firebird is pretty cool

**storm2k** · May 10th, 2003, 12:56 AM

tonight on a whim i downloaded mozilla firebird (the former phoenix project) and i have to say i like what i see so far. i'm using the latest nightly (which will eventually be 0.6) and i have to say i like what i see. i don't think it'll totally replace ie6 just yet, but it's a great browser. much faster than mozilla, that's for sure.

**skuz** · May 10th, 2003, 02:03 AM

Yes Phoenix is quite good. I don't think it's faster than Mozilla except for startup.

I would use Phoenix, but I need an email software too, so I use Mozilla. When they split up, then I'll be back to Phoenix.

**Whir** · May 10th, 2003, 02:24 AM

Firebird's engine will be replacing Mozilla's eventually. I've got the 5/4 nightly and so far it's only crashed on me once I think. The previous nightly crashed every third page or so. I've stopped using Opera again. I like Firebird. Mmmmm, Firebird.

**Bob The Great** · May 10th, 2003, 02:32 AM

I'll give it a try. I'm really loving Opera but it opened my eyes to the fact that there are other browsers other then MS IE

**SpookyEddy** · May 10th, 2003, 06:28 AM

I am also running firebird 0.6, seems to work well.

The good....

Fast startup (especially compared to mozilla)
Decent page load times
Stable (only had a couple of crashes since I first got 0.5)
Good html rendering (I haven't noticed any major breakage)
Easy to read fonts
Tabs
Mouse Gestures

The bad...

Rather sketchy plugin support
Insistance on rendering some graphics with external apps

Regards

eddy

**storm2k** · May 10th, 2003, 04:44 PM

well the plugin support is in beta form. it's in the release notes. yes it's annoying, but i am sure it will be fixed up as time goes on. i tried copying the plugin dll's outright from mozilla's plugins folder to phoenix's, but it doesn't seem to have fixed it. oh well, i'm sure it will get ironed out eventually...

**storm2k** · May 10th, 2003, 04:45 PM

i also have to say how much i like having the search box right in the toolbar, especially since i can set it right to google.

**nukes** · May 11th, 2003, 09:37 AM

Yeah, its doing well. Come a long way in the last few weeks. I like it a lot.

**Wizzard~Of~Ozz** · May 11th, 2003, 09:49 AM

Storm, I have autosearch set up, I just type it in the adressbar and it googles it if it's not a valid name.

I've created and added these to user.js in the profile directory (nt based C:\documents and settigns\(name)\application data\phoenix\profiles\default\(letters and numbers\)

Code:

// Change to normal Google search:
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=");
// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
// Path to Cache folder:
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.parent_directory","C:\\Temp\\Phoenix");
// Specify the amount of memory cache in kilobytes:
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 4096);

Seems to work fairly quickly with those, and the autosearch is nice.

**griobhta** · May 11th, 2003, 10:28 AM

Yea i have to say i like 'Mozilla Firebird' been using it for a while after eddys reccommendation. Will be interesting to see how fast the development goes after the realeas of mozilla 1.4 where it will become the official Mozilla Browser

g

**strangerstill** · May 11th, 2003, 01:57 PM

FYI, you don't need to edit user.js to set advanced preferences - just type about:config in the address bar, hit Enter, and it displays all the settable preferences, with the ones you have changed from default in bold; double-click on a setting to change it.