I can't believe it's not Firebird!

[AtmaWeapon]

http://www.avantbrowser.com

Happy day.

They finally added the one feature AB was lacking: AdBlock. Now, I can't tell the difference between Firebird and IE, except on the pages that Firebird chooses not to render. Let's take a look at the features this bad boy has:

*Popup blocker
*Google search bar (configurable to your choice of any search engine
*Ad blocker
*Tabbed browsing
*Mouse gestures
*Skins
*Easy URL alias dialog, so if I type "agn" it takes me here
*Easy interface to clear history, typed URLs, etc.
*Easy buttons to disable images, popups, ads, and flash
*At 2.7 MB its filesize is 1/3 of Mozilla Firebird's (although I admit it IS cheating, since it's a wrapper around IE. Startup times are just as fast as Firebird has been for me.)


The only thing it doesn't have is the cross-platform support of the other big browsers, but I'm so happy with it. I am SO glad they added AdBlock to it, now it is truly complete. It's too bad I don't get paid for writing this stuff, but I guess it balances out since I'm probably borderline advertising here anyway. I just wanted to share this with my fellow IE users. :)

[Melonhead]

My one complaint is that these features should come stock, but thats an IE problem, not Avant's. Still, this is a great product, and anyone that uses IE should probably get it.

[AtmaWeapon]

I agree, I shouldn't have to download an add-on for the features like tabbed browsing, but when you add too many features you get a bloated piece of software, or what some people like to call Opera. :p I wish there was a browser that started off as just a browser: no tabs, no mouse gestures, no popup blocking, just an HTML renderer. Then, I could choose and add features I wanted: JavaScript, Java, popup blocking, ad blocking, but only what I wanted. Technically, I think this has been MS's idea with IE; through BHOs you can make IE do whatever you please, but no one really developed these enhancements for IE like MS wanted them to. I want to write an ad blocker one day. Ad Shield was really nice in that it actually rendered the page as if the image wasn't there. Neither AB, Firebird, or Opera seem to do that. Opera even gives you an option to stick an ugly replacement where the ad was. Bah. I'm never happy with other people's software, it seems.

[Qun Mang]

K-Meleon is something like what you're looking for. It's engine is Mozilla, and every feature seems to be a plugin. Dunno what kind of support it has as far as that goes though. Any opinions on MyIE2 anyone? That's another IE browser wrapper that is pretty constantly updated. It has tabbed browsing and an adblocker like the others.

[Rijuhn]

I've used MyIE2 for about 3 months now and I love it! Simply put it's the best I've ever used and since it's stable and has tabbed windows it's all good, oh and very good ad and spam blocking.

[gdorf]

I agree, I shouldn't have to download an add-on for the features like tabbed browsing, but when you add too many features you get a bloated piece of software, or what some people like to call Opera. I wish there was a browser that started off as just a browser: no tabs, no mouse gestures, no popup blocking, just an HTML renderer. Then, I could choose and add features I wanted: JavaScript, Java, popup blocking, ad blocking, but only what I wanted. Technically, I think this has been MS's idea with IE; through BHOs you can make IE do whatever you please, but no one really developed these enhancements for IE like MS wanted them to. I want to write an ad blocker one day. Ad Shield was really nice in that it actually rendered the page as if the image wasn't there. Neither AB, Firebird, or Opera seem to do that. Opera even gives you an option to stick an ugly replacement where the ad was. Bah. I'm never happy with other people's software, it seems.

I don't want to sound like a firebird fanboy, as I am actually trying out avant right now, but firebird did do that. Often you wouldn't even realize an ad was there to begin with.

[AtmaWeapon]

Really? I typically saw a border or the page rendered around the blank space. Also, Firebird had a bad habit of displaying the image while it loaded, then blocking the image. I didn't like that at all.

[theplustwo]

Just what we need! More software to prop up the bloated, feature-sparse piece of crap that is IE. What's the total size of IE with Avant? 35MB?

[ShadowTiger]

Congrulations on finding a browser that you like! ^_^

Question though. On Mozilla, whenever I'm on a forum with like.. RPG hacks and other Javascripts, they never activate, and are merely "left out." Is this also the case on Avant?

[theplustwo]

Well, Avant is just a front end for IE, so anything that shows up correctly in IE should show up in Avant.

[Raichu86]

But you still have:

1. IE's numerous security holes.
2. IE's lack of support for web standards.

And most or all of the features you listed are available in Opera and Mozilla. Why use an inferior and insecure piece of software that only has today's standard browser feature set because of third party assistance when you could be using a superior piece of software with more features?

[vegeta1215]

What Raichu said.

Still IE = still insecure. That's enough reason for me to use anything else. Even Avant Browser's own website says it: "Avant Browser is as secure as Internet Explorer."

[AtmaWeapon]

2. IE's lack of support for web standards.


The browser you choose comes with its own personal customized support of web standards. One example: Use CSS to set a border: dotted property and view it with Mozilla. Behold as Mozilla choses to render a dashed border instead. This is one of the small quirks, but believe what I have said and proven many times before, NO BROWSER CONFORMS TO THE STANDARD PERFECTLY.

Nice try on the security vulnerabilities in IE, but I'm running a spyware blocker and I don't click on strange links in strange emails, so guess how many security breaches I've had through IE?

I'm going to do some memory profiling when I'm not on my lunch break, and we'll see about bloated browsers. Right now I'm browsing two different forum pages in AB, and I'm using 19KB of system memory according to Task Manager. Netscape is viewing a page with no images off my hard drive and using 21KB of memory. We should all agree that Netscape sucks, so I'll reinstall Opera and Firebird later and we'll see how they stack up.

[EWild]

http://www.avantbrowser.com

Happy day.

They finally added the one feature AB was lacking: AdBlock. Now, I can't tell the difference between Firebird and IE, except on the pages that Firebird chooses not to render. Let's take a look at the features this bad boy has:

*Popup blocker
*Google search bar (configurable to your choice of any search engine
*Ad blocker
*Tabbed browsing
*Mouse gestures
*Skins
*Easy URL alias dialog, so if I type "agn" it takes me here
*Easy interface to clear history, typed URLs, etc.
*Easy buttons to disable images, popups, ads, and flash
*At 2.7 MB its filesize is 1/3 of Mozilla Firebird's (although I admit it IS cheating, since it's a wrapper around IE. Startup times are just as fast as Firebird has been for me.)


The only thing it doesn't have is the cross-platform support of the other big browsers, but I'm so happy with it. I am SO glad they added AdBlock to it, now it is truly complete. It's too bad I don't get paid for writing this stuff, but I guess it balances out since I'm probably borderline advertising here anyway. I just wanted to share this with my fellow IE users. :)

Doesn't Firebird have everything mentioned except maybe, "*Easy buttons to disable images, popups, ads, and flash", and "Mouse Gestures"?

Though it would be nice to see Java with Firebird, but that's being worked on. ;)