Building A Better Browser (Forbes) [LWN.net]

Forbes tries out Mozilla Firebird. "If, in its unfinished state, Firebird is this good, perhaps Microsoft should be worried." (Thanks to Bernard Bencic).

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exchange listings only, please

Posted Feb 4, 2004 19:27 UTC (Wed) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (3 responses)

Interesting that it runs on RedHat, but no mention of Linux.

exchange listings only, please

Posted Feb 4, 2004 20:29 UTC (Wed) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Well, it is Forbes. This is part of that community that has the mindset that unless it's making money, it's not useful, and that unless it's part of a business, it's not worth notice.

-Rob

exchange listings only, please

Posted Feb 4, 2004 23:57 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

they say redhat linux 7.0

while it would have been nice to be more general remember they are trying to put in as many stock symbols as possible and there aren't that many publicly traded linux companies for them to use :)

Mozilla-Firebird's distribution neutrality

Posted Feb 5, 2004 15:10 UTC (Thu) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

I expect (based on no evidence) that's because Forbes is just passing on release info from the Mozilla Project, and it'll run under any reasonably-recent GNU/Linux.

FWIW, Debian has it packaged in (at least)

Versions: 0.7-7 [alpha, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc],
0.7-6 [arm, m68k, s390, sparc]

A brief examination of the changelog and a few files' diffs turns up only changes to

extend the range of architectures, and
fix bugs & make improvements.

I.e.: No strictly Debian-distribution changes jump out at you. Therefore, it's probably almost trivial to adapt the original to any distribution you care to use. It certainly Just Works on my [Debian/testing] system.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 19:54 UTC (Wed) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] (7 responses)

Note that all the features they laud in Firebird, e.g. tabbed browsing and popup blocking and a search field/button, are also available in Mozilla 1.6, which they inexplicably describe as less "intriguing."

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 20:46 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (6 responses)

They don't mention Mozilla 1.6, but they mention Mozilla 1.5:

Eventually Firebird will become the default Mozilla browser, although that won't happen before it reaches version 1.5.

One could argue that all their praises would apply to Mozilla 1.6 if the Mozilla team did what they promised to do.

I'm not sure about version 1.6, but the last time I was using Mozilla it didn't have tab browsing and popup blocking enabled by default. Some of the Forbes readers may have problems reconfiguring their browsers.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 20:57 UTC (Wed) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link] (4 responses)

Mozilla has all that on by default. Where Mozilla Firebird shines, though, is in the over-all user interface. The Mozilla suite was designed to be as close as possible to the old Netscape Communicator interface, down to the preferences control panel and what-not. Mozilla Firebird has a simplified, streamlined interface that feels much more approachable to me, even though I have run Mozilla as my only browser for the last few years. I like Mozilla Firebird's preferences panel, I like Mozilla Firebird's use of site icons in the bookmark menus, I like that there's only one menu item for adding a bookmark, and it defaults to a dialog that can serve the old 'File Bookmark' function. I like how fast it is, I like how clean it is, I like how compatible it is.

When you add in the fact that you can get a nightly GTK2-Xft build with support for anti-aliased font rendering on Linux, there's really not much comparison. Without all of the extraneous Mozilla features and Communicator legacy interface mandates, Mozilla Firebird is free to be a better browser.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 21:12 UTC (Wed) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link]

Of course, as soon as I give such fulsome praise to Mozilla Firebird, I go and download today's daily build (linked from the top of MozillaZine) and find it broken.

Fortunately it was easy to pull down a slightly-less-recent build.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 21:59 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

To be fair, I've seen Mozilla with antialiased fonts in Debian unstable. That said, I'm typing these words in Mozilla Firebird.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 5, 2004 5:24 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] (1 responses)

Mozilla has all that on by default. Where Mozilla Firebird shines, though, is in the over-all user interface.
CTRL+k is so sweet! The separate integrated Google search field is excellent too (which is what CTRL-k applies focus to). One annoying factor about Mozilla from a UI standpoint is that the location field means one thing if you hit enter and another if you click "Search".

I also like the way when a link is opened in a new tab, it's loaded in the background with Firebird.

Firebird vs. Mozilla? Seperate Search Field

Posted Feb 5, 2004 20:37 UTC (Thu) by ptr (guest, #5885) [Link]

Hmmm... It's hard to say anything general here, I liked the Mozilla approach better (still using firebird right now).

I do not like the idea of wasting screen space. I often like to type in quite some keywords and since the search field is quite small it scrolls... That's really a minor annoyance and I see your argument though, I have just never considered it that way.

Firebird vs. Mozilla?

Posted Feb 4, 2004 23:59 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

check again, the mention mozilla 1.6 as being released. when they talk aobut firebird not becomeing the standard browser until 1.5 they are talking about firebird 1.5, not mozilla 1.5.

this seems strange, but matches up with the last I have heard from the firebird side of things.

