The Phoenix Project

[Tim Wunder]

On 9/25/2002 9:46 AM, someone claiming to be Net Llama! wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Tim Wunder wrote:
> 
>>There's a code fork in the Mozilla UI called Phoenix,
>>http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/
>>It's a browser only implementation, I guess it'd be similar to the likes
>>of Galeon, only it still uses XUL for the UI. Version 0.1 has recently
>>been released.
>>So far, it seems they're only building for linux and Windows.
>>Seems to be rather snappy in the few minutes I've been playing with it...
> 
> 
> Ya, i noticed it yesterday as well.  Overall feelings on /. were that its
> still a bit rough around the edges (even for a Mozilla type project).
> Seeing as how it still lacks alot of the configurability that Mozilla has,
> i'm going to wait a while longer before trying it.  Its easy to remove
> features and improve performance.
> 

AFAIK, it just lacks the UI to the configurablility. Any browser 
settings available to a user thru use of prefs.js and user.js are 
available. The big performance benny is the removal of mail/news, 
chatzilla, composer and their attendant cruft. It's *just* the browser. 
According to the release notes, much of its size (it's *still* and 8-10 
MB download) consists of unused Mozilla files that haven't been removed 
yet. It *does* have features that Moz doesn't, though. Two of which seem 
pretty good: a customizeable tool bar and a quicksearch for history and 
bookmarks.

I'm curious to see how it loads at home under KDE3 and if it will work 
with kmail -- will clicking on a mailto link in Moz open kmail? The 
Windows version opens the default Windows mailer, but trying a mailto 
link using the linux version under Gnome/RedHat 7.0 doesn't do anything.

As far as what the /.ers say about the project, I'd be more inclined to 
listen to people who investigate and read prior to making comments. I 
find the majority of posts on /. are made by people who simply don't 
have a clue...

I do know that the 4 guys referenced in the release notes that are 
intimately involved in the project have been around the Mozilla project 
for a *long* time, and know what they're doing. Phoenix is gonna be a 
*very* nice browser, and probly in short order.

IMO, they need a second group to spin-off the mail/news client and fix 
that, too...

Tim