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Interesting Web Browsers You Have Never Heard Of

smashingmagazine.com — A quick review of some new (and old) browsers as alternatives.

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  • demea, on 11/22/2007, -5/+251Safari is an "interesting browser I've never heard of"?
    • nottidredd, on 11/22/2007, -28/+1that's funny
    • ki85squared, on 11/22/2007, -1/+35Albeit confusing, the author is referring to Safari for Windows.
      • TheWorm, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3Still...People who are in the know of technology enough to use Firefox over IE on Windows probably do know about Safari.
        • yugiohdan6, on 11/22/2007, -1/+1and most of all, people who read digg know about Safari...
        • jgtg32a, on 11/22/2007, -2/+2Only because the Mac users keep bringing it up.
    • caLt, on 11/22/2007, -0/+13Yes it is... Netscape also is an "interesting browser I've never heard of"...
      • falafelkiosken, on 08/12/2008, -0/+1neither have I, it must be very new
    • unixgold, on 11/22/2007, -4/+2Firefox, safari...

      they don't even have Dillo(.org) on there.
      Buried.
      • bigsteve, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1The dillo project has been frozen since February.
    • silfiriel, on 11/22/2007, -2/+1yeah, and what's interesting about safari or netscape.....
    • dorkino, on 11/22/2007, -10/+1Hello, fanbois :)
    • ahughes, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2Agreed. I have used or at least knew about most of these browsers already.
    • GeForce8800GTX, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1GhostZilla :D
    • dsm88, on 11/22/2007, -0/+8Also, no mention of Konqueror (KDE), Epiphany (GNU), Seamonkey (Mozilla), and _NO LYNX_ ?

      Lynx is handy if you need to telnet or SSH without X forwarding.

      Seamonkey is essentialy built from the original Netscape: Netscape --> Mozilla --> Seamonkey

      Iceweasel is just Firefox re-branded by Debian and GNU because of the Firefox name being trademarked by Mozilla. Only the official binary is allowed to be called Firefox.

      Konqueror is for KDE. This is what Safari is based on.

