I recently started using Aurora and I have been impressed with how stable it was. I was more impressed with how well the Firefox update stream is laid out. Below I have a description of each web browser that Mozilla releases along with the Firefox Beta PPA, Aurora PPA, and the nightly PPA for Ubuntu. To install any of these browsers, add the PPA and do an an update and upgrade.
Firefox, Firefox Beta (referred to here as "Beta"), Aurora, and Nightly are four web browsers developed by Mozilla and the community. In the end they will all become Firefox, but they are laid out like a chain in a brilliant update stream. Each of the browsers serves a different purpose and has a varying level of usability. Here is the breakdown of what each web browser does.
Firefox
Firefox is the standard web browser sponsored by Mozilla. Additions are added to Firefox only after they have been added to all of the other web browsers in the chain. Firefox is stable and has the most support for add-ons and themes.
Firefox Beta
Beta is for features that have gone through alpha and pre-alpha testing and are almost ready to be added to the Firefox web browser. This is one last testing phase before additions are finalized and implemented in Firefox. Stability isn't usually an issue at this stage, but some addons with poor support may be incompatible.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next
Aurora
Aurora is equal to an Alpha stage of development. At this point features are still relatively new, but have been confirmed to be useful and usable by nightly. This is the most stable of the "Cutting-Edge" browsers, but can still be hit by stability issues like crashes with any new features, although it is uncommon. Addon support and Theme support take a much larger hit than in Firefox Beta. Only web developers and computer hobbyists should use Aurora. Normal computer users probably wouldn't find many problems with aurora, but there would be no benefits worth risking crashes and a lack of addons.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/firefox-aurora
Nightly
Nightly is a web developer where features are added literally every day and then trickle downstream. Nightly users get the raw code churned out from code contributors, which can lead to crashes and problems. Using Nightly is seen as a show of status, almost like a volunteer. Nightly users receive the worst addon and theme support out of the bunch of the builds. A knowledge of programming and patch submission is not required, but is helpful to further the progression of updates inlcluded in this browser.
sudo add-apt repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
Although I mentioned that addon and theming support gets worse as the versions get larger, this is not a dealbreaker. Many good addons are supported on all versions. Nightly is the only browser that may go dark for certain addons.
Showing posts with label web browser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web browser. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
New and Exciting web browser: Qupzilla
The world of web browsers is a split between the core used to render web pages. Webkit is used by Midori and all Google Chrome / Chromium variants. The other option, Gecko, is used by Firefox. Webkit offers some functionality over Gecko, including plugins and faster rendering of pages. A new web browser has recently come into existence that is fully cross-platform compatible and uses webkit called Qupzilla. Despite the weird sounding name, this web browser could give some of the larger browser a run for their money if it gets some of its kinks worked out. Here is the breakdown:
Every operating system that has a Qt port and webkit can run Qupzilla. Windows, OS X, and any major Unix are all eligible. That is better support than Google Chrome and it's only a year old. Other than the great support it has other advantages:
Built-in addons
The web browser has multiple addons installed by default. Greasemonkey, a personal information handler, a speed dial (pictured, and adblock are all installed from the get-go.
Theming and Configuration
Themes are installable like in other browsers. The browser comes with a few themes installed by default. They try to mimic the appearance of a theme for a certain operating system. The Linux theme integrates with you Qt theme specified in qt4-qt4config (run with qtconfig).
Configuring Qupzilla is similar to configuring Firefox. Going to edit>preferences brings up a terse set of menus for configuring your web browser. A bunch of goodies are packed into here, including network proxy configurations, notifications, the password manager, and the download manager. A dialog for notifications is also including, and I was impressed at how well it integrated with free-desktop compliant notifications as well as OSD just like a more mature project like clementine does.
Compatibility
Qupzilla can import bookmarks from most major browsers. For playing video and game content, HTML 5 and Flash both work perfectly.
Browsing experience
Webkit loads pages very fast. I am on a slow connection and I was able to take note of the speeds that were achieved with webkit. Because of Qupzilla's use of Webkit and how it works with the operating system the memory usage should be FAR lower per-tab than any other major web browser. There are also other features in the browsing experience that make it unique. The IP address of a loaded page and the progress of loading is shown in the status bar. The search bar AND omnibar can both use different search engines depending on a set preference dialog or a key-letter like "g" for google or "d" for duckduckgo. Flash playing support is installed by default.
