A Linux 'Browser War' in the Making?

We all know about Mozilla. It's one of the major 'poster children' for the entire Open Source concept. Build 9, Build 10, Build 11, and so on. Someday there will be a Mozilla that will run without crashing, and we'll love it. Someday. Then there's Opera's Linux - and BeOS, Mac, EPOC and OS/2 - ports. Over the last week we've had 100+ readers submit the news that (proprietary shareware) Opera for Linux is close to beta release. But there's another potentially exciting Linux browser in the works that has hardly gotten any publicity. (continued)

I learned about the new KDE browser project almost by accident. The concept is only a few months old, and active work on it only started a few days ago. Konqueror - "Konq" for short - is not the spotty KFM utility included in the current KDE release, but a whole new code base.

The people working on Konqueror are worried about getting too many people's hopes up too hard and fast; if they do, and if they run into Mozilla-type slowdowns, they'll end up with plenty of egg on their faces. All they're willing to show the world at this point is this screenshot.

It's amazing how far Konqueror has come in almost no time, especially when you realize that this is a purely volunteer project with just a few members, not a big deal with big money from a big company like AOL/Netscape behind it.

Are there other Linux browsers in the works? Good question; if you know of one, please tell us about it.

Another question: Would more volunteers help Konqueror? Perhaps, perhaps not; the KDE developers aren't sure that more bodies would necessarily help.

Should we all get behind Mozilla and push? Yet another good question - and one that's been hashed to death all over the place but hasn't been fully answered yet.

Whatever the answers, I believe most Slashdot readers agree on one thing: that a better Linux browser would be a Good Thing(tm).

We have a little poll about Linux browsers to the right of this story. And, as always, your thoughts on the subject are more than welcome.

Competition is good

What the browser space really needs is competition, on all fronts. Companies and projects should be competing to make the fastest, most stable, most compliant browser with the best user interface. Mnemonic and several other free browser projects were effectively killed by Mozilla.

We shouldn't have all our browser eggs in one basket, any more than we should all be using the same operating system or text editor. Especially with open source browsers (but even with closed source ones), competition brings about innovation, as well as better code and, in the end, a better browser.

If one browser supports PNG, then they all will feel the need to support PNG. If another one is 100% compliant with the HTML 4.0 spec, then they all will feel the need to be compliatn. This competition is going to be the best thing that's happend to browsers, on any platform.

Personally, I look forward to trying out all the new browsers (konquerer, opera, and mozilla), as well as the old favorites (w3m, lynx, and netscape), and using whatever's best. Especially if it's open source, I'd also look forward to contributing bug fixes and new code. However, this means a relatively small and clean open source project, not that 120MB of C++ monstrosity called Mozilla.

Konqueror should use the Mozilla Layout Library

Is it just me, but the layout engine in Mozilla is pretty damned good by all accounts, it is the stuff surrounding it that cacks up all the time.

So wouldn't it make sense to use the Mozilla layout engine inside of Konqueror, and also to use that layout engine as a standard html widget for all of the different programs that display html to some extent? That way, all (bug hunting and fixing) resources will be focussed of one code base, instead of having loads and loads of different code bases around?

Or maybe it is just me being hopeful!

Just the idea of a standard libhtml widget would be great for Linux and other Unix variants. Why reinvent the wheel indeed!

Oh well... there will always be two or three competing things in the Linux world it seems (gtk vs. qt, KDE vs. Gnome, Mozilla vs. Konqueror, etc)... it is when they are merged that the trouble occurs... look at gcc.

Other browsers that work with linux

I can think of

• mnemonic
• gzilla
• hotjava
• arena
• amaya
• lynx
• Star Office
• w3

Right off the top of my head. I am only too sure there are others.

Note that this list does not seek to compare or champion any of the browsers mentioned, a few of them are very sucky indeed. I just thought I'd mention them. Certainly in the linux world there hardly ever seems to be a lack of choice. Celebrate Diversity !

There's also "Armadillo" (formerly gzilla)

Not to fan the widget wars or anything.... :)

There's another one out there - haven't played with it for a while, but I don't see it get much press, either. It's Armadillo [gzilla.com] - a GTK+ based browser written in C.

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Zawinski's Law, Redux

I think it was Jamie Zawinski who said that every application seeks to expand until it can read e-mail. I would add the corollary that the really bloated applications expand until they can browse HTML.

For example: there is Emacs/W3 [indiana.edu], which just released version 4.0 [freshmeat.net]. To quote the Freshmeat entry: Emacs/W3 is a full-featured web browser, written entirely in Emacs-Lisp, that supports all the bells and whistles you will find in use on the web today, including frames, tables, stylesheets, and much more. Emacs/W3

Now, I happen to use XEmacs. It's my favorite editor. I couldn't code without it, debug without it, or even read e-mail without it. But I can browse the web without it, and I think building an emacs-based browser is just way over the edge.

As the wise man said, though, Your Mileage May Vary.