      Epiphany is a separate project by GNU for the GNOME Desktop Environment.
      • Tanath, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1IMO, Elinks is better than Lynx.
      • gaucho4, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1Actually Seamonkey is on there. They listed it with Netscape.
  • duckyinc, on 11/22/2007, -1/+58Warning: 3D browsers reduce functionality for eye candy :)
    • nottidredd, on 11/22/2007, -31/+1that's funny
      • cyrix, on 11/22/2007, -1/+8And yet for posting this comment twice...you're still not. Hmm....
    • jgtg32a, on 11/22/2007, -2/+4Warning: If you don't breathe you die.
    • ggko, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2But I'm still going to download them because they look fun.
    • Takteek, on 11/23/2007, -0/+2I downloaded Browse3D a while back. It was HORRIBLE. Don't download it if you want to live.
  • ropers, on 11/22/2007, -1/+45Let's see. The authors have never heard of Arachne ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne_%28web_browse ... ) and think that I have never heard of Netscape. LOL.
    • geepee, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2The first thing I thought when I read the title was "I bet Arachne isn't on this list", and it wasn't.....It was a great browser for people livin' the high life with DOS back in the day.
  • Izbitzer, on 11/22/2007, -11/+8I just downloaded and installed Safari for Windows, and it crashed as soon as I tried to go to digg.com :)
    Gonna give it another chance though. But I'll probably stay with Firefox :)
  • maxyRO, on 11/22/2007, -2/+31they look nice.
    but still sticking to my trusty fox
    • gritta, on 11/22/2007, -5/+16Most of them have just stolen Gecko (Firefox's rendering engine) and packaged it with their own GUI.
      • canthraxp, on 11/22/2007, -2/+19How can you steal something that's free and open-source?
      • gritta, on 11/22/2007, -0/+12Figure of speech. The makers of these browsers don't actively help in the development and improvement of Gecko.
      • bejayel, on 11/22/2007, -5/+1I thought firefox dropped the use a Gecko a while back
      • clubby, on 11/22/2007, -0/+4Nope. Firefox 3 beta is using Gecko 1.9 so it's still going strong.
  • xsquirrel378x, on 11/22/2007, -12/+3isnt the iceweasel browser exclusive to debian and not linux in general?
    and what is swiftweasel? i thought it was swiftfox that was the arch-optimized firefox
    • xsquirrel378x, on 11/22/2007, -7/+3ok guess i was wrong
    • zongamin, on 11/22/2007, -3/+8could you have looked into it before posting?
      • xsquirrel378x, on 11/22/2007, -3/+11yeah sorry i hope i didnt ruin your day
    • Netrilix, on 11/22/2007, -3/+3At first glance I thought your post was German.
  • rabbro, on 11/22/2007, -2/+81Safari? Sounds interesting - think I'll go download right no... wait a minute, it's already in my dock. What convenience is this?
  • markwilcox, on 11/22/2007, -20/+3I've heard of flock and safari... buried as inaccurate.
    • pezholio, on 11/22/2007, -5/+12Your comment is buried as stupid and unnecessarily anal.
  • alanr19, on 11/22/2007, -4/+66NEtscape, safari, flock? is this guy retarded? Everyones heard of them.
    • CSAngel, on 11/22/2007, -6/+15I'd never heard of flock.
      • Assezdefromage, on 11/22/2007, -0/+19I guess alanr19 thinks you're retarded...
    • jaygray, on 11/22/2007, -0/+15Sadly I can think of a number of people who have only heard of Internet Explorer.
      • chubbstar, on 11/22/2007, -0/+16whats a browser? i just click internet.
  • leftykiller, on 11/22/2007, -9/+3Love Maxthon.
    • dip03, on 11/22/2007, -5/+2Maxthon is a great browser, simple and easy to use. I use on a daily basis IE at work, firefox on one computer and maxthon on the other one. I can say i always enjoy more my browsing experience using Maxthon. Go China Go
      • DominicNeagle, on 11/22/2007, -2/+4It's my understanding that Maxthon is based on Internet Explorer, and so it inherits a lot of the bugs/flaws of IE as well. It's been a while since I used it, and I liked some of the extra little features like being able to launch external apps from the toolbar, but I didn't stick with it simply because (in terms of security and standards) it was no better than IE.
        If that's OK with you then stick with it, but if you changed to Maxthon to do away with all those problems, then you wasted your time. :P Unless Maxthon has changed in the last couple of years.
        :)
        • leftykiller, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1Run a spyware/malaware scan after using FF and Maxthon for a week. See what you discover. Also, open 10 tabs in each browser and see which one uses significantly more RAM.

          FF has a good marketing campaign, and its add-ons are often very handy, but when it comes to overall performance and security I'd say Maxthon has a strong edge.
          • DominicNeagle, on 11/29/2007, -0/+0Well perhaps Maxthon has come along way in the couple of years it's been since I used it. However, if it's still based on Internet Explorer (and it's associated rendering engine) then security aside, the browser will still be sub-par.
            And yes, if I keep Firefox open for a week or so continuously, I've noticed it's RAM consumption goes up, but in this day and age, 20 to 30Mb of RAM use isn't going to bring your system to it's knees. Personally I've got 4G RAM installed, so I tend not to pay attention to these things anyway. But I'd say it would only affect users who have 256Mb RAM or less really.
  • benroy, on 11/22/2007, -3/+90I still prefer AOL.*
    * = EXTREME Sarcasm.
    • doshindude, on 11/22/2007, -11/+81995 called, they want you back.
      • Memnochxx, on 11/22/2007, -3/+9Much like your insult?
      • Netrilix, on 11/22/2007, -1/+24Hey, the jerk store called, and they're out of you!
      • badenglishihave, on 11/22/2007, -1/+5I don't care that all these naysayers are burying you; that was pretty funny.
  • tyrione, on 11/22/2007, -1/+24Where the hell is OmniWeb? It was one of the earliest Web Browsers, period! It's Cocoa and uses WebKit.

