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Netscape 1.0 introduced a bug into Mosaic where the process would sometimes, for no apparent reason, shot to 100% CPU usage and stick there. To this day, the latest version of Firefox exhibits this behavior, though not nearly as often Netscape 3.0 did. And stability has improved too, but after a week, it either becomes unstable or else leaks so much memory that I want it to die. The search for a browser that doesn't suck has consumed months of my life, and this is a small amount of time compared to time lost reopening windows, re-following links, retyping messages, and so on. But this stability is a fine sacrifice for the performance benefits of C. Only Mozilla is so bloated that using it feels like dragging sheep up hill on my couple year old laptop. Sluggishnesh I'd expect, but taking over a minute to uniconify makes me wonder every time if X has crashed and the OS is in the process of deallocating every byte allocated to every program and swapping in virtual memory just so it can be doomed. In my quest for a browser that was mostly usable most of the time, I've tried: mMosaic - lack of Javascript an issue, like small size, speed and general lack of brain damage, but it crashes too much, and like Mozilla, a crash takes all windows with it amaya - off the beaten path - edit mode is the same as view mode and like Mozilla, it supports a large number of intersting standards, but it crashes too much. Issues with layout as well. lynx - still a standby for reading documentation that I know isn't going to pull stupid shit like frames, JavaScript, and mystery meat image navigation links - JavaScript works well, layout is good, frames work well, pretty, non-cluttered, has the important options (and options are more important than features in most cases - features without options backfire). links has a graphics mode that is worthy of a reputation unto itself, and I love the ASCII art menus done as bitmaps. Typing links -g & at the command line starts a new process so each and every URL can exist as a seperate process, taking only that one page down in the case of a crash, but this doesn't handle the case where you right click and open in a new window. w3m - does images in an xterm - I didn't know that was possible and it sure isn't documented anywhere I can find. There has to be an exploit in there somewhere. w3m does no JavaScript, but each URL can exist in seperate process, it works inside GNU screen, pretty damn stable, good set of options. Good pick for viewing pages that don't have JavaScript, require Flash, or Java. Konq - early versions were promising, but now its big and crashy, and I just don't have the incentive to use it instead of Mozilla. HotJava - after a deal with Netscape, they castrated it, turning it into a demonstration, or a minimal embeddable compoentent rather than a full fledged browser. While 1.3 was slow, it was also reasonaably stable, being written in a high level language, but now it's abandonware. Before bring up any page, I have to stop and think, will this page crash Mozilla and interrupt testing I'm in middle of, or reference I'm trying to keep on the screen? Do I need Flash? Java? Sometimes I pull up a page and discover that I need JavaScript to look at some crummy URL that can't claim the ignorance and self importance of an overpirced corporate portal. I have to ask myself if it is something that I'm going to keep open for a while. If so, w3m suspends nicely inside of an xterm, whereas links litters the desktop with icons, and Mozilla just crashes. Apologies to the authors of these problems - I don't take issue with the quality of work, or their motives (hey, it's free), only their priorities. And it's par for the course that developers priorities not be in line with lusers ;) -scott On 0, "Luke A. Kanies" <luke@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Grr. > > So apparently for some people, sometimes, Firefox has a retarded-ass bug > where it insists on doing a reverse lookup on IP addresses it gets, and > until it gets a response to that lookup, it just sits there, and sits > there, and sits there. Which means that my new dual athlon is bloody fast > at everything except browsing, where it suddenly feels like a p100 running > Netscape 4.7 or something scary like that. > > I don't even know who to hate on that one -- stupid Mozilla people (who > definitely have a fondness for writing hateful software, from what I can > tell), stupid people who packaged it, stupid users who apparently don't > notice the seconds being leeched off of their lives, stupid me for having > the specific configuration that results in this otherwise rare bug (I > don't actually know if it's rare or common, but it's documented online). > Either way, lots of hate. > > So, I tried konquerer. I didn't actually know that Firefox had > anti-aliasing until I looked at konquerer -- do you have any idea how > absolutely hideous HTML looks on a 1280x1024 LCD when it's not > anti-aliased? I didn't know either, but now I do. Ugh. Oh, but they're > going to have it RSN! Yay!!!!!! Uh, yeah. > > So, I tried Opera. I might give this one a bit more of a try, but... I > admire what they're trying to do here (make some money by providing a good > browser) but none of my instincts work (no ^L for going to the address > bar, for instance), they think the F keys are for them whereas I consider > them to be for my personal shortcuts, not applications, and they don't > appear to have a status bar. Safari defaults to not having one, but at > least you can make it appear (they really should default to having it), > and although this isn't very hateful, Safari gives you extra information > in it like whether a link is to a new window or in the same window. WTF > don't all status bars do this? > > Sure, I can mouse over a link and then eventually a tooltip pops up. > Because that's exactly what I want -- a three second delay for > information. I'm all about waiting for my computer; that's why I > upgraded to a faster machine. > > And don't get me started on how busy the whole interface is. I don't like > lots of crap distracting my eyes; one of the things I don't like about KDE > is that the colors are so jarring that my eyes keep getting stuck on the > wrong buttons. If colors were used for useful direction (bright means > important or something), fine, but they're not, they're just there for > fun or whatever. "Wow, it's bright and colorful; I didn't know linux could > do that!" > > With opera, I can't really even tell where the page ends and the browser > crap starts. How many frame do I have here? The page, the nav bar on the > right, the toolbars on the top, the toolbars above those, the ad bar, and > a bunch of other stuff. I count five bars of crap above my web page in > Opera -- can people actually use that for anything useful? Come on. > > Oh, and I just found that Opera has decided (like IE) that standard mouse > operations in text boxes don't apply in browser text boxes. Double click > means select a _word_ not all of the text. Why go changing UI that's been > standard for 20 years? It will just make me hate you. Hate hate hate. > > -- > SCSI is *not* magic. There are fundamental technical reasons > why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain > now and then. > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Luke Kanies | http://abstractive.org | http://reductiveconsulting.comThere's stuff above here
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