon guys. I got TunnelCarpal, if I get 500 field form I don't want to half to click in each field, or continually half to move the focus from the scroll bar to the main page and back.
9) I want better screen/context controll. Have you ever had 20 or so windows open on the same page, and sorta wished they were all consolidated into one screen. or have you ever wanted to click on a link and not wipe out the page you were on (well you can do that, but it would be nice if it was more intuitive. On the same note, i just absolutely hate it when I visit a site and it shoves half a dozen useless piece of shit popups down my throat, please do something about that too. Thankyou, since I know noone's gonna listen anyhow, please feel free to moderate this down to negative infinity.
David
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Finally (Score:1)
--- Brent Rockwood, Senior Software Developer
Re:They never claimed it was bug free, but.. (Score:1)
(The "Location:" tooltips on all anchors were not my idea and hopefully they'll be removed soon.)
f1st pr0st (Score:1)
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Re:I hope.. (Score:1)
Re:They never claimed it was bug free, but.. (Score:1)
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795
There are test suites already in place, too.
If you think there's anything missing from there, input would be appreciated.
don't forget the green ketchup (Score:1)
Re: They ARE fixing the bugs! (Score:1)
Re:Do we really need ANOTHER browser ? (Score:1)
As of now.. (Score:2)
this requirement probably goes away later
in the development.
It's faster than running Mozilla M16 itself
though, and has a bit less memory footprint.
It is about as stable as Mozilla, which about
equals NS 4.72 for me.
Galeon is an interesting project, but perhaps
it is a bit too late. Nautilus is almost as
mature, and promises a lot more.
Of course, Galeon would be great for those
that doesn't like to run Gnome.
One more thing, Galeon has a very annoying bug,
in that shows the windows behind it through
the main window when you first start it up.
This goes away when you visit the first webpage
for the session though.
Re:You can already do 2, 3, 4 and 5. (Score:1)
Their "Total Recall" package works cross-platform IIRC.
Excellent! (Score:2)
Re:I hope.. (Score:1)
Re:Excellent! (Score:1)
hooray for simple and flexible. (Score:5)
Since all the stupid shopping and search for shopping buttons are not there, that leaves room for some real buttons. There are a lot of options buried in the preferences dialog that I think of as dynamic, not static. Load images automatically, accept cookies, accept javascript, font, etc. I like to run pretty small and stripped down, but some pages are hard to read that way, so it would be nice to turn these features on and off quickly, and get a visual reminder of what mode it was in, because I forget while browsing.
Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:1)
I bet Netscape will release a browser-only version just like they did with the 4.x series, and have the full-featured suite for only a couple of megs more. That should please everybody enough, I'd think. Although it would be nice to also have a custom install routine where you could only install, say, the browser and the mail client, and leave the rest of the functions uninstalled. There are a lot of excellent mail/news clients for *nixes (and I guess Windows too), but I think why the Netscape mail/news client is so widely used is simply because it comes with the browser, has a similar interface, etc.
Re:Why not to this inside the mozilla project? (Score:1)
The used to be something similar built into mozilla a while back called gnomefe (i.e gnome front end) but it was no where near complete as this. Also it got broke after all the embedding technolgies changed.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
iCab reports one error/warning in your html (Score:1)
Warning (20/5): In the tag the attribute "WIDTH" should only contain absolute pixel values.
The page does seem to render fine in iCab, though.
What would it take to rebuild Gecko to GPL/GNOME? (Score:1)
- Galeon is nice, but e.g. the scrollbar is a Mozilla scrollbar. While the techie party (including me) wouldn't *really* mind, it is a usability point. If it's an all-GNOME (GTK+) thing, people will understand it better.
- Also, it would make a smaller footprint if Gecko only used the GTK+-toolkit instead of adding its own.
- Additionally, it would be nice to have it GPL'ed. Just nice, OK? No big deal and stuff.
I think the most realistic plot for this to work is, that the ppl of Galeon would take Gecko, make it an all-GNOME (or GTK+) thing and distribute it with their Galeon browser, while making clear that Gecko is a Mozilla license thing. That would make sense, I guess.
Well, and I'd love to see Nautilus off course. But there hasn't been any release except for CVS yet, and the website is also not really informative (like in "good old Amiga gossip"
It's... It's...
