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The best web browser ever

I witnessed all browsers wars in my life, just like many of you; and they are just like nations, they rise and fall, Netscape once dominated the market even Internet Explorer did at some point; some great browsers with great capabilities such as Opera never got the exposure that they really deserve and some good browsers like FireFox got great deal of promotion, a proper marketing team behind it I'd say.
I work as web developer and I'm so attached to Web Standards, Usability and Accessibility, I do believe in them and I do my best to stick to them whenever possible. I'm also a self-taught kind of people which means I read a lot and mostly online so I really value any piece of software or website that would make my reading experience just better.
Recently I decided to quit FireFox because it eats memory as no other application would, even GNU Image Manipulation Program or Video editors doesn't eat as much as Firefox does, so I decided to quit it.
I tried Opera, it was good in term of using a browser but for reason or another I wasn't satisfied and my experience with it wasn't convenient, lots of functionalities and maze of preferences.
I tried Epiphany but I needed bit more of control on my browser preferences so I gave Galeon a try and a new love story began.

Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on Gecko (the mozilla layout engine). It's fast, it has a light interface, and it is fully standards-compliant. You can download it but first take a look at some screenshots and read additional documentation (installation...). Galeon requires Gnome and Mozilla.

Although reading Galeon History would give the impression that Galeon is the bad guy but after using it you would understand how over simplifying things might not work well.
Using Galeon would tell you that if you want a web browser that as promised the web and only the web then its bookmarklets and smart bookmarks would be more than enough for the best browsing experience.
I've been using Galeon for two weeks in row and since then never had to run Firefox, Opera or any other browser, it's just the one I need and the one I'm willing to spend my browsing life with forever.
[tags] gnu image manipulation, gnu image manipulation program, image manipulation program, new love story, gnome web, light interface, video editors, smart bookmarks, documentation installation, internet explorer, layout engine, marketing team, bookmarklets, reading experience, functionalities, gecko, web standards, web developer, maze, usability[/tags]

Comments

  1. Any web browser works if all you do is surf the web. If you're a web developer, though, I wonder how you can live with Firebug. There is no browser that can touch Firefox for web developers. If your computer can't handle the ram usage I suggest you upgrade your ram.
    By the way, your blog theme isn't very accessible. The form fields have background-color set to white but do not set a font color so OS themes which use white for text color are invisible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beerfan
    I'm afraid you are not aware of firefox memory leak issue/s and of course I can live without firebug or web developer extension, we developed sites before firefox exists and after.
    Having such tool would definitely ease the process down but having Amaya would also help or any other tool.
    as for ram usage, I have a laptop with two gigabyte of ram so it's not about my hardware, my laptop is six years old one, it's about firefox don't take it personally or emotionally ;) I know many people are attached to firefox and I used to be one of them.
    my blog isn't accessible because I decided to stick to this theme and never had the chance even to check if it meets standards or if it's accessible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I honestly thought Galeon was a dead project. The Wikipedia page led me to believe this.
    I would like a lightweight browser without a dependency on firefox. Why have it installed? Can Gecko be packaged separately?
    I like Epiphany but it takes way too long to set it up to be similar in look and feel to Firefox. Galeon looks quite promising, thank you for bringing it back to the spotlight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jimcoocat,
    Galeon is amazing browser, it's just very light weight and it's not dependent on firefox; I just love it and I believe it's going to be a long-term relation ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, indeed firefox does suffer from a some memory leak issues. But the fact is, currently it is the most web-developer-friendly browser out there. Imagine how much time do plugins like the web developer toolbar, firebug, and color picker save you.
    Here is the mozilla zine article about some guy's quest to reduce memory usage in firefox: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak
    BTW, opera released a web developer toolbar, but i haven't tested it personally.
    P.S: I didn't know you run two blogs :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. What do you think of FF3 about to come?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm using IceWeasel --Firefox unbranded-- with Lenny + xfce.
    I'm trying to keep my PC as clean as possible, so I've to refuse to install Galeon when a simple 'apt-get...' is answered by this endless new packages list:
    alacarte app-install-data capplets-data cdrdao deskbar-applet dvd+rw-tools evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common galeon galeon-common genisoimage gnome-about gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-control-center gnome-doc-utils gnome-media gnome-menus gnome-mount gnome-netstatus-applet gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session gnome-system-monitor gnome-user-guide gnome-utils libapm1 libbeagle1 libcpufreq0 libecal1.2-7 libedata-book1.2-2 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserverui1.2-8 libeel2-2.20 libeel2-data libegroupwise1.2-13 libexempi3 libgnome-window-settings1 libgnomekbd-common libgnomekbd1 libgnomekbdui1 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libmetacity0 libmozjs0d libnautilus-burn4 libnet-dbus-perl liboobs-1-3 libpanel-applet2-0 librarian0 libslab0 libtie-ixhash-perl libtotem-plparser7 libtrackerclient0 libwnck-common libwnck22 libxklavier11 libxml-twig-perl libxml2-utils libxres1 libxul-common libxul0d menu-xdg metacity metacity-common nautilus nautilus-cd-burner nautilus-data portmap python-beagle python-dbus python-fpconst python-gmenu python-gnome2-desktop python-libxml2 python-soappy system-tools-backends ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu-extra wodim yelp