    http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/
    • gaucho4, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2I was thinking the same thing. Sunrise Browser is another interesting Mac browser that was omitted. It's aimed primarily at web developers.
      • craprock, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Sunrise is awesome. It's very light too.
  • TrickyTree, on 11/22/2007, -12/+8Buried for patronising title
  • kahrn, on 11/22/2007, -5/+4Wow.. netscape is still alive! I remember the days when people actually used it!
    • aeiou, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1nowadays its pretty much just mozilla, so its actually a pretty good browser, if a bit bloated.
  • racco, on 11/22/2007, -11/+4buried coz i've heard of about 75% of them
  • hackerssidekick, on 11/22/2007, -1/+36Not only have most people heard of those browsers, but the article itself is very poorly written
    • TheWorm, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2My favorite sentence.
      "Camino uses the Gecko rendering engine, what is not typical for Mac OS applications."

      On a side note, if you're on a Mac like I am, give yourself a week with Camino and it will become your favorite browser on the platform. Much faster and less bulky than Firefox.
  • Sabretou, on 11/22/2007, -5/+11You can list all the features of all the browsers in the world, but none will beat Firefox + Extensions.
  • tomharding, on 11/22/2007, -9/+4Flock is a fantastic browser, despite it being built on the firefox framework.
  • shanesemler, on 11/22/2007, -0/+7SpaceTime looks very cool. I've always wanted an interface like that. It's not mere eyecandy.
    • zebbers, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1I just tried it. Failed to install for me. Oh well.
    • Shizcake1337, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Got it installed and running, it was a little annoying and frustrating to use at first, but once you get the hang of it it's a pretty nice browser.
      • kevyn, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1I agree, once you figure out how to "fly through spacetime" its pretty neat... i like the image searches especially. its groovy
  • tuxidomasx, on 11/22/2007, -1/+2ghostzilla should be on there. its not really an independent web browser. more like a basic gecko rendering engine with some cool embedding features. but if you like to browse the web in a (sorta) stealthy way, its worth checking out.

    i.e. supposed to be working but you wanna log in to your favorite message board? wave the mouse around and a colorless faded web browser embeds itself in whatever active window is open. since there are no colors and no images loaded by default, a passerby would have to look hard to know that you're actually on the interwebs.
  • derjames, on 11/22/2007, -1/+8Where is Dillo?
  • fcukbush, on 11/22/2007, -3/+1hmm, interesting...
  • WoollyMittens, on 11/22/2007, -2/+19Maxthon is not a browser, it is a skin for internert explorer.
    • SpookyET, on 11/22/2007, -5/+1It's a skin for Trident.
    • darkNiGHTS, on 11/22/2007, -1/+2As is Green Browser and Slim Browser
    • EtherGnat, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3Maxthon isn't an IE "skin" anymore than Flock is a Firefox skin. It brings a number of useful features to the Trident engine.
  • biwillia, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1I was surprised that Kirix Strata wasn't in that list. It's an interesting gecko-based browser that attempts to blur the boundaries between the web and classical databases.
    http://www.kirix.com
  • xyphur, on 11/22/2007, -0/+9Where's NCSA Mosaic?

    http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Projects/mosaic.html
  • Pardus, on 11/22/2007, -0/+8Never heard of? I have actually used a number of those browsers. And several more that are not on the list.
  • tringtring, on 11/22/2007, -9/+1Are these browsers as useful as Firefox?
  • tringtring, on 11/22/2007, -12/+1Are these browsers as useful as Firefox?
  • derjames, on 11/22/2007, -7/+3Where is MSN explorer?...
  • manitoba98xp, on 11/22/2007, -6/+9I'd already heard of most of those (literally). Please, don't make assumptions about what I have and haven't heard of. Call it, perhaps "Interesting Low-Profile Browsers" or "Interesting Little-Known Browsers", but not "Interesting Web Browsers You Have Never Heard Of".
  • knuckles, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3Article must be for filler as the list is incredibly short on browsers I've never heard from. A cursory search points out a few more:

    http://www.icab.de/
    http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/