Re:Great Another Browser..... (Score:2)
Its simply an application that wraps the web browsing widget of mozilla so you don't have to run all the crap that comes with mozilla (composer, mail, news.. etc.). It is also a helluva lot prettier than mozilla which is butt ugly.
galeon needs mozilla (Score:1)
When I saw the last galeon-announcement on freshmeat, I wanted to try it out and downloaded and installed Mozilla and Galeon. Both (or either) took *forever* to start up - I wish there was a good graphical browser that starts up in no time and displays webpages according to the standards.
Features I want in a web browser (Score:3)
I don't want images on Slashdot, except for the one slashdot.org logo, I don't want Javascript popups to work on geocities. I don't want Java anywhere, except for two specific sites. I want all font size and color information to be ignored on all sites, except for three specific sites. Etc.
This is direly needed feature for an unstable web browser. If you can't have stability -- and you probably can't with any modern graphical browser -- HAVE PERSISTENCE. When Mozilla crashes -- and it will -- it should start back up exactly how it was last. Every new window or changed URL or text box should be logged whenever it is changed. When Mozilla crashes in the middle of a 450+ word slashdot post (such as this), I want to start it back up with that 450 word post exactly where it was at the crash (or perhaps 5 seconds out of date). And of course all the windows should start up with all the URLs I was at. I have 8 NS windows up right now, and I won't be able to remember all those urls if NS crashes. It'd be a hassle to open them all again even if I could remember.
I want to be able to bind keys to whichever functions I want, and I want functions available that are valuable. Numbered links would be nice, like in lynx. Mouse should be entirely optional for all functionality.
I want to be able to add buttons to the toolbar and bind them to whatever I can bind keys to. Like [add current URL to javascript blocklist] or [disable javascript in this window].
I want to be able to be able to bind a key to pop up a window for a google.com search, another for raging.com search, dmoz.org search, etc, that pop up a window instead of loading the page (fast as they may be, there is no need to load them) and I want Mozilla to convert the information to a format it understands and display it in whatever format I like.
Re:I hope.. (Score:1)
Opera mishandles the nested tables such that the inner table doesn't fill the outer table, even though the inside table's width is "100%."
Mozilla's engine does the same thing IE does. I submitted it as a bug, and it is a conflict between the table code and CSS.. which doesn't suprise me.
iCab and Netscape 4.7x seem to handle it fine, though.
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Re:Excellent! (Score:2)
Try making a site (without using a programming language like PHP or Perl) that looks good in Lynx, IE, Netscape, and Mozilla, and uses style sheets so you can keep the look and feel consistent. Those point and click programs put a lot of cruft into the HTML like font tags.
Even though HTML is just a markup language, there is a lot you can do with it and CSS. Even though it's limited, once you learn what those limitations are and how different broswers react to different tags, you have a lot of control for creating layout and presentation of information. For the people who can take the time to learn it and overcome the limitations, they definitly have a valuabe skill.
Re:Features I want in a web browser (Score:1)
Mozilla does this. Have you ever used it? Right click on an image, select "Block image from loading". Be careful though, it blocks all images from that image's domain. I use this feature a lot and it's great!
The intelligent wrapping you desire would break many sites. If you don't mind that, you could create a user style sheet for Mozilla setting the max-width of BODY to some desired width (e.g. 500px). Not an ideal solution I suppose, but an easy hack.
Re:The majority of the work IS on the browser? (Score:1)
If you want a small, simple, fast browser, you'll have to give up on complete standards support (especially the DOM). That's your choice, and there are browsers like Konqueror and Opera that fill this need.
Mozilla, on the other hand, aims for complete standards support, while still being fast (if not simple and small). It tackles a different, and harder, problem.
Re:"bit less memory footprint" (Score:1)
if netscape takes 14megs, and IE's graphical shell takes 9meg, imagine howt hey would compare if you counted in the HTML components, the protocol (http, ftp, etc) components, and all the others that windows doesn't report as part of IE.
Of course, this is not to say that they're not both WAY TOO FUCKING HUGE, but try to be rational here.
Re:I applaud this (Score:1)
One difference might be that I carefully pick the builds I use. Some of the nightly builds are unstable or have serious layout problems; this is inevitable because people sometimes check in buggy code. There is an enormous difference between a "good" nightly build and a "bad" one.
Re:I hope.. (Score:1)
Re:Reiserfs doesn't like software RAID 5 (Score:1)
Warning: Resierfs is incompatible with software RAID 5.
You're entirely correct. I don't see it as a major problem though because if you're doing software RAID you're not interested in performance. :-)
I should have probably made that warning as well when I suggested it. Thanks for bringing it up.
