this thrashes kmeleon by a long shot it!!!
http://mozilla.org/projects/phoenix

ok if you say so, might as well use mozilla. The download file itself is almost as large as the full installation of K-Meleon. Still not as easy to customize either.

So how is it better?

Hate to point this out to you, but so far on my Win2k box, phoenix clocks in at 17 MB of "memory usage" while k-meleon (0.6.5 beta) sits at 27 MB. But as features are added to phoenix that number will definitely rise, and it will always have the disadvantage of having an additional layer between it and the actual system (XUL). Also: The size of the archive file has nothing to do with actual performance. The k-meleon developers could package all of its add-ons and plugins and themes and the entire archives of the mailing lists and forums and anything else to fill an entire DVD, but that makes no impact on things like CPU or memory usage, which depend on the code that is actually running on your machine.

And by "customization", what exactly do you mean? I've looked at the documentation section on customization and there are mostly howtos on handing off certain mime-types to helper apps. For example, the howto states that to get realplayer or acrobat reader working, one is to dig through a prefs.js file and edit it. How is that "easy" for your average Grandma? Maybe easy for those of us who are used to editing config files all day, but certainly not for the vast majority of humans on this planet. You may pooh-pooh buttons and menus or GUIs to configure things, and I would agree if I were trying to configure a web server, a kernel, a mail server, a DNS server. But not my web browser. But I'm from the generation that first looked at http as "ftp for morons".

"For example, the howto states that to get realplayer or acrobat reader working, one is to dig through a prefs.js file and edit it."

All I did was install acrobat and realplayer and they work, no editing of files at all. Maybe I got lucky, but since the how-to's are for .6 they may be out dated. (I know .6.5 is not an official release, but neither is phoenix .1).

K-Meleon, at the moment is using 12.6MB of memory. What you have installed, and how much browsing you have done will effect how much memory is being used. Since I can edit K-Meleon easily, I don't need all of that extra garbage in memory.

" You may pooh-pooh buttons and menus or GUIs to configure things, and I would agree if I were trying to configure a web server, a kernel, a mail server, a DNS server. But not my web browser."

I use my browser for work, and since time is money, I want the browser to be easy to use for me, not the average Joe. K-Meleon allows this, and it isn't difficult at all if you think about it. If you can copy-paste-type then you can edit the menus.

At some point phoenix may be a better browser, and if it is, I will switch, but at this point it is not. In that entire post, there was not one reason pointed out as to why it is better, so . . .

"So how is it better?"

Your memory measurements may have been slightly incorrect:

17MB looks like "gecko that has just started, and hasn't loaded any page"

29MB looks like "gecko that has loaded a number of pages, and maybe some are displayed".

Start both from scratch, and display the same conents in both of them to get more accurate (and comparable) results.

I did not post this thread! So someone is using my nick. Notice the ip.
Author: ThatDude (---.expr.net) compared to mine.No biggie anyway.

"I did not post this thread! So someone is using my nick. Notice the ip.
Author: ThatDude (---.expr.net) compared to mine.No biggie anyway."

Looks like somebody's using you as a sock-puppet buddy :-)

I did not post this thread!... No biggie anyway. Well, it was big enough for you to make a post. I for one am glad that someone has taken the initiative to imitate ThatDude. It's good to play mind games with dimwit trolls.

Starting both and pointing them to the same my.yahoo.com page we see:

phoenix: 20 MB
k-meleon: 18 MB

I repeated the test, but this time pointed them to ESPN's website. Same results, so the numbers I posted before were not a fair comparison.

And as I said before, but seemingly not comprehended by certain people: But as features are added to phoenix [its memory footprint] will definitely rise, and it will always have the disadvantage of having an additional layer between it and the actual system (XUL). However, most people don't go around checking the memory footprint of their web browser.

"I use my browser for work, and since time is money, I want the browser to be easy to use for me, not the average Joe. K-Meleon allows this, and it isn't difficult at all if you think about it. If you can copy-paste-type then you can edit the menus."

Well, technically almost everyone in an office uses a browser for work. I don't see how if it is easier for the Average Joe it becomes harder for you. Are you saying that you'll be robbed of the ability to "copy-paste-type" in the text editor of your choice? What do you mean here? Do you really believe most people are really going to "copy-paste-type" just to add some functionality or rearrange their menus? As you say, "time is money", so should a customer service rep be using her time to reconfiguring her browser or paying attention to you, the paying customer, with a browser that was easy to configure?