    ReplyDelete
  8. Za3tar
    I have more than two :-)
    Ali Servet Donmez
    FirFox is a good browser that needs a good amount of memory; not that I don't have enough I got 2GB installed on my laptop and 4GB on my desktop but lets use the resource wisely ;)
    Debianero
    There is no way on earth for galeon to require what you mentioned, what you mentioned comes under ubuntu-desktop meta package rather than anything else.
    There are some useful commands to tell the dependencies of X or Y packages.

    jad@Syntux:~$ aptitude show galeon
    Package: galeon
    State: installed
    Automatically installed: yes
    Version: 2.0.4-1ubuntu1
    Priority: optional
    Section: universe/gnome
    Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers
    Uncompressed Size: 1528k
    Depends: galeon-common, libbonobo2-0 (>= 2.15.0), libbonoboui2-0 (>= 2.15.1), libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1-21), libgconf2-4 (>= 2.13.5), libglade2-0
    (>= 1:2.6.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.14.0), libgnome-desktop-2 (>= 2.11.1), libgnome2-0 (>= 2.17.3), libgnomeui-0 (>= 2.17.1), libgnomevfs2-0 (>=
    1:2.17.90), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libnspr4-0d (>= 1.8.0.10), liborbit2 (>= 1:2.14.8), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.19.1), libpopt0 (>= 1.10), libstdc++6
    (>= 4.1.1-21), libx11-6, libxml2 (>= 2.6.27), libxul0d (>= 1.8.1.4), procps
    Recommends: gnome-control-center, gnome-icon-theme (>= 1.1.3-1), iso-codes, scrollkeeper, yelp
    Suggests: mozplugger
    Replaces: galeon-common
    Provides: gnome-www-browser, www-browser
    Description: GNOME web browser for advanced users
    A standards compliant web browser, which integrates well with the GNOME desktop environment. It does not include an email client, irc bot, website designer
    etc., therefore has a moderate resource usage. Internally the program uses Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine to display the web pages so is fully feature
    complete and standards compliant, as well as rendering pages quickly.
    Homepage:
    Homepage: http://galeon.sourceforge.net/

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi all, I'm not really an expert like most of you regarding the web browsers; but I have my own share of experience with some. In my experience, Safari(I'm talkin about the Windows version) seems to be the fastest and most efficient browser. Also a surprise browser which my friend recommended me, called Flock.

    ReplyDelete
  10. harmanjot singh bhatiaJuly 24, 2008 at 1:35 PM

    I am using opera international from 2 to 3 years and it is the safest i used in my life i also have used Internet explorer 8 avant flock etc but i found opera 9.51 the best
    there are just three things of because i din't swich to other brouser 1) it update every month with new international features 2)there is not a single problem i faced in 2 years with opera and 3) it has in bilt download manager and widgets
    which i did not get in most of brouser i think every one should use opera international for at least one month from
    www.opera.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Beerfan, why should you have to spend money on more memory just to use a web browser? Firetruck is a memory hog.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The truth is there is no single best browser, everyone has their own personal choice and can use any browser they'd like.
    Isn't it wonderful that we can choose what we want to surf the internet with? Freedom is a powerful thing.

    ReplyDelete

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