--JT

Re:Konqueror should use the Mozilla Layout Library

That certainly sounds like a good idea; one not-so-minor problem; MLL uses the Mozilla Public License, which is not compatible with GPLed code as documented in the MPL FAQ: [mozilla.org]

18.How can GPL code be incorporated into the Communicator code base?

Under our reading of the GPL, it will not be possible to incorporate code covered by the GPL into the Communicator source code base. It is also not possible to use GPLed code and NPLed code together in a Larger Work. This is different for LGPL code. It is possible to create a larger work using LGPLed code that can then be used in conjunction with NPLed code through an API..

Other browsers...

There are lots of other browsers, if one just looks.

There's W3C's Amaya, and their orphaned Arena browser. Sun has HotJava. There's Netscape and Mozilla (of course). Lynx. Mosaic is still around. I remember something called "dozer" (or was that an HTML editor?) as well. Star Office also contains a browser within it.

There are probably a few projects that I haven't heard about.

It makes sense for KDE and Gnome to incorporate browser technology into their desktop environments.

What would be bad for everybody would be if every one of these started to extend HTML with their own proprietary features (Netscape's CENTER tag comes immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other culprits here).

If I can sit down at any of these browsers, and once I figure out how navigation works (click on links for graphical browser, TAB and ENTER for lynx, etc.), I should be able to surf on any and all of these. And all pages should render as best as possible on every one of these browsers.

This means that JVM's need to be standardized, JavaScript implementations need to be compliant to some standard, or else we will be in a tower of Babel where everybody can talk, but nobody can hear what anybody else is saying.

To see what I'm talking about, just browse some of the comp.infosystems.www.* newsgroups, and listen to all the complaints about how Netscape and IE disagree on the rendering of this-and-that, and multiply it by the sheer number of browsers that are still coming out.

I welcome all browsers, even newcomers. But this isn't 1993... there are standards that they are expected to adhere to.

I know the complaints...

HTML (what version? 3.2, 4.0? hmmm?). CSS (1 or 2?). JavaScript. Java (1.02? 1.1.x? 1.1.x + Swing? 1.2?). HTTP (1.0? 1.1?). You name it.

Well, the best thing would be to support as many of these as you can; usually the newer versions are backward compatible. If not, there is usually some way to specify which version something is written to; support as many and as much as you can.

This is a tall order for a web browser nowadays, and the weight of these requirements has been very apparent in the Mozilla development. But your users will love you for it.
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Why Mozilla is so badly broken

They're trying to support too much.

Mozilla has support for everything. Everything from email to the kitchen sink is part of the codebase.

It's gotten so badly bloated now that I hesitate to call it a browser anymore. All I want my browser to do is to display web pages, run some java/javascript, and support plugins for objects in a page. That's it. No more, please.

Look at the mozilla modules list:
-E-mail/news? I'd really prefer that to be a separate program that can open my web browser if needed, thanks.
-Dialup? I've already set that up, thanks again.
-Embeddable Web Browser? What the heck are you embedding that in?
-HTML to Text/PostScript Translation? Wouldn't this really be better as a separate program? How about saving using HTML? Simpler, eh?
-PerlConnect (Perl and JavaScript connection )? What the heck is this for?

And all the other stuff there. It just seems to me that they're not developing a browser anymore, they're developing an application suite.

Start with a simple architecture, and work up from there. Ahhhhh, would be nice.


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IE for linux

we'll just have to ask microsoft to make an IE client for linux. We'll just have to tell them it's for "winlinux", I'm sure they'll understand.

My personal opinion is that the mozilla project needs to focus more on fixing the browser before they add things like a html editor/news/mail reader. but since they've already added those things...mozilla should enforce a feature freeze on the current milestone.

but thats just my opinion

Re:Competition is good

What browser companies need to do is to meld the browser with the UI, like (dare I say it) Microsoft does. You have to admit there's some value in being able to type c:\mp3 or http://slashdot.org into the same window in a MS operating system and receiving the results you want. KDE has an advantage with Konquerer in that they have already spent a good amount of time learning how to handle files and applications and all they need to do is drop in a few more components to meet the level that IE is at. Netscape/Mozilla dont have that. They're designed as standalone utilities not integrated components. The web browser has become the consistent pervasive UI for computers, and the KDE folks are looking to capitalize on it. People on /. will always seek out niche utilities to do what we want. People who are not hackers will be able to flock to something like a KDE/Browser two-headed monster.


-Rich

Mozilla Lite?

I am not a C++ coder. Yet. And I know I'm totally oversimplifying the situation in my quesiton. With that in mind, maybe someone more enlightened than I could answer me this: Could it be possible for an industrious group of coders to grab the mozilla layout engine and wrap a simplistic UI around it, effectively creating what I see many people here asking for? ... A lightweight-but-functional browser-only browser, minus all the crap?

I used to be a big fan of the Mozilla project, but every screenshot that I see, I end up saying, "What is that mess over in that sidebar there? I don't want that. Can't they just finish the friggin renderer?"

Re:Why Mozilla is so badly broken

E-mail/news?

From a recent /. poll [slashdot.org], over twenty percent of /. users use communicator for their mail client. Now what do you think that is for the less knowledgable browsing public?