"At some point phoenix may be a better browser, and if it is, I will switch, but at this point it is not. In that entire post, there was not one reason pointed out as to why it is better, so . . . "

You're very observant, I didn't say that it was better. However, not observant enough to understand that I merely was pointing out the flaw in the belief that Archive Size == Performance that you espoused in your first post, along with a challenge to this idea that k-meleon is "easy" to configure (which is based upon reading howtos for the officially released version of k-meleon). I still haven't seen your explanation of why Archive Size is such a strong indicator of performance.

Linus Torvalds and his crew consider hacking his kernel "easy", just as I consider setting up apache/DNS/mail "easy", and many diehard k-meleon users consider it "easy" to configure. To put it another way, should you know how the linux memory managment or kernel scheduler work before you build yourself a new kernel? That's an exaggeration, but saying "the only Real Way to configure k-meleon is edit the config files" is rather ridiculous. Remember that the beta is hidden away pretty well, so most people will be downloading 0.6 and if they need help or documentation, they'd most likely look at the stuff in the "Documentation" part of the site. And failing that, they'd come to these forums or mailing lists. If "time is money" is that a good use of their time?

Don't misconstrue my questioning of YOUR statements as equivalent to saying, "k-meleon sux, phoenix 0wnz", because that's absolutely not the case, despite your rabid defensiveness prompting you to believe otherwise. So let me be completely clear: I don't believe phoenix or anything else that uses a cross-platform runtime library will ever surpass a native browser in performance, because that flies in the face of the obvious. And even if, by some space-time warping miracle, phoenix is faster, I believe that k-meleon's dev team has the philosophy of putting something that's stable out, rather than something that's flashy (of the three native gecko driven browsers I've used, k-meleon is the most solid (the other two being chimera and galeon)). I do believe that k-meleon can be made easier to use, so more people will enjoy using it as their browser of choice. There is already much progress made in this area, as of the latest beta, as I've not had to touch any prefs files to get things to work. And this is a pretty solid beta. No crashes, and very few rendering errors (which are generally attributable to bad website design). Bottom line: this is the browser of choice for me (when I'm on windows), since it cuts away a lot of crap without sacrificing much in terms of accessing poorly written websites.

I wasn't getting defensive, though it seems you might be just a little. I just want to know if phoenix has it's advantages. At this point I guess it doesn't as no one has come up with any.

I won't bother to get into you post to heavy, but . . .

"I still haven't seen your explanation of why Archive Size is such a strong indicator of performance."

1. Where did I say that?

2. If it is an early beta, and is large at the moment, what is it going to be later. That was my main point. And anyway, more times than not, larger downloads does mean more junk, more memory.

3. Some people surf the web with slow machines (some with 286's), and not much drive space.

4. You found the flaw that prompted me to state: "K-Meleon, at the moment is using 12.6MB of memory. What you have installed, and how much browsing you have done will effect how much memory is being used. Since I can edit K-Meleon easily, I don't need all of that extra garbage in memory."

"I don't see how if it is easier for the Average Joe it becomes harder for you."

I use my browser for certain reasons. I can get rid of all the unneeded menu entries, toolbar buttons etc. I can then reorder the context menu's so the easiest one to click on are the ones I use most (Since there is a lot of research by big companies on the advantage of this, for those who don't know, you should be able to find something on the web).

There are a lot of 'actions' that I perform routinely. I can set them up in macros. Most businesses could save a lot of man hours if they took the time to do this, as well as that in the last paragraph.

"Do you really believe most people are really going to "copy-paste-type" just to add some functionality or rearrange their menus?"

If they use it 13 hours a day as I normally do, they would. It makes life much easier. (See above.)

"As you say, "time is money", so should a customer service rep be using her time to reconfiguring her browser or paying attention to you, the paying customer, with a browser that was easy to configure?"

Since I am not overly intelligent, I missed your point here.



Guess that is enough

Well after taking a thorough test drive with both K-meleon and Pheonix I'd have to say that both are great apps created by insightful and talented developers! I'd also have to say that they are both flavors of the same ice cream... You know like neopolitan ice cream...Bbut K-meleon is coming at it from the strawberry and Pheonix is coming from the chocolate and they are both after vanilla... Have I made you hungry yet?

