[P1] Mozilla browsers

[Ruffin Bailey]

> I like Mozilla. I want to update to 1.4, but notice that there are a 
> couple of variants available, Camino and Firebird. Any thoughts on 
> why updating to 1.4 is nifty or why using one of the other variants 
> is better or worse than sticking with plain vanilla Mozilla?

I'm not real sure what the best answer is here, but I can try to give a little context.

As you probably know, Mozilla as an AOL project recently died.  I think they might have been splitting up the product to allow them drop dead weight and concentrate on whatever might be most useful to AOL.  Totally speculation.  At any rate, splitting Mozilla into two/three (if you count Composer++, which is pretty weak right now) products happened right around the same time.

I believe there's a good deal of momentum to keep Mozilla split into Firebird, which is an excellent browser and I have it installed on my machine, and Thunderbird, which is still obviously a beta email client, but works fairly well on my x86 box (haven't tried Mac version yet).  If you want to start using the Moz codebase the way it'll be developed in the future, I think this is the way to do it.  If you enjoy, say, Mail.app, you're better off picking Firebird and ditching the overhead a full Moz install brings.

I used to like Chimera/Camino, but nothing much has happened there since the Firebird split.  I don't see much future for the project, but wish them the best.  Before Safari, it was the best OS X browser -- or at least the one I used daily.  It has a good deal of Mac-specific code wrapped around the Moz engine, give or take, but, again, hasn't been updated recently (unless it's been in the last week or two).

Anyhow, for faster, optimized *browser* code that renders like a beast, run Firebird.  If you need a dedicated suite and don't use Mail.app or iChat, keep Moz.

Ruffin Bailey
---------------

--
This message sent by an unregistered version of The Digest Handler.
If you read email digests, you NEED The Digest Handler!
http://DigestHandler.WebHop.org