Like Firefox, Qupzilla has a download manager. A feature that I found to be very interesting was the ability to pass off an external program and parameters as the download manager.
Development Process
Major web browsers always feel the same anymore. Qupzilla is not to that point of maturity yet. Every update (which are somewhat frequent) brings some new and exciting feature along with it. The project is open-source and listed on github. The developers and anybody interesting in helping the project (as well as just normal users) should join #qupzilla on the freenode IRC network. I've talked a bit to the developers, and they are all very nice people that tend to listen to suggestions.
Of course, like any project it has its disadvantages too. Here is a rundown of those:
Addon support
The web browser has an extension system, but almost nobody is developing extensions that work with Qupzilla. The addons including by default are ported by the developers and may not be fully functioning. In fact, my beloved spell check doesn't work. This was the only real dealbreaker for me. Userscripts do work but they may not work exactly right.
Stability
The project is relatively new and bugs are being worked out. I haven't had a crash from it yet, but at one point it wiped all of my speed dial entries.
Conclusion
Qupzilla certainly is not the best web browser in the world in its current state. The major gripe with its users is addon support, and I couldn't agree more with how much this helps a browser out. I've contacted the developers, urging them to improve the plugin framework by looking at Firefox and Eclipse's approach. If addon support improved and better UI customization came to be, I would definitely use this as my default browser.
Built-in addons
The web browser has multiple addons installed by default. Greasemonkey, a personal information handler, a speed dial (pictured, and adblock are all installed from the get-go.
Theming and Configuration
Themes are installable like in other browsers. The browser comes with a few themes installed by default. They try to mimic the appearance of a theme for a certain operating system. The Linux theme integrates with you Qt theme specified in qt4-qt4config (run with qtconfig).Configuring Qupzilla is similar to configuring Firefox. Going to edit>preferences brings up a terse set of menus for configuring your web browser. A bunch of goodies are packed into here, including network proxy configurations, notifications, the password manager, and the download manager. A dialog for notifications is also including, and I was impressed at how well it integrated with free-desktop compliant notifications as well as OSD just like a more mature project like clementine does.
Compatibility
Qupzilla can import bookmarks from most major browsers. For playing video and game content, HTML 5 and Flash both work perfectly.
Browsing experience
Webkit loads pages very fast. I am on a slow connection and I was able to take note of the speeds that were achieved with webkit. Because of Qupzilla's use of Webkit and how it works with the operating system the memory usage should be FAR lower per-tab than any other major web browser. There are also other features in the browsing experience that make it unique. The IP address of a loaded page and the progress of loading is shown in the status bar. The search bar AND omnibar can both use different search engines depending on a set preference dialog or a key-letter like "g" for google or "d" for duckduckgo. Flash playing support is installed by default.
Like Firefox, Qupzilla has a download manager. A feature that I found to be very interesting was the ability to pass off an external program and parameters as the download manager.
Development Process
Major web browsers always feel the same anymore. Qupzilla is not to that point of maturity yet. Every update (which are somewhat frequent) brings some new and exciting feature along with it. The project is open-source and listed on github. The developers and anybody interesting in helping the project (as well as just normal users) should join #qupzilla on the freenode IRC network. I've talked a bit to the developers, and they are all very nice people that tend to listen to suggestions.
Of course, like any project it has its disadvantages too. Here is a rundown of those:
Addon support
The web browser has an extension system, but almost nobody is developing extensions that work with Qupzilla. The addons including by default are ported by the developers and may not be fully functioning. In fact, my beloved spell check doesn't work. This was the only real dealbreaker for me. Userscripts do work but they may not work exactly right.
Stability
The project is relatively new and bugs are being worked out. I haven't had a crash from it yet, but at one point it wiped all of my speed dial entries.
Conclusion
Qupzilla certainly is not the best web browser in the world in its current state. The major gripe with its users is addon support, and I couldn't agree more with how much this helps a browser out. I've contacted the developers, urging them to improve the plugin framework by looking at Firefox and Eclipse's approach. If addon support improved and better UI customization came to be, I would definitely use this as my default browser.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Opera web browser
Opera is a small (11 MB for the version 11.50) web browser, but it has played a large roll in how we browse the internet today. It pioneered features like mouse gestures, closed tabs, and most notably tabs themselves. Even though Opera was the first to dream up these features it only has about 1% of the total market share of web browsers, internet explorer 8 being the highest.