    • zongamin, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3except you clearly knew about these before....
    • knuckles, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2I did a search on Google for "OS X browsers" and the following site listed a comparison of several browsers with a few that I was not aware of. I would suggest that YOU may have been aware of these and are calling me out on the basis that I surely must be aware of everything you are.

      http://hsivonen.iki.fi/os-x-browsers/
    • gaucho4, on 11/23/2007, -0/+1I used to use iCab when it was one of the few Mac browsers. It was great in the OS 9 and really early OS X days. It rendered pages better than IE. Heck, even Steve Wozniak praised it in his book "iWoz" for stopping crashes in OS 7 caused by IE. Today it's hard to take seriously anymore. It's updated infrequently and was horribly slow last time I tried it again.
  • drjekelmrhyde, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Have anyone hear tried TVguide browser when it was out like 8 years ago
  • solidus636, on 11/22/2007, -0/+10or...you could just go here...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_bro ...
  • zongamin, on 11/22/2007, -3/+2Check out the OiNK tab in the slim browser part!
    • darkNiGHTS, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Wait, people used OiNK? Who would have though!!
    • gavin422, on 11/22/2007, -1/+1Yeah, dugg for OiNK. I don't know why darkNiGHTS is hating on you - no one said OiNK was obscure. It was just the best thing ever.
  • visarya, on 11/22/2007, -2/+2yeah right ...never heard of flock or safari .

    why is dillo not on list
  • DeFex, on 11/22/2007, -4/+4you know it is extremely rude to tell people what they have and have not heard of. how about stop doing it.
  • SpookyET, on 11/22/2007, -1/+3I really like the Maxthon 2 interface. I wish someone would make a skin for Firefox. The icons are awesome.
    Not to mention, settings, history search, and a few other gimmicks have really nice UI. Anti-Freeze works as well.
  • Klarth, on 11/22/2007, -3/+3Don't tell me what I haven't heard of.
  • Duncast, on 11/22/2007, -0/+6Where's Neoplanet? http://www.neoplanet.com/
    • Netrilix, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3Haha, right before I read your post, I was thinking "Where are uRocket and NeoPlanet?"
    • drjekelmrhyde, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2hey you're right I posted about the TV guide browser a couple posts up but that browser is based on NeoPlanet
  • lemonis, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3What about w3m and lynx (and the clones like links and elinks)?
    I find them pretty useful sometimes.
  • carstairs, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Gee, what's this confangled "Safari" thing? And while I'm at it, what's an interweb?
  • segiterrus, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1hmm, interesting...
  • BLAB13, on 11/22/2007, -0/+0I have heard of 1/2 of those, and I am using Flock right now
  • FredSpeaking, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1Apparently a faster, less memory intensive native win32 interface == "There is no reason to change from Firefox to K-Meleon."
    /useragent: k-meleon
  • chubbstar, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3whats a browser? i just click internet.
  • Darkhacker, on 11/22/2007, -0/+3I know it's only an alpha, but let's show Midori some love. It's a GTK+ 2, WebKit browser.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(browser)
    • Rammsteined, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2Thanks for pointing that out, I've been looking and waiting for something like this for so long.
  • soulonice, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2Lynx FTW!!
  • GeForce8800GTX, on 11/22/2007, -0/+1I was hoping to see Ghostzilla in there :
  • adrake86, on 11/22/2007, -0/+2I love maxthon.
  • egonSchiele, on 11/22/2007, -0/+0what the hell is "safari" is wonder...
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