🚀 go-pugleaf

Competition is certainly hotting up on the Amiga web browser front
now, with both IBrowse and AWeb freely available! This can only be
good for the Amiga online community, and ultimately the people behind
the browsers themselves...

Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd run a little comparison
between the browsers as they stand. Please bear in mind that IBrowse
0.81 is an ALPHA version, while AWeb 1.0 is the first ever release.
But nevertheless, users are faced with a choice of which one (if any)
to use right now...

Pros and cons are not listed in any particular order. Please bear in
mind I've been using IBrowse longer, so I probably will say more
about it.

I am using an A1200 with 68030 @50Mhz, 68881 @50Mhz, MMU, 12Mb of RAM
and WB 3.0. Oh, and a 14k4 modem, though I'm also running AWS to view
my http://localhost URL's (you can view my Eternal site at
http://lars.keme.net/eternal/ - some of the comments may relate to
how this site was displayed in particular).


IBROWSE
-------
(release 5, version 0.81 alpha, requires MUI 3.2)
http://www.omnipresence.com/ibrowse/

PROS

  - Very nicely presented; animations, icons etc.  which can be
    changed by the user, or replaced with something more simple.

  - Easy to get up and running and configure on the whole.

  - Opens multiple network connections, to help make the most of your
    available bandwidth, especially with slower sites. Displays pages
    as they download.

  - Progressive display of inline GIF's - especially nice if they're
    interlaced (like on my site :-) )

  - Includes some features from Netscape which are genuine
    improvements to the standard.  Including:  width= and height=
    attributes, which improve the way inline images are handled;
    background colour/image; text colour.

  - Some support for tables. There is some way to go in this area,
    but having basic support means there are very few pages which are
    completely screwed up now. :-)

CONS

  - Still very unreliable (I know, I know, it's not finished yet...
    I'm just stating the facts *as it stands*) even 0.81 has managed
    to crash, but the main problem with this version is that it often
    fails to load most of the images (tested on various sites, local
    and remote).

  - Can be rather slow... although not terribly bad for today's
    average setup, it can be a tad slow on scrolling/redrawing; the
    progressive image decoder is a bit slow (though IBrowse is the
    only Amiga browser to have one at all...) Quite usable, but not
    so good on slow machines or with heavy multitasking.

  - Doesn't support HTML level 2 properly. I think by the final
    release it should be able to display an HTML 2 document
    correctly. The main flaw is that it interprets </p><p>
    differently than just <p>, and other closing tags like </ul>,
    </h1> etc. also produce extra white space.

  - Minor flaws with display of alt= text for images: always uses
    black (not good if the background is dark); doesn't display
    entities such as &aeacute (see my site: "Kelle" with accents on
    both e's is displayed as "K ll ". :-( ).

  - Latest version seems to have particular problems displaying
    HTML properly - on most of the pages of my Eternal site, there is
    a paragraph containing a heading image, followed by a normal
    text-only paragraph. IBrowse 0.81 runs the two together... yuck!
    Hopefully this is a temporary problem (I have reported it).

  - Requires MUI. For many this is no disadvantage - if you already
    have MUI and like using it, fine. If you don't have MUI, it's an
    extra thing you'll have to download and install before you can
    run IBrowse, and so far IBrowse has always required the latest
    version of MUI.


AWEB
----
(first public release, version 1.0)
Available from Aminet sites in the comm/tcp directory.
Look out for the replacement icon "aweblogo.iff" uploaded separately.

PROS

  - Simple to install and configure. Good documentation.

  - Opens multiple network connections, to help make the most of your
    available bandwidth, especially with slower sites. Displays pages
    as they download.

  - Renders HTML 2 pefectly (as far as I've been able to tell so
    far), making it ideal for testing your pages for suitability on a
    range of platforms. Proper handling of white space makes the
    layout of pages far more attractive. (This means a lot to me
    because I work in publishing...)

  - Fast - redrawing, scrolling etc. is noticably quicker than
    IBrowse. Downloading a page with several inline images is at
    least as fast as IBrowse.

  - Menus - while IBrowse has a good set of options, AWeb's are
    more comprehensive and intuitive, and there seem to be more
    options availble. To paraphrase the documentation, it *was* much
    easier to get AWeb to run on my preferred screen type (not to
    mention remember the window position!) than with IBrowse.

  - It's easier to get hold of as it's been released on Aminet. Plus
    you don't need MUI, so if you don't have that you'll find getting
    AWeb much less painfull than getting IBrowse.

CONS

  - Basic display compared with IBrowse - the lack of animated icons
    (however useless they may be) is missed. The lack of background
    colours/images and text colour is a shame, as it makes AWeb look
    a bit dull by today's standards, despite the excellent way HTML
    elements are laid out.

  - No support for tables as yet. OK, it *is* only an HTML 2 browser,
    and it does that well. But there are many pages out there with
    tables now, supporting them would give us useful access to more
    web sites. (Of course, the tables on my web site have been
    carefully designed to look at least OK on HTML 2 browsers :-) ).

  - Not completely reliable, though *much* better than IBrowse in
    this respect. (I know, IBrowse is only an alpha! I'm just saying
    how it is now you understand!) I managed to get a suspend/reboot
    requestor on exiting once, and one or two other problems have
    been reported.

  - Doesn't allow CycleToMenu to work (turns cycle gadgets into
    pop-up menus, a bit like on the Mac). The author doesn't like
    these, which is fair enough. But I do, so it would be nice to
    keep 'em for anyone who's installed CycleToMenu if possible. :-)


Phew, I guess that's enough! I'm sure I've missed something
important but what the hell...


CONCLUSION

There's never been a better time for Amiga web browsers. Both are
very promising, but are still some way behind the competition on the
PC/Mac/Unix platforms. Java on the Amiga seems to be a long way off.

IBrowse has more good features, but also (understandably) more bugs.
For a version which admits to being far from finished it's very good.
If I'm not mistaken, the people behind IBrowse used to work on
AMosaic.  Amosaic went through several versions before it was
truly reliable...  let's hope the finished IBrowse is stable too.

Although it has less advanced features, AWeb can quite justifiably
call itself a finished product because it's both functional and
reliable.  (Let's face it, very few products are released on any
platform that are *completely* bug free at first). If nothing else,
I'd say it's an ideal replacement for AMosaic, and I look forward to
seeing later releases.


WHICH IS BEST FOR ME?

If you like a good-looking program with the latest HTML features,
you'll like the current version of IBrowse. If reliability is more
important, you'll probably prefer to stick with AWeb for now.

Me? I still use my trusty ALynx 90% of the time. :-)


Good luck to developers of both web browsers! Somebody will get my
money eventually, unless I find it necessary to buy a PC (bleurgh).

Lars.

-- 

                     Lars Janssen --> lars@mistral.co.uk
                     --- Still dreaming about Kelle! ---
  <<Eternal web site>>                                 <<My home page>>
  http://lars.keme.net/eternal/          http://www.mistral.co.uk/lars/