Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. Phoenix 0.5 (Naples) was just released for Linux and Windows. Other recent releases include Opera‘s 6.11 for Linux/FreeBSD and Opera 6-beta3 for Mac.
Phoenix 0.5 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The infamous XUL redraw bug that plagues my Mozilla is of course still on Phoenix, but with great relief I have to say that now Phoenix loads in 2-3 seconds (first load)! Previously, it was taking 9 seconds on this OS/machine.
Posting this from 0.4, waiting like a hawk… like a HAWK!… for it to appear in the portage tree. Excellent piece of browser.
Pheonix is wonderful yet, some of the things you dumbed down make it worse! Specifically the Bookmark Manager. You screwed up one of my favorite features, the bookmark searching.
I like the fact that you put the search bookmarks abr right at the top, but I HATE what you did to it. You should of left the features like they were.
Here’s how to please everyone:
Take out Find and replace it with the first dropdown menu (name, location, keyword, description{with name as default}) in mozilla’s bookmark search dialog and than make another dropdown menu like in mozilla which includes the other features (contains, starts with, ends with, is, is not, doesn’t contain) and than leave a space for user input liek you did now. When the user presses enter, ask him if he wants to save the query. (Saving queries rocks, I saved a “name contains linux” search and now everytime I add another bookmark about Linux it gets added to the folder with my old search query. Really cool.
Please do this, nobody needs an entire search bar to write a name anyway. This functionality is really needed.
Furthermore, the text zoom in Pheonix sucks! I don’t even know if it is original size. Please do it like this
In the view menu, make a “text size” entry which expands to reveal “Larger Ctrl ++”, “smaller Ctrl +-“, ” “Original Text Size”, and most importantly “Other” which would bring up a dialog where you can write down the text zoom you want like in Mozilla. At least do this, please.
Also, on the right of my address bar there is a small form which allows me to search the web or the page I’m on. I think the find on this page doesn’t need to be there, it’s a waste of space since you can just press Ctrl-f and have a better find on this page dialog. I also don’t know how to add or remove search engines. I only want google.
Finally, the way sidebars now work sucks. It should work like in Mozilla , I open the sidebar and I can click on History to view history, and fro the same sidebar view bookmarks by clicking it. In pheonix I ahve to go to the menu and click each one, it sooo much slower and it take sonly slightly more space to improve it. (also for some reason finished downloads ahvea progress abr with nothing in it.)
I noticed you guys are really trying to copy explorer in almsot everything, sidebar etc., but you should really look at how others do it, MS doesen’t always do it the best way.
THESE ARE ALL MY RANTS, I HOPE YOU TAKE THEM INTO CONSIDERATION, EVERYTHING ESLE SIG REAT, EXCEPT LINUX INTEGRATION WHICH NEEDS A LOT OF WORK!
Thanks.
(BTW, when i right click on a folder in my personal toolbar folder and click manage, the find thing totally disappears! I think this is a bug.)
what about the name change?
Read the FAQ.
It says: “we’d already had this 0.5 released planned for awhile, so it was okay to release under the Phoenix name. But under no circumstances will any future release be called Phoenix.”
Download links are down atm, must either mean it’s REALLY popular or that they screwed it up. I want and demand Phoenix 0.5 now, especially if that startup speedup is for real, which is the only real complaint I’ve ever had about Mozilla compared to Internet Explorer.
Was that speedup on Linux or Windows Eugenia?
>Was that speedup on Linux or Windows Eugenia?
Windows XP PRO here.
Phoenix has always loaded, since the initial release, in 1 second on my AthlonXP 1900 WindowsXP box. With this new version on my Linux box, which is also an AthlonXP 1900, it also loads in 1-2 seconds, I even restarted the machine twice to see if I wasn’t just trying to trick myself into thinking it was loading faster. It actually was. Kudos to the Mozilla team. The new extension/theme pages are fantastic too.
> Phoenix has always loaded, since the initial release, in 1 second on my AthlonXP 1900 WindowsXP
Well, it was not doing that here. I talked about it in the past too. For some people Phoenix was loading as expected, while for others it didn’t. The new version fixes the problem and now Phoenix should load fast for everyone.
>> Phoenix has always loaded, since the initial release, in 1 second on my AthlonXP 1900 WindowsXP
>Well, it was not doing that here.
Nor here. I also have an AtlonXP 1900+. How much memory do you have? I only have 256 which could be the problem. It’s pretty fast though. I’m my start using it instead of IE (I like mozilla but it’s a little too slow, Pheonix seems to have solved that problem)
It will automaticly import my IE bookmarks, but I can’t find the entry to import my mozilla’s bookmarks.
I have 256 MB too.
From Mozilla, export your bookmarks file as an .html file
Bookmarks menu…
Manage bookmarks…
File menu (from Bookmark Manager)..
Import…
Then navigate and double click on your bookmarks.html file from the first part.
There might be an easier way to do this, but this is how I was able to import bookmarks.
Phoenix is pretty nice, it has mouse gestures (installed as an extension) and a tabbed interface, which are two of the features from Opera that I miss when using IE. The find toolbar is handy too (switch between google and page finds).
