kev392
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Post by kev392 on Dec 30, 2021 6:15:03 GMT
You thought this was over, but it's not What about all those browsers you've never heard of, or perhaps heard about a long time ago but they disappeared. There's also newer browsers that just didn't last very long. This is dedicated to the early pioneers of the internet and to developers that gave their blood, sweat and tears, but for whatever reason these browsers just didn't make it. 1. AmayaTamaya was the first naming choice, but it was changed to Amaya World because a French company had already trademarked Tamaya as their company name. Created in 1996 by a French national research institution, it was mainly an authoring tool with browsing features. By 1997 it was being used as a testbed for web standards by the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C. At this point it was just known as Amaya. The project eventually ceased in January 2012 after the developers retired. Amaya had its own unique engine and the project had to be abandoned since nobody was capable of maintaining it. 2. ArenaAlso known as Arena WWW Browser, this is one of the very first web browsers for Unix. It predates Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Work began on it in 1993. Development continued at CERN and W3C. It mainly served as a beta testbed for W3C from 1994-1996 and helped to advance the use of CSS and HTML. It was the first web browser to support background images. By 1997 Yggdrasil Computing took over its development after abandoning its Linux operating system. The project didn't last however and the final release was in November 1998. 3. AroraArora was created in 2008 by Benjamin Meyer using Apple's WebKit. In August 2009, Research In Motion (RIM), the inventors of the Blackberry bought the company Meyer worked for, Torch Mobile, and placed restrictions on what Meyer could do with WebKit. By June 2011, Meyer had enough of these restrictions and retired from the Arora project. The browser was never officially maintained after this. In 2014 some new patches were added on GitHub. Forks of Arora have been created. The most recent one is called Endorphin Browser, which started in 2020 but has yet to have a stable release.
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ligoxi
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Post by ligoxi on Dec 30, 2021 7:27:35 GMT
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Dec 31, 2021 1:46:08 GMT
I now have that in the list. Thanks for the heads-up. There are numerous browsers that I've never heard of. Probably because I wasn't looking for Linux browsers back in the 1990s or 2000s.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 1, 2022 2:49:10 GMT
Happy New Year everybody. I've assembled a fairly lengthy list of these browsers and I've found even more since my first post. I will try to keep them in alphabetical order. 4. ArachneArachne is a web browser and email client that had 2 beta releases for Linux in 2000 and 2008. A stable release came out in 2010. It was originally created in 1996 for operating systems using MSDOS 3.3 and higher but would not work with Windows 95. It worked quite well with DR-Open-DOS. Those releases were made between 1996 and 2008 but then the project was declared dead. Despite this, some minor updates were released between 2009-2013. Then out of the blue, a new release came out this month for DOS 387+ and 286 builds. There is no Javascript or HTTPS support. 5. AtlantisThis is a personal project lightweight web browser based on WebKit. I can't find much information except for developer comments on the www.akcaagac.com website. It was created in 2002 and the last update is from 2018. It appears to be in perpetual alpha and there's no link to download it. Cool name though. 6. Axene XMaydayAxene, a French company, offered a Linux-based office suite from 1996 to 2000 on their website. This includes software for XMayday HTML Browser, desktop publishing and a word processor. I can't find any additional information on this company and it's assumed none of these projects were maintained.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 2, 2022 5:36:13 GMT
7. Barque
There's not much information on this browser other than being mentioned on a couple of websites that it's in development. It uses the GtkHtml component and is Bonobo enabled. Bonobo is an easy management tool used to access git repositories which I have never used. Upon further research, Barque was declared dead by August 2006 on the barque.sourceforge.net website.
8. Beonex Communicator
Beonix Communicator is a discontinued security enhanced version of Netscape Communicator, which included an email and news server client. Development started in 2000 and one stable version was released in 2002. The last communication from the developer is from March 2004, indicating they were waiting on the Mozilla Foundation to make a decision on its future policy, but nothing specific. Apparently they didn't get the answer they were looking for.