Seriously though, I think Pheonix is a great product as well especially for those of us that want to learn more about XUL and XRE by example! But also as a non instaled solution that runs from the point you unzip it.. (at least in windows - haven't tried other flavors yet...)

In a lot of ways both projects are trying to do for the browser what LiteStep has done for the shell: make it easy to customize the browsing experience...

But as far as market share we have to admit (no matter how begrudgingly) that IE rules the world. Hey! I hate it too! - and believe me I was a die-hard IE programer for a long time... (bookmarlets, custom toolbars, custom menu settings, integrated debugging, you name it!... you've never seen a browser more decked out!) But Microsoft has not done a good job at serving it's customers so it's time for something new...

It's time for Microsoft to fall on hard times. It's time for someone else to take the lead and even out the power for a while - particularly in the browser market!

We shouldn't be figeting in the ranks amongst ourselves! W e should be figuring out how to raise up this moster and bite off the head of our enemy!!!

If we really believe in this Mozilla thing then let's get excited about any new development because even if we don't use the browser, that's one let Microsoft groupy! :-)

What I'm getting at is: we've got to think like a marketing department as well as a product development and quality assurance lab... If we can't market this to our friends and the little old lady that is still learning how to use a computer... If we can't sell our bosess on the superiority of our beloved browser then - does it matter???

We gotta get the word out people!!!

Gecko is a great engine! It's fast it doesn't crash easily. It does what it says it does. It's easy to pop the hood and tweak it. There's a heck of a lot more thought and development that goes into development...

Let's get Mozilla and Gecko out there and not wory wheather or not someone uses this interface or that interface. You're windows golors can be green and purple with orange highlights for all I care!!!

What I do care about is that you switch to a platform that isn't obsolete or proprietary but something that we can actually have some freedom as developers to develop on...

Let's turn this really cool list of features into a list of benifits for each and every person we know!!!

But if we don't get the word out... It's over folks!
Might as well hand the world over to Microsoft... because without us getting our market share there is no free market!!!!!

Yours Truly,
~TheRodster

a.k.a. Rodney Giles
Chief Engineering Architect
Toydrum Web & Media

Jason Foss writes:
>I just want to know if phoenix has it's advantages.

I doubt that considering your public zealotry leaping out in defense of k-meleon at every occasion that is apparent upon even a casual viewing of these forums.

Like every braindead fanboy, you just want to see yourself and your "hero" web browser vindicated somehow. Sadly, you lack the expertise to even point out k-meleon's strongest performance advantage over phoenix. And no, it is not size on disk. And yes, I suspect you'll be plagiarizing it in future k-meleon vs phoenix flamewars.

>"I still haven't seen your explanation of why Archive Size is such a strong indicator of performance."

>1. Where did I say that?

Here you go then:

"The download file itself is almost as large as the full installation of K-Meleon."

So what? What's the big deal about that? How is that in of itself indicative of performance? Doesn't one typically run tests and benchmarks to determine performance? Which, of course, you didn't do, and which I showed were not significant differences at this point (and if you're on a system where 2 MB in memory usage really matters, you shouldn't be running either browser). Or are you suggesting that the next version of Doom should have its performance rated entirely on the size of its distribution?

>3. Some people surf the web with slow machines (some with 286's), and not much drive space.

I didn't realize that the people still surfed the web with 286s and only 8.1 MB of disk storage constituted a great majority of web browsers, and certainly that flies in the face of data collected by any website. Is this some "research" you found during your 13 hours/day on the web? Where did you find it? At the "Annals of Improbable Research"? "The Onion"?

Regardless of your ludicrous, irrelevent statement, I would think that an embedded operating system would be a better solution than attempting to get k-meleon running under DOS, considering that the 286 lacks a FPU or similar co-processor to run modern operating systems (ie: meaning no 286 is currently running k-meleon). If you're going to counter by saying that any PDA fits this description, I will offer my Palm Vx (with 8 MB of storage) as proof that neither k-meleon nor phoenix run there particularly well.

>I use my browser for certain reasons. [blah]

>There are a lot of 'actions' that I perform routinely. I can set them up in macros. >[blah blah]

Yes, thank you for repeating this spiel without answering the question. I asked whether making such customization changes EASIER for the average person, ie: not freaks, somehow impairs your ability to do the same. I don't need another rehashing of your laughably pathetic daily life.

>"Do you really believe most people are really going to "copy-paste-type" just to >add some functionality or rearrange their menus?"

>If they use it 13 hours a day as I normally do, they would. It makes life much >easier. (See above.)

