Why is there phoenix when KM, Galeon, Chimera, et. al. were around for years already?

Not trolling, I really want to figure this out.

Phoenix is an experimental browser. It exists as part of a lame attempt to validate XUL, XPCOM, XPFE, and the rest of the "Mozilla X-Files" as viable. XUL is why Mozilla is so big and so very slow and the flawed thinking is that if XUL can be optimized in Phoenix then the same thing can be done in Mozilla. Now anyone who understands programming knows that there's just no way to make an interpretive language user interface (which is what XUL is) faster than a native OS user interface. They'll argue that XUL is cross platform but that's just an excuse for laziness. Once the basic UI code is done for each platform then it really wouldn't be a major effort to add enhancements. Also some stuff can be made portable since there are commonalities in all GUIs, the platform specific stuff really wouldn't change. This is how the Netscape 4.x UI was implemented. In the end XUL is a bad design and the Mozilla devs put a lot of wasted effort into and they simply won't admit it. If Mozilla had a UI like K-Meleon then it would be much faster, smaller, more stable, and likely have a higher usage than it does now (about 0.8%).

Phoenix is supposedly dying (good) and even if it continues won't be called "Phoenix" because the BIOS company Phoenix Technologies wants them to stop using their name.

Does it matter?

At least everyone has an option as opposed to the 'other' option. That is what open source equals. Choice.

Nick

asmpgmr, you need to check your dosage of the medication you take. Too many paranoid Mozilla bashing post by you lately to be a fluke...

Meanwhile a more sensible explanation to why Phoenix exists is that Mozilla itself is quite bloated and how to fix this has gotten a lot of attention the last 6 months over at mozilla.org.
Projects that are highly realted to this is eg
* the stand alone browser (Phoenix)
* the stand alone mailclinet (Minutaur)
* GRE (which was just added to trunk before 1.3beta closed) http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/MRE.html

@asmpgmr
> Phoenix is supposedly dying

And so was K-Meleon according to many not long ago, simply becuse the webpage wasn't updated and 0.6 to 0.7 took 1 year.
I think it's quite ironic as well as amusing that you, a K-Mel user, would be so quick to buy into the "phoenix is dying" FUD.

Different strokes for different folks... Oddly enough, everyone isn't satisfied with exactly the same things, and everyone has a
better idea
In an ideal dictatorship, of course everyone would use K-meleon! ;-)

Stefan,

You need a hypocrite check, why are you here using K-Meleon if you think Phoenix and XUL are so good ? You must think they're good or you wouldn't be defending them. Note I'm not against Mozilla on the whole, only XUL and I've stated why and like it or not I'm correct.

SJ Zero,

Each of the browsers has their strengths and weaknesses. I think one of the strengths of Phoenix (sorry asmpgmr, I know you disagree here) is the use of a standard interface across various platforms (in this case, XUL). Where Kmeleon, Galeon, and Chimera were all created to run only on a single operating system (or OS family), Phoenix is easy to port to a variety of OSes. The trade off is that it is a bit slower. People with nice, speedy machines may not notice the difference as much, and for them Phoenix may work very nicely.

Also, different people work in different ways. Each browser "feels" different, and some prefer Kmeleon, orPhoenix, or IE, or Opera, or Mozilla, or Lynx. It just works better for them.


andy

> You need a hypocrite check, why are you here using K-Meleon if you think Phoenix and XUL are so good ?

I think both browsers are great and I use both.
How does that make me a hypocrite?