Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Another Browser discussion... Hopefully polite!

This is topic Another Browser discussion... Hopefully polite! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Don Bruechert (Member # 1538) on 09-02-2003, 03:22 PM:

Just wanted to pass along a browser that has been in development for a while and I decided to check out. It's from the mozilla people and called "firebird". For those who might want a full-featured browser that is lean and easy to use, why not check it out. One nice thing is thaere are no mail and news functions to slow everything down. It loads quick and runs fast. The mail and news stuff is available as a free standing program if you want it. So far I think it's great!
www.mozilla.org will get you there.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-02-2003, 07:02 PM:

Rather than click on the link and read, I shall pull a Joe and make you answer my questions.

Does it have a built in solution to reject pop up windows like Opera?

Does it have mouse click gestures for navigating pages like Opera?

When you tell it to not cache, does it really not cache like Opera...or does it cache anyway like IE?

Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 09-02-2003, 08:20 PM:

From scanning the "reasons to switch" page, there are not mouse gestures, and it has just the block all popups, which will also allow you to "pick your popups" It seems to have some good features. I'll have to check this out.

Posted by Don Bruechert (Member # 1538) on 09-03-2003, 10:50 AM:

I can tell you right now that it does have pop up blocking, and it is configurable so if you have sites that you want to allow pop-ups on you can put them on the allow list.

If I recall correctly, was Opera the browser that "numbered" items for you to click on or put flags on or some such? I know it doesn't do anything fancy with the links, but it will allow you to open links into tabbed pages so that you can go back and forth. A benefit for this site would be that you could have one tab with chat running, and be reading forums in the other. No need for minimizing up and down to see what's going on, just switch tabbed windows....

Don't know about the caching - I will have to check and get back to you. Since it is based on gecko/mozilla I would assume it may behave like netscape, but there are not a whole lot of similarities there either....

--- Added ----

OK, looked up the caching, and I think all you have to do if you don't want it to cache at all is set the maximum allowable disk space to caching to zero. Then it can't cache.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-03-2003, 02:40 PM:

It would be nice if you could have a "non-cache list" of sites. [Smile]

This looks interesting, but I don't know if I can live without my mouse gestures. Aren't there some programmable mice out there now that can assign gestures? Or is that just assigning to the "extra" buttons on the mouse?

Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 09-03-2003, 04:35 PM:

so after a day of playing around with mozilla, ehh. Opera still kicks my ass. If opera didn't exist anymore, than possibly I would switch. But no mouse gestures, well it sucks. No offense against mozilla just an offense against all browsers. But as a secondary choice, I would go for it. [thumbsup]

and the tabbed windows feature, well it's great in Opera lots and lots of choices.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-03-2003, 07:40 PM:

Sean, what version of Opera are you using? I am using 6.0.6 and I think I may have something set wrong. When I click a link or try to go to almost any webpage, it sits there and "stalls" for a few seconds before it actually goes. Once it gets there all is fast and good. IE doesn't stall and runs at warp speed, same goes for the browsers in Mac OS X (the ones in OS 9 are always slow). Anyway I have heard that they have fixed the problems with Opera 7.

Any modern web browser MUST block pop-ups. That is a necessity and the reason I don't use IE. As for mouse gestures, I could live without them. I really like my MicroSoft Intellimouse with forward and back buttons on it. A lot easier (and quicker) to use than mouse gestures.

I have Mozilla installed on my PC and it is OK. I'm not sure, but I don't recall any way to block pop ups. Did they JUST release a new version? Mine is maybe a month old at most. Also there are many sites and forums that it did not render correctly. Maybe I have it set up improperly?

Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 09-04-2003, 12:14 AM:

Joe
I currently use opera 6 and 7.11(windows for both versions). For my G4 Mac that I am running in my studio I think it's 6.03? And your right, just about any browser for os 9 is pretty slow, especially that horribly ported Internet Explorer. One of the things that I would check for the stall problem would be to see how many max connections that you have running. (Preferences, Network) Too many can clog your browser connection. For my cable connection I run about 5.

The only problem that I've see with Opera 7 is that sometimes (only on forum pages actually [Confused]

) on a back page it will bring you to the main forum screen... Actually it only seems to happen on UtilmateUbb run forums. But besides that Opera 7.11 is definitely the way to go!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-04-2003, 01:55 AM:

Hey Sean thanks for the tip! Seems to be working. Though for some weird reason when I clicked "Post Reply" I got the reply box and then suddenly an Infopop ad filled the frame! I have pop-ups blocked. And I KNOW Film-Tech isn't dishing out any ads. Weird.

Edit: Actually it's not helping. Things are still slow. Oh well back to IE, which is the best browser on the PC (except for the fact it doesn't block pop-ups --- that's all I ask!).

Posted by Elena N. Solovyova (Member # 1636) on 09-04-2003, 05:36 AM:

Why bother?