I suppose if you are surfing the web for 13 hours a day, it becomes difficult to comprehend what a normal person will spend their time on. People have other, apparently meaningless to you, priorities, like family, or their religion, or hobbies that do not involve customizing one's window manager/GUI/web browser. I don't really see how if you end up spending 13 hours a day at this occupation of yours anyway, how much these customizations have bought you in terms of spare time. 13 hours a day has certainly not improved your perception of reality when it comes to user interface design.

>"As you say, "time is money", so should a customer service rep be using her >time to reconfiguring her browser or paying attention to you, the paying customer, >with a browser that was easy to configure?"

>Since I am not overly intelligent, I missed your point here.

Then I will pander to your readily apparent deficiencies by removing the analogy and using small words:

If time is so valuable, and since people have priorities in their life that do not involve browsing the web for most of their earthly existence, then why demand their time and attention to learning the relatively hard process of altering the k-meleon GUI to fit some corporate study's or some web geek's idea of "ideal", when the GUI itself can be made to be easily customizable to fit their needs and tastes?

Boy another long message and still haven't answered my question. I won't even bother . . .

"Boy another long message and still haven't answered my question. I won't even bother . . ."

What I cannot understand is, if these postings about Phoenix aren't about just basic impatience and trying to wake the developers up (some of them are), then what does it matter to them what browser people choose to use. If somebody decides to use Phoenix based upon whatever merits that browser may have, then bully for them, however why then try and force it down the throats of others who *may not be interested* in it, or who know of it and have decided not to use it. It certainly couldn't be for financial gain now could it?

From what I've seen of Phoenix, both in reviews and other people using it, it may appeal to those who don't want to be getting their hands dirty adapting the browser to their own needs, but still that is the very reason why people like K-Meleon as well: you don't have to customise it or adjust anything to get it working straight away, however if you do want to do so, the option is there at least. That's the appeal of the K-Meleon browser: it suits both non-technical *and* technical users alike. Browsers like Mozilla or IE or even Phoenix don't really deliver on the same level as much as what K-Meleon does (which may explain the impatience of some users *wanting* a new release). Plus, with those other browsers, you also do not get a forum such as this one, or a website offering the option for *users* to get involved in the project, if they so choose to do so, or even get involved in the beta testing process as easy either.

Besides, K-Meleon and Phoenix are not competing products anyhow...

I say F... these lazy smartass devs here.I personaly will not ever download K- I have been amusing myself with they're forums though and just more amused as a year has gone by and nothing,I have found it quite amusing just to come read these forums and see what smart ass remarks these lazy kid jerk devs have to say.And I don't say I'm not going to ever download K-meleon when the next release is ever released as I think they would be bothered by it I just simply have Moz, Phoenix, that have real developers.I would'nt even consider using a program any program developed by a few lazy smart assed devs like this project has, If ya want to call em devs.I think they are as full of @!#$ as a christmas turkey.I know that the K is as good as the devs and thats enough for me to know it will never touch my pc.And afer reading these forums it should tell a lot of people that there wasting time waiting on under developed memory sucking K. It sucks memory bigtime and allways will.It allmost sucks more than the devs.I think the only thing alive here is this forum and I am making a oath to never post to a thread no matter how much I may want to because it is the way they watch to see if there @!#$ is dead yet or not and as far as I'm concerned its been dead.

So on that I will I promise you devs you will never hear another word from me ever again and thats a guarnteed promise.So long.

"So on that I will I promise you devs you will never hear another word from me ever again and thats a guarnteed promise.So long."

cya round ThatDude, oh nad on the way out could you please wipe your boots. You've been tramping around your muddy boots in these forums for far too long ;-)

Good riddance!

Did somebody say something? I don't think so.

GOOD BYE

I'm Back!

I've been using Phoenix and K-Meleon for some days. My opinion is that Phoenix is more feature-packed, and you can drop lots of mozilla extensions on it and they'lll work. (For example mouse gestures) But K-Meleon beats Phoenix hands off when it comes to speed, the ability to import Opera hotlists is another plus. And I still have to learn how to configure K-Meleon to the max...

"So on that I will I promise you devs you will never hear another word from me ever again and thats a guarnteed promise.So long."

There is a troll in every forum, some more persistent and abusive than others. I am no fan of K-meleon, but I was under the impressions that these forums were to educate.
I hope that we do not hear from him again.