My general comments on Phoenix 0.4

[aebrahim]

I just want to write a bit about my experience with Phoenix 0.4. I'm running it on Windows XP, and I've been using it as my primary browser instead of IE6 for about 2 weeks or so. So far I've been very impressed with it. I'm just going to summarise some of the pros and cons that I feel it has:

Pros:
- Application loads very quickly
- Page rendering is very fast
- Installation of plugins is very slick
- Tabbed browsing is VERY nice/useful
- Popup blocking is very convenient
- Built in Google toolbar is good (though not as nice as the one for IE from toolbar.google.com)
- Is browser only, so it doesn't contain the bloat that Mozilla has

Cons:
- Does not have all the hooks for mouse support/buttons that IE has
- Java applets can be slow (though this is much improved with the latest JVM)
- Non English pages often render incorrectly. Fonts are also not recognised properly.
- Printing from Phoenix sometimes works in a weird way, it doesn't print as one would expect
- Some preferences are still hidden from the user, this will apparently be fixed later (for example I had to edit the prefs.js file to get it to always open a new browser window when clicking on a URL)

Although I was skeptical at first about switching away from IE, I've found Phoenix to be a very viable alternative, and one that I'll probably continue using. I'm looking forward to the 0.5 release. Phoenix still crashes infrequently, though more frequently than IE, but this is to be expected of a 0.4 release. So far, I've been using Phoenix for my everyday browsing, but for things such as online purchases, I've been sticking to IE because often I want to be sure it works properly, and want to print stuff out when I'm done.

[Stefan]

A few comments

- Built in Google toolbar is good (though not as nice as the one for IE from toolbar.google.com)

There is a "full" googlebar you can install too.

- Does not have all the hooks for mouse support/buttons that IE has

Yepp, that is especially noticable if you have a scrollbutton on the mouse eg and want to scroll anything but the the main page, well you can't :/. Gecko is definitly lacking in this area.

- Non English pages often render incorrectly. Fonts are also not recognised properly.

That might be due to errors on the page. If the webdesigner has forgotten/ignored correct charcodes on the pages on non English pages, there is a high risk of them breaking.

- Printing from Phoenix sometimes works in a weird way, it doesn't print as one would expect

Yes, printing is really crappy in Gecko at the moment
Floated images dissapearing, pagebreaking in images, ignoring many usefull print CSS commands etc
Definitly an area that need improvment.

[tve]

A few comments

- Built in Google toolbar is good (though not as nice as the one for IE from toolbar.google.com)

There is a "full" googlebar you can install too.

I tried it on Moz some weeks ago.. first it's ugly as hell, and it didnt contain the PageRank feature, which was the most important feature for me (besides the search field, duh!). so I just stick with PHX built-in Googlebar