[buug] mozilla

[Claude Rubinson]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 03:47:14PM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> 
> I've become somewhat fed up with the way I use mozilla, and I'd like
> to customize its UI (beyond what the Edit|Preferences dialog allows).
> I have read about things like RDF and XUL and I think what I want to
> do is possible, but ... where are the fine documents?  Not on
> mozilla.org as far as I can see.

..snip..

> More generally, can I add my own menus and keybindings as in Emacs?

A couple of thoughts, none of which answer your questions: How is that
you wish your web browser to behave?  What, specifically, has got your
dander up?

Have you examined any of the other Gecko-based browsers?  I've been
fairly happy with Galeon.  It's basically Mozilla but with more
attention given to the user-interface (which uses GTK instead of XUL).
Regarding your question about customizing the search bar, Galeon
includes something that they call "Smart Bookmarks."  Basically, a
smart bookmark is a bookmark that accepts an argument permitting e.g.,
a google search.  (Another Gecko-based browser is Phoenix which is
still pretty young and, I believe, not quite ready for primetime.  But
it might be worth checking out.)

I'd also recommend taking a look at w3m which is what I use as my
default browser.  It's basically just a pager, so it doesn't support
images but it does support tables and frames.  (Actually, that's not
quite true.  By default, it doesn't support images and will, on
demand, call out to an external viewer but there's also support for
inline images.  I can't decide whether I like it or not.)  The more
that I've used w3m, the happier I've been with it.  As far as I can
tell (the docs aren't great), w3m doesn't permit custom keybindings
but, by default, it uses Emacs-style bindings (vi- and lynx-style
bindings are also available) so I'm happy.  It can also call out to
another browser which means that when I stumble across a page that
requires a graphical browser, Shift-M opens that page in Galeon.
(Also, if you're an Emacs-junkie, w3m can be embedded in Emacs.  I've
only played around with this a bit and haven't ever really gotten the
hang of it but it seems nicer than W3 to me.  And, as far as I know,
there's no relation between W3 and w3m.)

If I'm idlying surfing the web and clicking away, I'll generally turn
to Galeon which gives me all the color and formatting and graphics
without any fuss.  But when I'm trying to get work done, w3m is my
tool of choice.  Depending upon your demands, it might be worth taking
a look at.

Claude