9. BlueLightCat
A fork of Arora and the Zeromus Browser, BlueLightCat was released in December 2012 but never got past beta. Its engine used Qt and WebKit and was very lightweight. It had a built-in ad blocker that enabled the user to define custom rules for filtering the displayed web content. The last release was in June 2013 and can be found on SourceForge and GitHub.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 3, 2022 6:18:07 GMT
10. BrowseXA small and fast browser, it also had a mail and chat client. A 2001 interview states, "While Netscape 6 requires 32 megabytes of RAM and at least a 133 MHz processor, BrowseX can run on a machine with 12 megs". There were some releases between June 2000 and March 2002, but no further versions were developed. 11. CheetahA very lightweight browser, there was only one pre-alpha release in June 2001. Other than that, I can't find any additional information about this browser. I would vote for Atlantis, Cheetah and Otter as having the best names for a browser that haven't had a release in over a year. 12. ChimeraCreated for Unix-based systems running the X window system. There was an alpha release in May 2001 for Chimera 2. Chimera 1 was also mentioned, but there's no documentation to provide any details. There are two definitions for Chimera. 1: a monster from Greek mythology that breathes fire and has a lion's head, a goat's body and a snake's tail. 2: something that exists only in the imagination and is not possible in reality. Definition 2 would seem to apply here
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 4, 2022 5:03:14 GMT
13. Cineast
There were 2 versions made available in the late 90s. Cineast also had a presentation at the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference in April 1997. It supported HTML 3.2 that came out in early 1997 and was written in OTcl, as opposed to C or Java. There was no java support but there were plans to implement it. Frames were not yet handled. Primarily, Cineast was intended as a fast and compact web browser that could be easily modified and extended.
14. Cliqz
Developed as a fork of Firefox starting in 2008, it took several years for its first stable release which happened in 2015. Cliqz started out as privacy-oriented, but that aspect took a backseat when Mozilla began investing in the company in 2016. In October 2017, Firefox included Cliqz software in slightly less than 1% of German downloads. That version collected and sent data to the Cliqz corporation including the text typed in the address bar, queries to other search engines and information about visited webpages. The user had the ability to opt-out of this data collecting. On May 1st 2020, the browser project was shut down by Cliqz.
15. Closure
Not many details are available for this browser. Closure was written completely in Common Lisp. The cloud-based grammar checking program Grammarly is also written in Common Lisp. The underlying core was generally considered stable, but the GUI was considered lacking. The browser never got out of the alpha stage.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 7, 2022 5:30:13 GMT
Back for more. Isn't that a song by Ratt?
16. Conkeror
Conkeror was originally a Firefox extension. It was then developed into a Firefox-based web browser with an Emacs-like skin and made available in January 2008. GNU Emacs is a text editor created by Richard Stallman and made available in 1985. Stallman was also the principle developer for the original Emacs at MIT that was basically finished by the start of 1977, but I digress. The SaltyCrane blog says, "Enter Conkeror, the keyboard-driven web browser that conkers the web without a mouse". The last stable release came out in November 2017. The Conkeror extension can also be used with Pale Moon as of September 2018. The website conkeror.org is still active.
17. debris
debris is a text mode HTML browser. It was a spin-off of DBOX, described as The complete BBS Package first made available in 1996. debris provided a secure environment suitable for public terminals and was very small, about 25% the size of Lynx. Frames and javascript were never implemented. The last update for debris appears to be from 2001, but DBOX had a release in April 2003.
18. Dillo
Dillo is a minimalist web browser that had several releases between December 1999 and June 2015. It was created from the Armadillo and Gzilla projects. The first FLTK release of Dillo came out in October 2008. The Fast Light ToolKit provided modern GUI functionality without the bloat. Dillo never incorporated java support. Some minor updates were made available between 2015 and early 2021. Plans for a new release were announced in 2015, but this part of the project remains on hold.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 8, 2022 5:40:22 GMT
19. Dwb
Dwb is a lightweight web browser based on WebKit. An alpha version was released in 2010 with periodic fixes. It's highly customizable and can be easily configured through a web interface. It intends to be mostly keyboard driven, inspired by Firefox's vimperator plugin. An adblocker can also be installed. The Arch wiki considers it insecure and outdated since 2016.
