Portable Internet Browsers...

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cr8
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Portable Internet Browsers...

#1 Post by cr8 »

Hi there,

Just now officially joined PFC, glad to be here.

I have quite recently become very interested in Portable applications, and my main goal is to find an excellent portable web browser...
I ideally want one to be very fast,small and low-resource. Ater reading through forums and posts I am aware that the a great deal of you (particularly the admins etc) seem to now favour Firefox Portable, and I do run that on USB with fastlauncher, as well as using QtWeb,Fastbrowser and the recently updated k-meleon that i attemtped to make portable with cameyo. I do not know anything about what essentially a portable app actually is, nor do I know what exactly stealth is (I do intend to read more on the site)

my post is to inquire about running a portable webbrowser (or i suppose any application for that matter, while on the topic)
can you have a portable web browser running on the hard drive, because it is my understanding that it will perform better?
if so i would appreciate some recommendations regarding this inquiry...


please excuse my neophyte questions, I know that this is the place to ask though...

thanks

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SYSTEM
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#2 Post by SYSTEM »

Most portable applications don't care where they are. There is one notable exception: some programs turn off portable mode if they are in %PROGRAMFILES%. Thus, you can put a portable web browser to a local hard drive as long as you don't put it in %PROGRAMFILES%.

And welcome to TPFC! :)
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Midas
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#3 Post by Midas »

If you don't mind depending on the Trident engine, Greenbrowser (http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=24) would be a viable alternative for it's lightweightness and sheer configurability...

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cr8
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#4 Post by cr8 »

Hi guys,

Cheers for the quick replies! and Welcome :o
much appreciated tips!

ps: Midas; I have keenly followed your comments in regards to the myriad of portable web-browsers on here, and i am just now going to give Greenbrowser a go! If it is not too much to ask, what do you think of browsers like QupZilla or these Slimboat/Slimbrowsers out there, is trident not particularly good and or what is it you might prefer?

Thanks for your attention man,

Cheers

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Midas
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#5 Post by Midas »

cr8 wrote:Midas; I have keenly followed your comments in regards to the myriad of portable web-browsers on here, and i am just now going to give Greenbrowser a go! If it is not too much to ask, what do you think of browsers like QupZilla or these Slimboat/Slimbrowsers out there, is trident not particularly good and or what is it you might prefer?
  • To my knowledge, some people regard the Windows embedded Trident engine (the one Internet Explorer depends upon) as a security liability and a second tier renderer with poor standards compliance -- and although I don't count myself among them, it's been ages since I used it in any serious quality...

    I have tested (summarily) both Qupzilla & Slimboat, as you can confirm in their respective threads. I still hold high expectations regarding the former, but also feel that it's not yet ready for prime time -- mainly because it did falter on my aging platform under heavy loads (Windows XP Pro SP3 with 30+ tabs).

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cr8
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#6 Post by cr8 »

Okay excellent info :)

Once again thanks for the response. I have found QupZilla highly unreliable so far, often either crashing shortly into use, or just at the most innappropriate of times, with that said my portable mozilla is also crashing some-what frequently (for no particular reason I can deduce) I have actually found so far Pale Moon to be decent, and even 'Fastbrowser' to be a great no-nonsense browser that has yet to let me down. Greenbrowser was a good recommendation thanks man, it is so far very good, however it to has crashed now once and is a little laggy on sites here and there (And the max tabs I ever have open is like 8 with perhaps a few videos on them etc at peak)...

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Midas
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#7 Post by Midas »

Right now, I'm on vanilla Firefox -- it does crash at times (more than it used to), but recovery is fast if you tell it to save sessions (menu "Tools|Options|General", "Show my windows and tabs from last time" in "When Firefox starts:" dropdown).

Have you tried Maxthon or Iron? Some of the members here have recommended them in the past...

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cr8
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#8 Post by cr8 »

Okay intriguing. I am actually just now using pcxFirefox after reading that post where a user showed it benchmarked better than FF and PM. So far it is doing very well! I haven't used either Maxthon or Iron, both seem a little large in size, and perhaps packing a lot of unnecessary baggage (for my usage) not that i should be concerned but I dig the smaller applications.