Re:Self Compiler Technology for Javascript (Score:1)
That's why the minds behind Self went on to other things, such as Chambers' Vortex compiler.
Re:Computer totally locked when using Galeon :-( (Score:1)
Is there an easy way to convert ext2 to Reizer FS? I think I might have to finally get a tape drive.....
Not that I know of.
I did the backup thing and format.
Re:Use Geko for replacing IE in Windows!! (Score:1)
It's amazing how on these Slashdot forums, everyone comes up with these great ideas that MOZILLA IS ALREADY DOING. People should take some time to actually look at the project before they comment.
Re:Self Compiler Technology for Javascript (Score:2)
If this is off-topic, one has to wonder what is on topic when we are discussing light-weight flexible alternative browsers such as the one mentioned in the original article or the one derived from Mozilla described in a response which received a rating of 5. If on the other hand, it is the history of how we got into the present inflexible implementation schema that is "off topic" then all I can say is, "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
I've never made a meta moderation comment before, but this "moderation" needs some serious meta moderation.
Re:hooray for simple and flexible. (Score:3)
~tieguy
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Re:Not There Yet - Licensing Issues? (Score:2)
But I'd already worked out the perfect name! (Score:2)
NoZilla--no newsreader, no email, no bloat, no bull.
Of course, if I wanted someone to actually use it someday, I probably should have mentioned it outloud, instead of just thinking it to myself.
Re: They ARE fixing the bugs! (Score:2)
I'm talking about major rendering failures on common web sites.
Are you sure that the errors are bugs in gecko, or are they bugs in the site code due to the designers exploiting IE/NS tricks?
Re:Features I want in a web browser (Score:2)
Speaking of images, it would be nice to be able to unload an image after it's been loaded, say if it's an advertisement or something. Meta-H, click the image, and boom it's gone. Meta-B, click the image, and it's gone and on the blockfile. Pretty good, eh?
Re:Computer totally locked when using Galeon :-( (Score:2)
** CRITICAL **: file gtkmozembed.cpp: line 298 (void gtk_moz_embed_init(struct GtkMozEmbed *)): assertion `retval == TRUE' failed.
Guess I'll go back to 0.2, which was pretty darn functional.
Re:Do we really need ANOTHER browser ? (Score:2)
OpenGL is a better choice. It's being used in a variety of markets all the way from gaming up to complex scientific visualization, CAD, etc. OpenGL is the standard for the scientific/engineering marketplace. Linux has the better chance of making inroads into this market than it does general desktop & gamer markets. Why? Because people in those areas are used to working on Unix workstations and to them, Linux would be very similiar to what they've already been using, just on cheaper hardware with zero licensing costs. Given that OpenGL is available on PCs, Macs, and Unix workstations, developers who want to have something that can work on a wide variety of platforms will use OpenGL.
The reason OpenGL is slow is due to poorly implemented hardware drivers or it being implemented completly in software. With the efforts of the XFree team, SGI, and others, this won't be a problem for much longer. SGI recently announced [linuxpr.com] a new graphics system that's been developed with NVidia to provide hardware accelerated graphics to linux.
Besides, do you really think Microsoft is going to provide a DirectX linux port anytime soon? Don't hold your breath.
Re:I hope.. (Score:2)
Agreed. I was watching a friend of mine use Mozilla and I was astounded by how brain-damaged the rendering was. It really made me wonder whether any of the developers use the browser in real life. I mean, if Gecko is supposed to be the "best part of the Mozilla project"...
The Mozilla developers really, really, really need to take a step back and fix the HTML rendering. Otherwise, it will just continue to get a bigger bad name than it has now.
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Re:The majority of the work IS on the browser? (Score:2)
All things that have perfectly viable (and in most cases, free) alternatives already.
Most of the work IS on the browser,
Maybe in terms of getting it to draw an IRC windows or somesuch thing, but you'd better believe that work is being put into the backend IRC/email/news/spaghetti maker stuff as well.
and there is no evidence AT ALL that any more work would be done on the browser if they ditched the other parts, either temporarily or indefinitely.
But we can be reasonbly sure that no less work will be put into the browser, either.
And how is this best of Mozilla? It needs GNOME so isn't cross-platform at all. Wasn't that part of the point?
Maybe to the Mozilla developers, but not to me. Their idea of "cross-platform" is turning out to be "we want the browser to stick out like a sore thumb no matter what OS you're using."