20. ELinks
Work began on ELinks in late 2001 as a fork of the Links web browser. It's a full-featured text browser that can render both frames and tables. It's also highly customizable. The latest stable release was in August 2009. There's also a preview release from October 2012, but it was never completed. OpenBSD removed ELinks from its port tree in March 2017 because of security issues.
21. Eolie
Eolie is a simple web browser created for GNOME in 2017. It has its own adblocker and allows syncing with Firefox. There's also a download videos from current page feature. It does not have any tab capabilities. The last release appears to be from 1 year ago. The developer has announced, "I'm not working on Eolie anymore. I may release new versions to fix important bugs but no more for now. A new maintainer is welcome!"
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 9, 2022 0:21:23 GMT
22. Encompass
Founded in 1999, the Elysium Project offered a suite of applications, libraries, and utilities to enhance the desktop experience of Linux. The Encompass web browser was created in 2001 by Elysium for the GNOME desktop project based on the GtkHTML v2 rendering engine. Their tagline was, "Capture the web in your desktop". There were plans to rewrite its engine and serve as a testbed for GNOME, but the Encompass browser was abandoned in 2003. The Elysium Project appears to have ended in 2005.
23. Express
Express was written for the GNOME desktop project in GTK+. It aimed to be a full-featured web browser but remain as lightweight as possible. The only releases available were from February 2000 to June 2000. Later that year, Express was officially orphaned and added to the Unmaintained Software Project as of December 15th 2000.
24. Flock Announced in August 2005, their initial tagline was, "Flock has landed. Today we're introducing the world's most innovative social browsing experience. We call it the two-way web". Originally based on Firefox, in October 2005 it was made available as a developer's preview. By October 2006 there was a stable release. Community members of the Flock website were known as Flockstars. In August 2010 the Firefox-based version dropped support for Linux. A Chromium-based version became available for Linux later that month. The last Flock release was in January 2011. That same month the Flock team joined Zynga, a social game developer. Zynga launched its best-known game, FarmVille in June 2009. With this move, Flock decided to abandon the project by April. Support officially ended on April 26th 2011.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 10, 2022 6:08:04 GMT
25. Galeon
Galeon was a GNOME web browser based on Gecko, the Firefox rendering engine. The first release came out in June 2000. It was fast and had a light interface. Galeon had many features before they became standard, such as mouse gestures, customizable toolbars and page zooming. It was one of the most popular Linux web browsers for most of the 2000s. The lead developer decided to leave the project in November 2002 and create a fork of Galeon called Epiphany. Eventually it was announced the project would end by saying, "the current approach is unsustainable". So in September 2008, one of the most well-known Linux browsers released its last version, but it still remained popular for some time before security became an issue.
26. Geedot
The Geedot project began in 2000 and its first pre-alpha version was released on SourceForge in October 2001. It was described as a faster, lighter Emacs for the X Window System. It used plugins for all its rendering. The project had no further releases.
27. Grail
One of the earliest web browsers for Linux, the project started in 1995 and had its first release in August that year. It was an extensible multi-platform web browser written in the Python programming language. The creator, Guido van Rossum was also the creator of Python, which was named after the British comedy team Monty Python. Grail was named after their movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The last release came out in April 1999, with one patch offered in January 2002.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 12, 2022 15:23:00 GMT
28. Gzilla
Gzilla was written in the Gtk+ framework and was the forerunner to the Armadillo project, later named Dillo. Gzilla had four releases between January 1998 and July 1999, with the latter two considered stable. The project was soon abandoned for work on Dillo.
29. Hbro
A minimal web browser written and configured in Haskell. It's mainly keyboard driven and based on WebKit. It was released as pre-alpha in November 2016 but all reported builds failed. There was one revision in July 2018 but no release candidates were ever produced. The project appears to have been abandoned.
30. HotJava Browser
Created by Sun Microsystems, HotJava was first released in March 1997. It was a modular, extensible web browser built completely in Java. It was the first browser to support Java applets. HotJava had somewhat limited functionality compared to other browsers of its time. Support was only offered for Solaris SPARC machines and Windows, but Sun did offer unsupported packages for Linux and other platforms. The Linux version could not use the SSL cryptographic protocol that was considered secure at the time. The last version of HotJava was made available in late 2004.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 14, 2022 3:45:29 GMT
31. Html Viewer 3
Also known as hv3 this was a minimalist web browser that used Tkhtml3 as a rendering engine and SEE, the Simple ECMAScript Engine to interpret scripts. The application itself was written in Tcl. The idea was to have just enough functionality to test Tkhtml, but it wasn't meant to be usable as a real browser. It was useful as an offline html viewer. The last version was released in March 2006.