HTML to Text/PostScript Translation?

I convert to text all the time, and conversion to PS is nice when there are many embedded images and you would rather not fetch them all with wget.

Embeddable Web Browser?

If you mean the GTK+ mozilla widget, it's small and useful and was contributed code.

Re:Why you're wrong

Mozilla starts with a simple architecture. It uses a light-weight, quick as lightning html rendering engine. Add xml support, javascript and their blossoming child XUL and you've got the beginnings of a great product. Add on to that a simple mail/news interface (btw, the browser does not rely on mail/news code, mail/news code is pretty lightweight and sits atop the browser)and you've got a very functional product. Add an open java interface so you can plug in the version you like and it's really starting to look sharp (but still simple). Read a little more before you judge mozilla. Not all modules are part of the default product and not all modules that are part of the product are as big as the name would suggest.

We Need Netscape

I'm sure some people won't agree with this, but I strongly believe that we need to get Mozilla out soon so that Microsoft won't have an opportunity to 'standardize' the internet. What I mean is that if most of the general population uses Internet Explorer long enough, web developers will start developing sites that work ONLY with IE. This hasn't quite happened yet, but with some more time and some more 'features' put out with IE, this most likely will happen.

What we need is competition in the browser market to prevent this and to ensure that standards, not companies, rule the internet's content.

This is why we need Mozilla. It is Netscape. People know who Netscape is. Netscape might be in a strange state right now, but they are the underdog and people did use them at one point. Now I'm not bashing KDE or Opera (I use both browsers), but telling web designers that their new IE feature won't work under those browsers probably won't hold much weight (I hope I'm wrong there). Netscape, on the other hand, will get them to think about it.

I guess it comes down to the number of people who use a particular browser. There is still a significant number of people using Netscape, so you can argue that you need to support that browser. I just hope we can see Mozilla in force before its too late.

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Re:Why Mozilla is so badly broken

Maybe you should look at the mozilla code and/or newsgroups before whether you decide if the mozilla team is forward thinking.

Mozilla is a very heavily Object oriented project which is very modularized.

Most people who actually know anything about the Mozilla project look upon 'bloat' differently than idle commentators such as seen often in slashdot.

The fact is that the market requires certain features from their 'internet experience'. This includes mail/news, Postscript output, etc.

Communicator was built as a monolothic application which had all these modules inextricably linked in one binary. In mozilla, these modules are seperated. If you want, you could rip out the mail/news DLL, and you would not have mail support any more.

I don't understand what you consider 'bloat'. You don't like large executables? Fine, we split it up into multiple DLLs. You don't like large download time? Fine, we make the distribution download size a fifth of what is was previously.

Maybe you're just whining that you think we'd get a better product quicker if you had all the mail/news engineers working on core browser stuff? Well, anyone who's done any s/w engineering knows that you can't just throw more engineers at a project to get it done quicker/better.

Mail/news is an application that sits on top of the new mozilla framework. If mozilla was just a browser, it could not compete with IE. The core of Mozilla is a framework for building applications such as a web browser, or mail client.

The importance of an HTML mail client cannot be underestimated in a corporate environment. Many millions of seats of Communicator and outlook have been sold to corporations, and they love and demand HTML mail.

So, we must provide and HTML mail client. Do we make them download it seperately? What do you do about the shared components such as core layout? do we make people download it twice?

Here's some real numbers from a recent mozilla status report:

Footprint
Estimate of compressed total download size on Win32: 1266k

Uncompressed DLL sizes:
Win32: 1174k, Mac: 2382k, Linux: 2331k


Now compare to Microsoft IE 5.

Minimum installation (without Outlook) is about 50MB. With Outlook, you're talking about another 20MB.

THAT'S bloat. We can get mail/news for around (guess) 500kb compressed download.


My main point is that adding these features don't significantly impact the size of the project. If you don't want a feature, remove the DLL. But the mozilla team know what the market demands. Just because you don't want something in the browser doesn't mean nobody else does.

Re:Once there was Mnemonic

As one of the developers of Mnemonic, let me make a few remarks about the status of the project.

As with any project (including KDE's browser and Mozilla), Mnemonic has gone through several design stages and we have thrown away the entire codebase several times now. It's not very strange that only very few people know about it, since none of those times did we ever reach a point were the program did anything remotely useful.

At the moment, things are, however, progressing very rapidly. Apart from a very small core library (some 230 Kb), everything from network protocols to rendering engines is in separate modules. There is a rather decent generic XML parser, a completely GUI-toolkit independent rendering engine, network protocol modules (with SSL being added at this very moment) and a GTK based layer on top of that.

Just as the Konqueror team kept things relatively quiet, we have decided to work out the basics without giving too much publicity (although of course the code has always been available for anyone to look at). But as soon as the table layout algorithms have been debugged, we will start to release binaries (as that is probably the first time that the browser is really useful).

For more discussion, please join the mailing list; more info and status updates can be found at http://www.mnemonic.org [mnemonic.org].