What I want in terms of "cross-platform capability" is the ability to ensure that when I create a web site it will look and function as alike as possible, whether you're viewing it on the MacOS, BeOS, Win32, Linux, Unix, etc. (taking into account differences in the font selections and renderings, etc. for the various GUIs).
I don't care if it has an email client; I have one of those already. I don't care if it does newsgroups or IRC; I don't read those. (And if I did, there's those aforementioned other free alternatives.)
Someone else said it best; the Mozilla developers are out of control. They've forgotten about the people who want to have a simple, fast, standards-complaint browsing alternative to MSIE and are interested in somehow conquering the world by being able to code old arcades games into their webpages [slashdot.org].
Jay (=
Re:Computer totally locked when using Galeon :-( (Score:3)
Re:Self Compiler Technology for Javascript (Score:2)
I believe you are refering to the static optimizations. The dynamic optimizations of the Hotspot JVM are an different story altogether. The basic problem with static optimizations is they have to be very local in scope because as soon as you start trying to find all the combinations during global optimizations, you exponentiate things into intractability. By adding the dynamic information you can go a lot further than the Hotspot JVM did toward less local optimization.
It is feasible to collect dynamic execution statistics and preload them along with the program to let the optimizer tractably produce well optimized code in large programs -- and I believe that is the direction in which most of the offspring of Self are headed.
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
OSS trend maybe? (Score:3)
I applaud this (Score:4)
Quite frankly, I think the Mozilla programmers are out of control.
The world could really use a nice, standards-compliant browser that actually works (and Netscape is far from that). What really annoys me is that so little effort is going into this supposed "best part of Mozilla", namely Gecko. Watching Mozilla used by a friend of mine was a painful experience. There were so many rendering errors that I personally found it unusable.
Call me crazy, but I would think that the HTML renderer would be the most critical part of the browser to get right. But why isn't anyone fixing these obvious problems? Don't the developers actually use their own browser?
Hopefully having developers focusing on a browser rather than a full-blown development environment (that is butt-ugly, BTW) will give some sorely-needed attention to basic functionality.
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Re:hooray for simple and flexible. (Score:2)
~luge (hey, I don't want to defend MS either, but that doesn't mean we can't both take a swipe at the "old" NS)
Re:I hope.. (Score:2)
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Re:As of now.. (Score:2)
They won't be able to since they've licensed their code GPL. Mozilla is NPL.
Re:Computer totally locked when using Galeon :-( (Score:2)
though I always hate the 20 minute reboots to fsck 30GB of storage :-(
Try reiserfs [devlinux.com]. I run it on top of a 40G U2 hardware RAID-5, a 4G SCSI-1 hardware RAID-1 and a 30G linear software raid with no problems. fs integrity check takes < 3s.
Tell this to PC Week (oops, eWeek) (Score:3)
It's a fork but not a fork (uses the same code base) and solves problems people have (big web browsers, ugly Netcenter skin on Mozilla
Re:This is great! How about non-GNOME platforms? (Score:2)
When I say "feature set" I mean the feature set of the browser, not the rendering engine. Mac IE has stuff like the scrapbook, print preview -- a lot of stuff that is really useful that probably won't find its way into Mozilla anytime soon.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
I hope.. (Score:2)
The gecko module may let you have a nice browser, but if it can't handle nice, standards compliant HTML, then it needs to be fixed. There are a lot of warts in the interpretation code (especially related to CSS1 and tables) that come out when you try to do serious browsing with the Gecko component because the Netscape/Mozilla crew are busy also working on a UI, a skin component, a ported GTK+ widget set, etc, etc, etc...
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Re:As of now.. (Score:2)
Still at early stage... (Score:2)
kudos!
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Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
This is great! How about non-GNOME platforms? (Score:2)
1) Reducing total number of files (most good Mac apps only have a few dozen, and can be placed anywhere)
2) Providing a default UI/skin that is a little less arcane/obscured
3) Making the thing stop crashing so much
4) Speeding up launch time -- IE5 launches in a few seconds on my G3. Mozilla takes around 15-20 seconds.
5) Cleaing up the menus and panel layout so it actually resembles a Mac app
Mozilla will probably never match the feature set and polish of IE Mac, but if somebody who knows Mozilla (and has time to do all this) can push it into the realm of reasonably usable, then I would attempt to use it as my primary browser. I might even consider paying for it, if it was good enough -- though I may be in the minority there.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:2)
The reason they designed their own widget set was to increase the amount of cross platform code. One of the smarter moves they've made.