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webfork
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#9 Post by webfork »

cr8 wrote:...just now using pcxFirefox after reading that post where a user showed it benchmarked better than FF and PM.
Everything I've looked into for using non-standard versions of Firefox for speed purposes has largely come up nil. The speed increase is at best unclear and if it's there it's very modest. I'd just use standard Firefox.

For lightweight browsers, I've had good luck with Qupzilla. It has an active developer community, it's growing and improving, has a GPL license, and gives you some controls/flexibility. I've tested QtWeb, k-meleon (both are old), Chromium (the multi-process system ends up taking up a ton of RAM for me), and Iron (Chromium is clearly better).

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joby_toss
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#10 Post by joby_toss »

Sorry if it's not really related, but didn't want to make a separate thread just for this.
My son is almost 9 and he uses the computer for about 6 years now. He has his own PC (for gaming, mostly, but also for internet browsing and some other stuff) for 2 years, but he doesn't install anything without me. Besides the games (minecraft, terraria, warcraft, starcraft, counter-strike etc.), the only thing I use for him is the PA.c platform with just a few apps, because it takes me very little time for maintenance (keeping the apps updated, mostly).
The browser I "made" him use for all this time was Opera (old branch). Lately, his appetite for internet browsing started to grow rapidly (youtube tutorials, game guides and walkthroughs etc.), so I decided to add a few more apps for this purpose (mainly to keep things a little bit more organized).
Firefox was the first one in line (with just an add blocker), but he didn't like it more than Opera, so I ended up using it when I need to troubleshoot something for him.
Maxthon was next, but he felt overwhelmed by the interface and options and now only his mother uses that when she needs something for her job.
A few days ago I decided to add Chrome (with only an add blocker) just for the sake of it (although I really hate the way Google collects info from everyone and mostly the way they use that info - lack of transparency). Guess what: my son now uses Chrome exclusively. Why do you like it so much, I asked him? Because it is simple, it feels snappier, more fluid when browsing and youtube works better, he said. :)
Most people I know (in both my private and my work circles) use Chrome and I start to understand why. In most of their cases (I asked many of them) Chrome got installed because they saw and clicked a banner in google.com page while using Internet Explorer, but after that, they simply fell in love with its simplicity and the fact that it just works. Granted, they don't need anything else except typing an address and hitting Return key, but still...

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tproli
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#11 Post by tproli »

Funnily I just switched to Chrome about two weeks ago from Maxthon. Why? Because Maxthon uses a Webkit/Blink engine that is not the latest one, and the Developer Tools (Inspector) in it lacks some features that I need in web development.

I have tried other browsers before Chrome but all had issues:
- Avant: the DevTools opens in new window. The advice in their forum is to manually position it under the main window - sweet :)
- Opera: low feature set
- Firefox: would be fine, but its inspector doesn't fit for me
- QtWeb: almost made it, but its DevTools has the same issue as Avant's
- Chromium: couldn't log into Google to sync settings and doesn't have flash built-in
- Iron: have read bad things about it lately here at TPFC

So that was the point when I turned to Chrome. And so far so good. I had to install some extensions:
- μBlock
- Speed Dial 2 (paid $3 for the sync feature)
- Shortcut Manager
- Google Analytics debugger
- Tab to Next
- etc.

I also searched for a good mouse gesture extension. Unfortunately many of them are reported to be spys, so I decided to use StrokesPlus in the browser too. It took me some days to learn that the middle mouse button is the gesture trigger instead of the right button (I used that in Opera/Maxthon). It was a good decision, now most gestures work not only in Chrome but in IE, Firefox, etc, plus StrokesPlus offers much more possibilities.

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joby_toss
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#12 Post by joby_toss »

Just wondering, did you try regular FF, or dev edition?

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tproli
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Re: Portable Internet Browsers...

#13 Post by tproli »

Only the regular edition. I just tried it and I don't see any advantages that would suit me better.

Thanks for the info, I was unaware of the dev edition (though I have read about it earlier).

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