The Phoenix 0.1 Lightweight Browser

[Posted September 24, 2002 by cook]

Mozilla.org has released version 0.1 of Phoenix, a lighweight web browser. "Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform."

The Phoenix release notes and FAQ state that Phoenix is primarily designed to be fast, but without sacrificing features. Some of the currently implemented features include:

A Customizable toolbar.
A Bookmarks and History Quicksearch capability.
Fast start-up and operation.
An overhauled Bookmarks Manager with undo/redo.
A new look based on the Orbit theme.
"Reasonable" Default Settings for pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, and other features.
Support for plugins like flash and real.

The list of planned features include:

Satchel, a replacement for Mozilla's Wallet functionality.
A new Plug-in and Add-on Manager.
A new Download Manager.
"your favorite" preferences.

Phoenix is currently around 8MB in size, the developers are working to shrink it down to 6MB. The software is still very new, with a number of known (and likely unknown) bugs. It should be interesting to watch this project move forward.