Mnemonic Browsing Alternatives
General Info

Introduction
Screenshots
Mailing Lists and IRC
Alternative Browsers
Special Thanks

FAQ
Understanding Mnemonic
TODO list and ideas
Bug Reports


User Info

Download binaries
Platforms
Compiling Mnemonic
Other useful software


Developer Info

Core
Message modules
Library modules
Object modules
Coding Guidelines
Browse Source
Using CVS


View with any browser

Website questions to:
webmaster@mnemonic.org

Mnemonic questions to:
disc@mnemonic.org

 

Alternative Browsers

You might also be interested in another list of alternative browsers.
Usable Webbrowers
Name Toolkit(s) Description Copyright
lynx C
curses
Wide spread terminal(text)-mode browser. Can navigate through frames and client-side image-maps. Shows images externally (if possible). Mouse events and colors are used, if the terminal supports them. Biggest advantages: Speed: Startup and Navigation Used by some professional surfers to get straight to the information. GPL
mMosaic C
lesstiff
Improved XMosaic. (Hint mMosaic*frameHack: True in .Xdefaults makes it possible to browse through frames, like with the latest XMosaic betas.) GPL
Emacs/W3 Emacs-Lisp Runs in the famous editor. Uses other Emacs packages. Full fledged. (untested by Ed.) GPL
MMM Objective-CAML
Tk
Supports most of HTML 3.2 and has interesting possibilites for moving code. This browser has the most modular concept focussing on displaying HTML (and getting it via HTTP) relying other tasks to other software (bookmarks, mail, news, printing, security of applets(!)). Too slow mainly because of the Tk toolkit and its interpreted language. (c) INRIA
(~OpenSource)
Grail Python
Tk
Slow because of the Tk toolkit and its interpreted language. (c) CNRI
(~OpenSource)
Plume Tcl
Tk
Formerly known as SurfIt. Can run save tcl/tk applets. Small (about 350Kb tcl/tk script.) (c) ANU
(free 4 non-commercial)
Chimera C
Athena
Simple and lightweight browser. GPL/LGPL/
OpenSource
Amaya C
motif(?)
Testbed of the W3C. (c) W3C
(~OpenSource)
Omniweb Objective-C
OpenStep
Webbrowser for NeXTStep and successors. There used to be another browser called NetSurfer. Commercial
Hotjava Java Sun`s attempt to participate in the browser war and show the advantages of Java. Still supported, but not the wanted success. (New versions untested by Ed.) (c) Sun
(free 4 non-commercial)

Webbrowsers in Development (untested by Ed.)
Name Toolkit(s) Description Copyright
JoZilla Java The Project's goal is to develop an independant, open source code, 100% Pure Java Internet resource browser. Open Source
Mnemonic-Browser C++
GTK+
Project to develop components to build a modular browser. GPL
Express C
GTK+
Part of the GNOME project. Uses the XmHTML widget. GPL
kfm (KDE Filemanager) C++
Qt/KDE
File manager with integrated web browser. Part of the KDE Desktop. ~GPL
Introduction to Project Magic C(?) Port of the lightweight browser Opera to other OSs. At least the linux port has slowed down due to problems. Commercial
Mozilla C++
motif/
various toolkits
Netscape has open up its own parts of the browser to develop sucessors with help of the public. NPL
(Open Source)

Webbrowsers of historical interest
Name Toolkit(s) Description Copyright
Mosaic C
motif
Precessor of Netscape. Still has some advantages when printing pages over netscape (links as footnotes, page numbers.) Main disadvantage: Shows information too late. (c) UI
arena C Testbedbrowser of the W3org. Never stable enough for real use. Yggdrasil took over development, but seems to have stopped it in March 1998 when Mozilla went Open Source. W3C copyright
GPL

Beside from Netscape's and Microsoft's browsers there are lot more, which are worth a look. The presented collection is not meant to be comprehensive. It focus mainly lays on alternative browsers which are especially interesting because of features or being really usable on Unix-like free operating systems. Another aspect is the maintainance status. Other pages about web browsers:

Why is supporting alternative browsers so important?

Widespread internet browsers today are Nescape's Communicator(NS) and Microsoft's Internet Explorer(IE). Lynx is used by a small but significant number of people because of its unique advantages as a text mode browser. Machines considered an unusual platform or low end are mostly forced to choose a different browser. You have to support alternative browsers for the case that you need them, because they might be your only choice then.

For the World Wide Web the dominance of IE and NS not only means low market chances of competitiors selling browsers, but has an impact on the way information is created and organised on the Internet. For a long time it was not an aim of these companies to create a better web, but to gain a broader market share with their browsers. Which means they want to "bind" customers. And they tried to do that with new unique features. (The famous "browser war" between NS and IE.)

This is how we got blinking text and frames instead of more navigation support or better languages for mobile code (applets). The current situation prevents everyone from introducing better features and a cleaner design, because the pages are already out there. (If you want to build a new browser you have to display them all.) So the usability of commonly used browsers could be better. The following links provide some hints on what is wrong:

Write correct HTML

Speaking a common language which has elements to structure the semantic contents of hypertext documents has many advantages. Client programs can be written more easily. This includes robots and spiders which help you to deal with the contents of the pages. Browsers work with the contents like reading the captions and headers to people which are visually disabled. Take up the Web oberability pledge and participate in the campain to write pages for any browser. See the World Wide Web Consortium, an international industry consortium for providing information, reference implementations and promote standards for the WWW. They come up with most of the sensible "standards" for the WWW. NS and IE mostly do not comply.