Browser

[Peter Harrison]

On 4 Jan 2012, at 16:54, Chad Perrin wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 07:17:47AM -0500, Daniel Lewis wrote:
>> Im running Free BSD 8.2 and was wondering whats a good web browser for
>> version 8.2?
>> Where and how would we install it? ( Im really new to unix)
> 
> There are at least as many answers to this as there are browsers, and
> probably quite a few more answers than that.
> 
> For minimalist browsers in the X Window System environment, I quite like
> Surf.
> 
> For its incredibly rich extension system, I use Firefox (and extensions
> such as Pentadactyl, Perspectives, HTTPS Everywhere, and Scrapbook).
> 
> For a combination of excellent GUI design, smooth built-in features, and
> stability (relative to Firefox), Chromium is a good choice (that's the
> open source project behind Google Chrome).
> 
> For a relatively lightweight, modular design that offers an interesting
> alternative interface for people who prefer keyboard navigation rather
> than mouse navigation, there's Uzbl (though the Pentadactyl extension for
> Firefox offers some of the same benefits).
> 
> For the most complete feature set of any console-based browser I've used
> (which means I don't necessarily need a running X Window System session
> to use it), there's w3m.
> 
> Some OpenBSD people have started working on the xxxterm project, which
> looks quite promising to me, and I intend to give it a serious look very
> soon.
> 
> There are others as well.  Others have already mentioned Epiphany,
> Midori, and Opera.  Lynx and Links are a couple more console-based
> browsers.  In addition to Firefox, the Mozilla guys also offer SeaMonkey.
> Konqueror is the canonical choice amongst KDE users, I think, and Flock
> has a small but dedicated following.  Conkeror, despite the similarity of
> its name to Konqueror, is not a KDE browser; instead, it appears to be a
> Firefox variant specifically designed for keyboard navigation (with a
> less vi-like set of default keybindings than Pentadactyl provides).  I
> think NetSurf is a popular browser for the Haiku OS, but has been ported
> to other OSes such as FreeBSD.
> 
> I don't have a favorite.  All browsers I have encountered disappoint me
> in some way (though I hold hope for xxxterm when I get around to giving
> it a try).  Each of the browsers I mentioned in their own paragraphs are
> browsers that I use at least occasionally, except for xxxterm -- which
> gets its own mention basically because it looks promising.  For the
> negatives:
> 
> Surf - It's so feature-minimal that I would need to build a bunch of
> custom scripts to interact with it and give me the functionality I need.
> I have not tried yet.
> 
> Firefox - It's getting huge, bloated, and unstable for my purposes, and
> its recent rapid iteration model regularly breaks the very things that
> keep me using it at all: the extensions.
> 
> Chromium - The extension system is (intentionally) brain-dead.
> 
> Uzbl - It's a bit of a pain in the butt to configure to my preferences,
> and the extension "system" is very, very ad-hoc.  I like some of the
> principles of the underlying architecture, but in practice I do not think
> it is as well executed as it should have been.
> 
> w3m - I find its keyboard navigation capabilities somewhat less than
> convenient and, as a console-based browser, that's kind of a fatal flaw.
> It's still better than any other console-based browser I've used though.
> Then, of course, there's the fact that it lacks the conveniences of the
> major GUI browsers (plugin support, for instance).
> 
> xxxterm - It's not in FreeBSD's ports system (yet), and I don't need a
> new custom software installation project this week.  Beyond that, I don't
> know what I may or may not dislike about it.

Chad,

xxxterm is in ports - at least I have it installed on my netbook and although I can't remember how it got there, I never (ever) install stuff that's not in ports.

I installed for exactly the same reasons you're looking at it - fast lean browser with good (vi-like) keybindings.

Firefox runs like a dog on my atom processor, but I do still keep it around for some stuff although compiling to keep their release schedule is gradually turning me off.

First impressions of xxxterm are that it's very good. The keybinding is quite as good as uzbl or vimperator on firefox, but it's live-able with, and it seems to have fewer performance or configuration downsides.



Peter Harrison.


> 
> the stuff in the paragraph listing a bunch of browsers - I like all of
> these less than any of the browsers I mentioned before this paragraph,
> for a variety of reasons.
> 
> I hope that helps, in conjunction with the advice others provide.
> 
> -- 
> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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