If you use the mouse gestures plugin, there’s no configuration panel for it (there was a while ago, but it disappeared somewhere along the line). To change the mouse gesture button from left to right (like Opera’s), open up your prefs.js file when Phoenix isn’t open and change
user_pref(“mozgest.mousebutton”, 0);
to
user_pref(“mozgest.mousebutton”, 2);
I write this because I wish someone would have told me about it earlier 🙂
I like most is that it displays the favicons in the bookmarks etc. I don’t know why mozilla doesn’t do this. The “Qute” theme is also quite nice… =)
Phoenix looks very cool and gets faster every time I try it =)
i believe the 1.2 series is where the mozilla developers add new features, like images selection being showed grayed (as in IE). i am currently staying with 1.1 because 1.2 seems to be slower, less responsive, and taking higher cpu resources. for example, try visiting a page with many images (the photos section of Yahoo! Groups is a good example). press Ctrl-A, deselect, and press Ctrl-A again. the CPU is utilized at 100%. IE is totally unbeatable in this respect.
trying with phoenix doesn’t make a difference, which indicates the slowdown is probably in the Gecko engine.
PS: i’m still waiting for my favorite feature: shift-Space to scroll upward 🙂
anyone know where i can get phoenix RPMs for Red Hat 8.0? i know that there is a linux binary available and of course the source code…but i like to stay with the package management whenever possible to avoid breakage
thank you in advance.
-bytes256
Give it a try
The modern theme doesn’t work?
The scrollbar in default theme has much little width
I’ve tried to reproduce the 100% utilization that davegaramond
mentions in comment #15, but it doesn’t happen on my machine, using phoenix 0.5 .
Could someone point me to a page with lots of images; the most I’ve found on a single page so far is 270 ( Sword Swallowing group at yahoo).
Found em myself…I should’ve looked harder before posting…oh well…anyway for those interested…
http://phoenix.ragweed.net/
xft2 support and all the glory of Phoenix on Red Hat 8.0…schweeet 😀
-bytes256
It also works in Mozilla 1.2, nothing special here.
Not only that, but to get to the URL bar, Mozilla now uses Alt+D in addition to less convenient Ctrl+L (just like in IE).
In my opinion, Phoenix’ real claim for fame is the inline form-autocomplete, but I’m sure this will be implemented soon by Mozilla.
Finally, the last IE feature that I’d like to see with Gecko-based browsers is ieSpell.
Using spellcheck.net is adequate, but it’s far from what IE and Omni offer.
Clean, easy and extreamily FAST to load. Like this one!
It is a sure bet that when released, several easy-go distros will dump the overbloated Mozilla in favor of this baby.
Yeah, I agree. I can’t really notice a difference between IE and Pheonix on my computer, other than a few seconds when you first open it up. It’s a really nice browser.
I’d love to see a BeOS version, Mozilla for BeOS is a little slow.
There is a BeOS version, (ok, it’s not official) which builds (afaik) from the current tree.
Since Mozilla on BeOS doesn’t support drag&drop it’s not customizeable, yet.
I downloaded the suggested xft2 package for my RedHat 8.0 and oh my god doesn’t it look gorgeous! Some minor issues here and there, but nothing constantly annoying.
Phoenix is no further than 0.5, but it is already close to a true Mozilla killer, indeed.
The startup speed mentioned (especially when having blank start page) is ONLY on Windows, damn damn damn… well, I’ll keep holding my thumbs that 0.6 will have improved startup times on linux aswell.
I’ve also just replaced my old Phoenix (0.3) with 0.5 (the RH8 tarball from the link mentioned above) and man, it feels way more snappy now
Unbelievable.. I think this is faster then IE ever used to be (can’t compare though because I’m not using W anymore)
Anyone know how to find the preferences for mouse gestures in Phoenix? The gestures works, but not really the way I want them to.
from slashdot…
If, like me, you’ve been using Mozilla’s mouse gestures feature for a while you’re probably hooked. The good news it that they are available for Phoenix as well:
http://texturizer.net/phoenix/extensions.html#gest ures [texturizer.net]
Unfortunately there is no menu option to trigger them with the right mouse button (they default to being activated by the left button). If you want them on the right mouse button you will have to edit your prefs.js file. On Windows (depending on what version you are running) this can be found in C:WindowsApplication DataPhoenixProfiles??????prefs.js
Before editing the prefs.js file you will need to install the gestures XPI, then restart your browser and shut it down again (this will create the default mouse gesture preferences in the prefs.js file). Now open the file in a text editor and look for the following line:
user_pref(“mozgest.mousebutton”, 0);
Change the number to 2 for right mouse button (or 1 for middle mouse button) and you’re done.
Chimera is a great browser, but it dont have the great popup whitelist of phoenix and cant change the character coding of webpages, I’m still using mozilla in the OS X.
I’ve tried this experimental build for a while:
http://www.kmgerich.com/misc.html
Lets hope he updates to phoenix 0.5 soon
1.2 is slow? How?
I was almost positive that the Mozilla crew followed the linux kernel versioning methold, even releases for stables, odd’s for development (like 2.4.x for stable 2.5.x for unstable)
I’m pretty postitive that 1.0 was a stable release, then in 1.1 they shoved in a whole slew of features, 1.2 is the tuning of those features, you’ll notice a huge difference between 1.0 and 1.1, but not 1.1. and 1.2. 1.2 has speed improvements and stability improvements over 1.1
I could be wrong, but I have read this somewhere, can anyone else confirm this?
Still no sidebar. What’s the hold-up?