I think they did too much from scratch, used too many untested ideas. They probably lost a good deal of time creating the widget set, but it was either that or spend the same amount of time fixing bugs for all the different widget sets. Easy choice.
Re:Why not to this inside the mozilla project? (Score:2)
So, will I use Mozilla? Occasionaly. Will it be my main browser? As soon as Galeon(or some other such thing) allows me to accept cookies, use https://, and configure my fonts(bookmarks are already implemented, of course). Only then. As it is, the interface is just too damned slow.
Dave
Nightly mozilla builds work just fine (Score:4)
There are only two big caveats: it doesn't store cookies (meaning no slashdot login) and it doesn't have any right-click menus for page elements (yet), meaning no saving images or 'copy link location,' etc. These things will probably be added later on.
-JD
Re:I want a browser (Score:2)
I agree.
I'd still like Javascript (for things like Yahoo Mail) ,Java (but not the AWT) and maybe even images rendered via aalib (ascii graphics;-).
Basically what I'd like to see is a Lynx that understand Javascript and handles frames. I've discussed this with the developers at Mozilla on #mozilla, but nobody has done any work yet.
With things like Palms, cell phones, and libraries with VT100's, there is certainly a market for it. But it's not obvious how hard it is to do. Not trivial I'd guess since nobody has tried.
The future default Web Browser for GNOME? (Score:2)
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Are there any similar more generic projects (Score:2)
More specifically, does anyone know of any similar projects based on gecko that have a Windows build?
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Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:3)
In my .mozconfig, I have: ac_add_options --enable-toolkit=gtk
It builds mozilla based on gtk, as well as a seperate bare bones browser even more streamlined than galeon.
It's also possible to build mozilla based on Qt.
This galeon project isn't anything new, there have been a few other similar projects that have existed(gzilla, qfce), but this seems to be the first independant one based on a usable version of the mozilla embedding widget.
Why not to this inside the mozilla project? (Score:4)
mk_add_options MOZ_CVS_FLAGS="-q -z 9"
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-strip-libs
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews
How to build it:
cd ~: /cvsroot
mkdir mozilla
cd mozilla
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org
cvs co mozilla/client.mk
cd mozilla
make -f client.mk pull_and_build_all
So, was this project REALLY necessary?
Re:Do we really need ANOTHER browser ? (Score:3)
This isn't really a code fork from the Mozilla tree, but rather a very fundamentally different approach to the web browser.
Mozilla provides a very heavy-weight, cross-platform user interface which is highly extensible, works on a huge number of different architectures, is skinnable, uses loads of XML and snazzy technologies, and stuff like that. This user-interface is built on top of the core Gecko and Seamonkey modules.
Unfortunately, it's pig slow.
By providing a really lightweight, platform specific user interface just for GNOME, this project is going to deliver a simple, clean web browser which renders out webpages. Only on one platform, and without too many features, but it'll do it well.
I sincerely hope similar projects start off for Windows as well, to make the full use of that platform. Mozilla's UI has a bright future, but for the mid to short term, the shining star in the middle is their rendering engine, and it would be a real pity if people were put off Mozilla simply because the UI around that engine was unstable and slow.
Re:Mozilla isn't that bloated (Score:5)
Mozilla is not just the next version of Netscape. It is completely different beast altogether.
Have you ever noticed that Mozilla looks decidedly different than any other app on your desktop? That's because it doesn't use any standard widget library (in the case of X), or the native OS widgets (in the case of Windows, BeOS, etc.) It's built its own set of widgets, with the goal of making them completely cross platform. Though it looks different than any other app on your desktop, a screenshot from the Windows version and the X version will look basically identical, with the obvious exception of the window decorations. That way people can easily write cross-platform web apps, with the assurance that they will look identical on any platform.
Yes, you heard me right, Mozilla is a complete framework for writing applications. You can write user interfaces in XUL (a language for describing widget layout in XML), change their appearance in CSS and code in JavaScript.
In fact, that's what the core browser interface is written in. Yep, everytime you hit the "back" button, Mozilla executes JavaScript to act on your request. Don't believe me? Go read all the *.js files in chrome/packages/core/navigator/content. If you feel like screwing with someone, take 2 minutes and switch the forward and back buttons, or make the stop button navigate to a porn site or something.
Don't get me wrong, the Mozilla project has ambitious goals, and what they're doing is exciting. But it would be nice to have a native, bare-bones browser too.