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 4, 2004 23:24 UTC (Wed) by tracyreed (guest, #16253) [Link] (9 responses)

For years I have longed for real text editing capabilities inside of a browser. Here I am typing yet another screed in the textarea widget of a web browser which is even simpler than DOS EDIT when it comes to editing functionality. All I ask is that I be able to somehow configure my browser to be able to use vi for editing within the textarea. So many apps are web based these days and we do so much text entry via browsers that I am really shocked that it is not a standard option in any browser these days. I thought the mozilla guys were "hackers" but I just can't see real hackers putting up with anything other than vi/emacs.

:wq

damn

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 4, 2004 23:58 UTC (Wed) by alonzo (guest, #2770) [Link] (1 responses)

vi?!!! Probably nobody writing browser code uses vi. But that would sure make my life easier! Everytime I have to use a wysiwyg editor I screw everything up. Being able to choose vi as my browser editor would be great!

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 12:54 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

I would abandon every browser using something that works like vi. I can't even do simple editing using vi - that may be why I hate it. Loving joe though, I don't need any other text-mode editor.
Anyways, I love having GUI text editor for the real complex tasks. Integrating something like Kate into the Mozilla text widget would make it even bigger in codesize than it is (and yes, it's too big already, come and ask about it on irc.mozilla.org) - and we're currently caring about reducing codesize, not bloating the product even more.

If you want to have an even better widget there, feel free to work on it though, it's open source, remember? And we'll be happy about everyone actively doing additional work anywhere in our great Mozilla projects.

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 0:29 UTC (Thu) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link] (3 responses)

What do you mean? Mozilla Firebird (and Mozilla before it) does support (modified) emacs keybindings in text area widgets. The control keys for cursor movement work the same in emacs. Ctrl-k deletes a line in the same way it does in emacs, though you can't do Ctrl-y to paste. The standard ctrl-x, ctrl-c, ctrl-v keys are kept for cut and paste, of course, and the alt key jumps to the menus, but.. it's close enough for a first approximation.

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 1:57 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

These keybindings are about the worst possible ones for emacs users. I,
at least, move text around primarily with ctrl-k/ctrl-y, which results in
me deleting everything I've written. When I'm done, I press ctrl-x
ctrl-c, which then cuts whatever's selected and then might copy nothing
over it. They really ought to make pressing esc twice erase all your
text, too, to keep vi users happy.

Key bindings

Posted Feb 5, 2004 4:01 UTC (Thu) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link] (1 responses)

I haven't tried Firebird but I have a few complaints about Mozilla.

One thing I wish for is the ability to use ALT as the menu shortcut
modifier instead of CTRL. Not only is ALT more familar to me but I
sometimes use the control keys in text widgets by habit. I also hate
the text selection semantics in the URL bar. My final user interface
complaint is the slowness of the menu widgets. I sometimes click twice
because the menus are so slow to open (especially long menus like
Bookmarks).

Key bindings

Posted Feb 5, 2004 14:23 UTC (Thu) by foo (guest, #1117) [Link]

Shut down mozilla, add this line:

user_pref("ui.key.accelKey", 18);

to your ~/.mozilla/*/*/prefs.js file,
and you're all set.

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 1:49 UTC (Thu) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link] (2 responses)

All I ask is that I be able to somehow configure my browser to be able to use vi for editing within the textarea.

Something which I guess can sort of help is mozex.

Larry

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 10:27 UTC (Thu) by fghorow (subscriber, #5229) [Link] (1 responses)

Firebird with mozex is indeed pretty sweet. I spend a lot of time using a TWiki at work, and the ability to edit large text areas in xemacs rather than a text box is sanity-saving.

Mozex also lets you customise the handling of things like mailto: URIs, etc.

Recommended.

Build a better TEXT EDITOR!!!

Posted Feb 5, 2004 18:08 UTC (Thu) by WilliamBland (guest, #15408) [Link]

Wow! That is very cool - I just set it up to use Evolution for email
and Emacs for textareas. Works perfectly!

Building A Better Browser (Forbes)

Posted Feb 5, 2004 5:30 UTC (Thu) by miallen (guest, #10195) [Link] (3 responses)

Actually I've had a few problems with it on RH Linux 7.3 Sometimes the keyboard events get lost. I type and nothing happends. I have to restart it.

Building A Better Browser (Forbes)

Posted Feb 5, 2004 13:59 UTC (Thu) by paradoiley (guest, #19239) [Link] (1 responses)

I have the same problem. I find just minimizing the window and restoring it does the trick without having to restart completely. If that doesn't work try shading and unshading (double click the titlebar on kde).

Building A Better Browser (Forbes)

Posted Feb 6, 2004 13:38 UTC (Fri) by jbh (guest, #494) [Link]

Or just refocusing: alt-tab alt-shift-tab on many window managers. It's still annoying though.

Building A Better Browser (Forbes)

Posted Feb 8, 2004 23:52 UTC (Sun) by pimlott (guest, #1535) [Link]

This problem almost brought me to tears (and to switching browsers). It existed in the Debian packages over many versions. However, I finally tried a recent nightly build from mozilla.org, and the pain is no more.