There are not so many things nowadays that just work, and IE is one of them. Just set your windows to auto-update, and you'll never have any trouble with it.

Our CP-650 does not recognise gestures, and I am absolutely happy with it!

(Ooh, sorry. I'm in really bad mood today, thanks to our projectionist who almost ditched the show trying to "improve" gate watercooling.)

Posted by Don Bruechert (Member # 1538) on 09-04-2003, 01:01 PM:

Joe,

Firebird is supposed to be different than Mozilla. Supposedly it is designed to be just a browser and they stripped out all the mail and news stuff. They also tried to configure it so you got the maximum amount of screen available for viewing the website.

So far I am still "testing" it. I need to copy over my bookmarks and I haven't found where the new version of Netscape has them stashed yet.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 09-04-2003, 01:07 PM:

I had tested Opera 6 a while back and ran into numerous problems, so I stuck with IE6. Recently I tried Opera 7.11, and it seems *greatly* improved. I really like it. Yeah, it does crash a little more than IE, but its convenience features far outweigh the minor annoyances. The tabbed windows feature is great!

I haven't tried Firebird yet.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-04-2003, 02:45 PM:

Does Opera 7.11 still print everything in bold font like the early version of 7 did? I had originally tried that and gave up on it after about 5 minutes because it was so hard to read everything.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-04-2003, 07:27 PM:

I just found an interesting browser for Windows that y'all might like to try. It's called Avant, or "OperaIE" in some circles. It seems to combine the best of Opera and IE. It blocks pop-ups (just be sure to turn off that stupid noise it makes whenever it does block a pop-up). It has mouse gestures for Brad. It seems to render forums correctly (Opera seemed to have a few problems with vBulletin forums). The text appears like it should. And it runs fast. So far I am very impressed! It seems to be free, but it requires that you have IE installed on your system. Don't worry, it doesn't modify the original IE, it creates a new app.

The worst thing about it is the Windows XP look. But I can live with that. Try it here:

http://www.versiontracker.com/redir.fcgi/lid=283995/iosetup.exe

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-04-2003, 10:30 PM:

I just gave this one a shot. So far I am VERY impressed!!! [thumbsup]

Posted by Rachel Gilardi (Member # 1016) on 09-05-2003, 12:54 AM:

Which one Brad...Firebird or Avant?

Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 09-05-2003, 03:40 AM:

Very cool, except for the fact that it uses the "rendering device" of ie. Which just means no w3 compliance. Ehh. I just believe that anything based off on MiSe code can be up to no good. [Confused]

But, well, it is pretty cool. [beer]

Just fer a little bit while I'll have to check it out.

Edit - I do not like any (well just about any) program that, automatically without telling me, will minimize itself to the tray! but, it is definitely IE engine based. and the mouse gestures are slow slow slow. But it still definitely beats the socks off of plain ol IE.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-06-2003, 08:32 PM:

WC3 is actually pretty worthless. Most people build their sites just to be compatible with MSIE for Windows anyway, since they figure that's what everyone uses. What are there, like 4 sites in the entire world that conform to WC3 specs, and render just fine on IE anyway, so I'm not worried.

As with any browser, there are a few minor issues with Avant. I seem to have to click the screen before my scroll wheel will work. Not liking that. I have never seen it minimize itself. I have no idea why it or any application would ever do that. I do like the tabbed windows.

Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 11-24-2003, 03:38 PM:

Just dredging this one up for some second opinions after a few months of use well, I still champion Opera but as a secondary browser (which one should never have to use, but unfortunately you do. [Roll Eyes]

)Avant is not that bad at all... If the mouse gestures were a little bit more responsive and gave you the ability to browse you tabbed windows through mouse gestures, then it would be my first choice. Also the ability to open links on a background page is great feature in Opera.

But overall, I would whole heartedly give a [thumbsup]

to both Avant and Opera. Firebird, in my personal opinion, just needs some more development.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-24-2003, 08:59 PM:

Update: I have found that Mozilla Firebird is, by far, the best Mac OS X web browser. Both Safari and even Camino suck, Camino used to be good, but they never update (still stuck on version 0.7) and it is the slowest of all OS X (pronounded "oh es ecks") browsers rendering pages.

For the PC world Avant is very good, but sometimes gets funky and crashes. It is updated a lot and that is good. I don't give a rat's ass about mouse gestures since I can go back and forth with even less effort with a click of my thumb.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 11-25-2003, 11:11 AM:

I've been using Mozilla as my primary browser for several months, and I can't imagine going back to IE.

The only thing I use IE for is compatibility testing, since 94% of people browsing my sites are still using it. There are so few differences between how Mozilla and IE render the pages that I create (I don't get into fancy IE-isms, and I don't auto-generate my code, so it's clean to begin with), so even that use of IE has diminished for me.

Never used mouse gestures, but the back and forward buttons on my Intellimouse are indispensable!