Alternative Browsers: Phoenix
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2003
David McLaughlin <david@dogwoodproductions.com>
In-your-face popup ads got you down? Tired of endless "trojan horse programs" taking control of your surfing experience, and adding their own buttons, menus, or toolbars? Well, there are options! Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer comes as the default on most PCs, it is not the only choice available.
Phoenix: Alternative Browsing on the PC
The new Phoenix web browser is an alternative to Internet Explorer that offers a snappier, more elegant browsing experience. Phoenix is the Open-Source cousin to the venerable Netscape browser and is closely related to the Mozilla browser. Phoenix launches almost instantly, with a simple, uncluttered toolbar offering only the most essential browsing buttons: forward, back, refresh, stop, home, a URL bar, and a handy Google search box.
If you don't like the default order or buttons available, the toolbar is quickly configurable by just dragging additional items onto the bar, or by rearranging items left and right. The simplicity of the interface is a welcome relief after the tons of buttons that IE throws on the screen in its default configuration, plus the minimal toolbar leaves more screen real estate available for the prime purpose of web browsing: actually reading web pages.
In addition to speed and an elegant browsing feel, Phoenix offers two essential features for frequent surfers: pop-up blocking and tabs.
For anyone who has used Internet Explorer for more than two minutes, pop-up ads fill the screen and the taskbar with annoying, flashing intrusions. In Phoenix, a quick trip to the preferences, under "Advanced", allows you to "Reject popup windows." Gone for good! While this feature can be added to Internet Explorer through third-party software, it is built-in to Phoenix. After using Phoenix for a while, going back to a browser that does not support pop-up blocking is a miserable experience.
Tabs greatly improve a user's browsing experience by allowing multiple pages to be open simultaneously, each open in its own "tab", highlighted beneath the toolbar. This can be handy when comparing a variety of sites, as is the case when one is product shopping for products and wants to flip back and forth among several descriptive pages to compare features and options. In addition, tabs are useful when reading news articles with many links, as one can simply click all interesting links in an article and have the new article open in a new tab in the background, instead of interrupting the flow of reading the current article. Then, when you are finished with the current article, you can flip to the next tab and continue reading from there.
Besides helping smooth the browsing process, tabs in Phoenix can also be attached to bookmarks. Why have just one home page? In Phoenix, you can have all of your favorite morning reading open up in individual tabs, ready to be read. This option is easy to use in Phoenix with just one click: after all of your pages are open in the tabs you like, just choose "Use Current Tabs" in the Tools:Preferences menu. Tabs are another useful browser innovation that, once you're used to it, is hard to live without. It's available by default in Phoenix.
Since Phoenix is Open Source, you can stay on the "bleeding edge" of development by downloading the latest "nightly builds" with all the changes that the programmers are currently working on. These builds always have the latest features, and are fun to play around with, but you may also encounter the latest problems and bugs that haven't yet been fixed. For more conservative usages, the Phoenix team makes available milestone builds that have been more extensively tested. For download information, be sure to check out the packaged Windows installers located at the following location: <http://blackdiamond.mozdev.org/installer/#installer>. There's even a Windows installer available that automatically downloads and installs the latest nightly build for you.
For anyone tired of the interface or speed of Microsoft Internet Explorer, or who just wants to play around with a different browser, be sure to give Phoenix a try!
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