Chromium-Based Spinoffs Worth Trying 185
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp takes an in-depth look at six Chromium-based spinoffs that bring privacy, security, social networking, and other interesting twists to Google's Chrome browser. 'When is it worth ditching Chrome for a Chromium-based remix? Some of the spinoffs are little better than novelties. Some have good ideas implemented in an iffy way. But a few point toward some genuinely new directions for both Chrome and other browsers.'"
6 spinoffs (Score:5, Informative)
6 more goofy names that mean nothing (internet explorer? ok, Netscape Navigator? ok, SRWare Iron, Comodo Dragon, Iceweasel? wtf)
ps here is the print version, so you dont have to wade through 6 ad infested pages
http://www.infoworld.com/print/184923 [infoworld.com]
Customization (Score:5, Informative)
Until Firefox somehow becomes totally unusable or Chrome actually lets me change basic settings, I'm sticking with Firefox.
Re:6 spinoffs (Score:5, Informative)
It was a pretty immature and petty thing to do, but well within their rights.
They had no choice. Debian, being a free distro, couldn't use Firefox's non-free logo. So they didn't, and Mozilla decided to give them the finger:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project#Origins_of_the_issue_and_of_the_Iceweasel_name :
In February 2006, Mike Connor, representing the Mozilla Corporation, wrote to the Debian bug tracker and informed the project that Mozilla did not consider the way in which Debian was using the Firefox name to be acceptable.
Re:F-I-R-S-T (Score:5, Informative)
Define "extra crap".
Chrome, includes Flash and PDF plugins, no extra functionality, 82M installed.
Mozilla, no Flash, no PDF, no extra functionality, 38M.
Opera, no Flash, no PDF, built-in news reader/mail, URL-based adblocker and a bunch of other stuff commonly installed as extensions on FF/Chrome - fits it all in 35M
Can you spell "b-l-o-a-t"?
Re:6 spinoffs (Score:3, Informative)
I've been wondering when /. would do a story on this. I've been using Iron as my secondary browser for when something doesn't work in Firefox. If you want more stable version of Chromium that protects your privacy better than Chrome Iron is a pretty good option.
Re:And none with a decent interface. (Score:4, Informative)
The interface is what ruins Chrome, how come no one bothers to fix it? A good interface is consistent, internally and externally: the app must belong with the operating system around it. Chrome is alien in any system, it does not have the same window borders, menu bar, or anything else as every other app. That's tolerable from a tiny indie team, like jDownloader, but from a megacorporation like Google this is simply cringeworthy.
Chrome ignoring the system's window decorations to build its own isn't just annoying, it's an accessibility and usability nightmare. If a user is disabled and needs, for example, larger close/minimise/etc buttons, Chrome's custom decorations still draw at their own size regardless of system setting. It also puts the window control buttons in the same place regardless of how your system is set up, so a user with motor control problems is going to be more likely to hit the wrong button by mistake due to the close placement and small size.. Since it ignores colour scheme, too, that means users that need high-contrast themes are screwed there, too.
These problems are especially obvious in KDE, because Kwin allows you to change button placement and decoration size. Even for a user without disabilities, the fact that Chrome and Chromium completely override your settings and does what it wants is a usability killer. I have custom window decoration placement, size, and a dark theme, so Chromium is absolutely horrible to look at by default.
Luckily, Chromium has two useful appearance options under the "Personal Stuff" section that mitigates this. You can choose "Use GTK+ theme" to get your system colours, and "Use system title bar and borders" to put your window manager back in control. No idea if it works in Windows, but it was a huge improvement for me in Debian.
Re:F-I-R-S-T (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, RockMelt is the most significant entrant on the list. #1 is Chromium, #2 is SRWare Iron (the legitimacy of which remains under debate), #6 is just Chrome itself (brilliant list-padding idea guys; include the official branch not once but twice to pad your pitifully short list), #3 is Comodo Dragon (dumb new UI + hardcoded DNS), and #5 is a Chinese thing that throws in the same old IE Mode and mouse gestures that we've seen a billion times everywhere else. There aren't six Chrome "remixes" out there, there are two.
From now on I think all stories that start with a quantity of items being reviewed, or the fragment "top n", are going to be purged vehemently from my system with a bit of JS. Sad, sad, sad.
Re:6 spinoffs (Score:4, Informative)
No definitely not. Debian do nothing wrong in respect of the GPL or other licenses. Unlike the FSF they don't write licenses and so it is in no respect hypocritical for them to class some licenses as incompatible with the project.
The license grant for the Firefox name and branding is incompatible with the methods of the Debian project. For Debian stable the application code is frozen before a release is declared stable, the only changes allowed are direct bug fixes and security fixes. The license for the Firefox branding requires that only unmodified code is used to build the executables so that the firefox developers are not chasing bugs in other people's code that they don't have.
Both of these stances are good and reasonable, but Debian will not accept 'the current build' of firefox into stable just to fix a minor bug and Mozilla will not allow a version with an unverified 'minor bug bug fix' to be branded 'Firefox'.
Incompatible
As for the name; neither Debian nor Mozilla care. The just want something that's not 'fire fox'; 'ice cat', 'ice dog', 'ice bear' ... all have Google hits.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh boy! (Score:4, Informative)
IE9. Microsoft has matured with its browser from the medieval times of IE5.
Speaking as an end-user; no, it hasn't.
Speaking as a web developer; no, it hasn't.
Use Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome. Not IE in any version.
Not yet anyway, IE9 is far better than previous IE's, so I've got some hope for IE10.