The psychology to Opera's neglect
Why would a program that paves the way for browsing as we know it be used by only 1% of all of the millions of internet users?
Even if you had a war winning weapon you may still prefer an army. It's that philosophy that causes Opera to be an unpopular browser. You could assume that a browser with more users would have more support, addon writers, and helpers when something goes wrong.
People may also be afraid of the new untested features that Opera produces. Once features trickle down to other browsers they are refined to fit in with the style of that browser. In Opera they are all "fresh out of the oven" and may be scary concepts at first. It's exactly like how the Alpha phase scares some away while others prefer it, other people would prefer beta, others the stable release. Opera would draw from those who like the "alpha" phase of a new feature.
The browser itself
I had been contemplating download opera for a long time before I actually did it. I must have visited the download page 3 time over the past month before I actually decided to test it out. Once I ran it I was very pleased.
Opera loaded in less than 2 seconds, which I expected because it had nothing added onto it. The next thing I noticed were the Panel, Opera Link, Opera Unite, and Turbo mode buttons.
Panel simply opens more options on the left side of the screen. What is shown here can be edited from the Opera menu. Opera link lets you access your bookmarks from anywhere. Opera unite seems to be pretty useful. Once you register an account it gives you some server space to put applications and files on. The turbo button improves browsing for those with slow internet connections by making great use of caching.
Opera caches by default and you may wish to make it check for changed on every reload. You can also do that from the Opera menu.
Compared to other browsers it seems to be extremely fast. Not only in startup, but in page loading as well. Even more so when using Turbo.
Addons, extensions, scripts
Opera is not compatible with firefox or chrome addons. This reduces the amount of addons by a lot. There seem to be plenty of Opera extensions that mimic some of the most popular firefox/chrome ones, but they still are not the same. There is some good news yet to come though. There is no need for Greasemonkey to install your own scripts or download them from userscripts.org You need to make your own folder for the scripts and copy the source code yourself. Then end it with the ".user.js" file extension, put it in the folder, and tell Opera to look in the folder from Opera menu> settings> preferences>Advanced>Content
The psychology to Opera's neglect
Why would a program that paves the way for browsing as we know it be used by only 1% of all of the millions of internet users?
Even if you had a war winning weapon you may still prefer an army. It's that philosophy that causes Opera to be an unpopular browser. You could assume that a browser with more users would have more support, addon writers, and helpers when something goes wrong.
People may also be afraid of the new untested features that Opera produces. Once features trickle down to other browsers they are refined to fit in with the style of that browser. In Opera they are all "fresh out of the oven" and may be scary concepts at first. It's exactly like how the Alpha phase scares some away while others prefer it, other people would prefer beta, others the stable release. Opera would draw from those who like the "alpha" phase of a new feature.
The browser itself
I had been contemplating download opera for a long time before I actually did it. I must have visited the download page 3 time over the past month before I actually decided to test it out. Once I ran it I was very pleased.
Opera loaded in less than 2 seconds, which I expected because it had nothing added onto it. The next thing I noticed were the Panel, Opera Link, Opera Unite, and Turbo mode buttons.Panel simply opens more options on the left side of the screen. What is shown here can be edited from the Opera menu. Opera link lets you access your bookmarks from anywhere. Opera unite seems to be pretty useful. Once you register an account it gives you some server space to put applications and files on. The turbo button improves browsing for those with slow internet connections by making great use of caching.
Opera caches by default and you may wish to make it check for changed on every reload. You can also do that from the Opera menu.
Compared to other browsers it seems to be extremely fast. Not only in startup, but in page loading as well. Even more so when using Turbo.
Addons, extensions, scripts
Opera is not compatible with firefox or chrome addons. This reduces the amount of addons by a lot. There seem to be plenty of Opera extensions that mimic some of the most popular firefox/chrome ones, but they still are not the same. There is some good news yet to come though. There is no need for Greasemonkey to install your own scripts or download them from userscripts.org You need to make your own folder for the scripts and copy the source code yourself. Then end it with the ".user.js" file extension, put it in the folder, and tell Opera to look in the folder from Opera menu> settings> preferences>Advanced>Content
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