32. jumanji
jumanji was announced in July 2010 on the Arch wiki forums as a development version. The project was very similar to the Dwb web browser. It's described as a highly customizable and functional web browser based on the Libwebkit engine and the GTK+ toolkit. The idea was to provide a minimalistic and space saving interface that mainly focuses on keyboard interaction. Version 2 was released in March 2011 with various fixes added over time. The last minor fix was applied 5 years ago on GitHub, so the project appears to be abandoned.
33. Kazehakase
First made available in January 2003, Kazehakase was a browser with the Gecko engine and support for Japanese bookmarks. Its aim was to provide a user-friendly interface and be fully customizable. It supported tabbed browsing, a remote bookmark feature through RSS, a variable UI to adapt to the user's skill level and customizable mouse gestures and key accelerators. It did not feature an adblocker. The last release was in September 2009.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 14, 2022 23:56:10 GMT
34. Kylie
Kylie was a short-lived lightweight web browser. The project started in February 2002. Described as, "small, fast and cute: it's Kylie!". It did text, images and tables. It didn't do CSS, frames or scripting. There were several minor revisions but there have been no additional updates since March 2002.
35. LeechCraft
LeachCraft became available in 2010. It was a cross-platform modular live environment and a full-featured WebKit-based web browser. LeechCraft also featured chat via IM and the ability to read RSS/Atom feeds. The user could download files via BitTorrent and other protocols, play audio files, automatically download, play or stream podcasts. The last release was in 2014.
36. libwww
libwww, the Library World Wide Web was one of the earliest web browser which was released in November 1992. It was Tim Berners-Lee's 3rd web browser after WorldWideWeb and the Line Mode Browser. The purpose of libwww was to serve as a testbed for protocol experiments so that software developers did not have to "reinvent the wheel". The project started at CERN but was moved to WC3 in March 1995. The final stable release was in December 2006.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Jan 16, 2022 3:36:51 GMT
37. Light
Light was a Gecko-based browser by a Japanese developer. The only release I can find is from June 2002. It featured a very simple non-bloated GTK+ interface, with Netscape 4 keyboard shortcuts and context menus. It lacked features such as bookmarks, tabs and did not have crash recovery.
38. Light
Yes, we have another browser called Light. It was originally called Firefox Light and is also Gecko-based. First released in October 2013, this browser is more advanced than the previous entry and actually received some attention in 2014 with a few online articles. It differs from Firefox by being built for performance, which it achieved by removing several of Firefox's built in components to speed things up. The last release was in October 2016, so the developer either lost interest or decided it was too much trouble.
39. Line Mode Browser
Also known as LMB, WWWLib or just www, this is the 2nd web browser ever created. Work began at CERN in 1990 with a team headed by the creator of the 1st web browser, Tim Berners-Lee, and included Nicola Pellow serving as the main developer. The first beta release came in April 1991 and Berners-Lee announced LMB's availability in August 1991 in the alt.hypertext newsgroup of Usenet. The first stable release came in January 1992 and eventually the project was moved to W3C in March 1995.
The name "Line Mode Browser" refers to the fact that to ensure compatibility with the earliest computer terminals, the program only displayed text with no images. Navigation was not controlled by a mouse or arrow keys, but by text commands typed into the program. LMB had official ports to Apollo/Domain, Classic Mac OS, DECStation/ultrix, FreeBSD, IBM RS6000, Linux, macOS, MS-DOS, MVS, Solaris, Unix, VAX, VM/CMS and Windows. With Mosaic becoming the browser of choice by most people in 1994, and the more flexible Lynx taking over the text-based browser niche, LMB soon became irrelevant. Work did continue on the project for many more years, mainly as a test application for the libwww library. The final release was in December 2006.
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