AVANT BROWSER

[Steve]

10 Useful Features of Avant Browser (taken from Avant's website)

 

 

Flash Animation Filter: More than 85% of all flash animation on web pages is advertising. These flash files are pretty large, and normally take up to 90% of the size of the page you're visiting. With Avant Browser you can save this bandwidth by blocking the download of these flash files with just one easy click. Avant Browser also provides options to block downloads of pictures, videos, sounds and ActiveX components. With these options users can control their bandwidth and speed up page loading.

 

Built-in Pop-up Stopper: Easily eliminate unwanted pop-up pages automatically with just one click.

 

Additional Mouse Functions: If you click a link in the web page with the middle mouse button, the link will be opened in a new window in the background. And there are two handy mouse gestures in Avant Browser. The first allows you to navigate backward one step by holding the right button down and then clicking on the left button simultaneously. The second allows you to navigate forward one step by reversing the buttons used: hold left, and click right.

 

Multi-Window Browsing: Browse multiple web pages simultaneously. All opened pages can be easily stopped, refreshed, closed or arranged with one click.

 

Real Full Screen Mode and Alternative Full Desktop mode: When you enable Full Screen Mode, all you see is the webspace, with no toolbars or other clutter. They are simply autohidden! Move your mouse over the top or bottom and find the toolbar and tab bar respectively. Avant Browser also provides Full Desktop Mode, which is the same as Full screen mode, but differs in that your windows task bar stays visible.

 

Built-in Yahoo/Google Search Engine: Avant Browser provides a built-in search engines, Yahoo and Google. Built-in search engines enable user to search for web pages, images, groups, directories, news, lyrics and software in Internet. International users will be glad to know that you can set avant to utilize any of up to 64 google mirrors by default!

 

Full IE Compatibility: Avant Browser comes with all Internet Explorer functions, including Cookies, ActiveX Controls, Java Script, Real player and Macromedia Flash. IE bookmarks are automatically imported into Avant Browser.

 

Records Cleaner: With Avant Browser, you can easily keep your privacy by deleting Typed Addresses, Auto-Complete Passwords, Cookies, History of Visited Web Sites, Temporary Internet Files and Search Keywords.

 

Safe Recovery: If Avant Browser is closed improperly, all open web pages are saved and will be automatically reopened at next startup.

 

Skins: Express your creativity by making a skin for Avant using a custom, easy to use program called Avant Browser Skin Factory, or use any of the many and varied skins made by other users.

 

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Here's a breakdown of some other features that I personally like:

 

 

The Avant interface is fully customisable. You can easily move, hide or resize any toolbars or menu items.

 

Mouse gestures - Hold down the right mouse button, move your mouse up and release the button and a new tab is opened. There are 8 other gestures too that include refresh page, close inactive windows, activate previous window and more. This virtually eliminates using the keyboard when you just want to browse around and read various web pages.

 

Favourite Groups - One click enables you to open all the websites that you've grouped together. You can create as many groups as you like with as many websites as you like in each group. This is great for browsing the many forums we all visit. You can also set up multiple homepages too so that several pages open when you initially start Avant.

 

Auto-Refesh - You can right-click any open tab in Avant and select an automatic refresh to occur either every 10 seconds, every 15 minutes or one of 5 other preset times in between. Again, this is great for forums because you can set several pages to auto-refresh in the background while you are busy posting here, for example.

 

Built In Language Translation - You can translate from French, German, Italian, Portugese or Spanish into English and vice versa. You can also translate from French to German and from German to French.

 

One Click Blocking - Block any of the following with only one click to turn on/off: Pictures, Flash animations, Sounds, Video, ActiveX, Scripts, Java Applets, Popups, Advertisements. You can also right click any picture, add it to the Avant black list and you'll never see it again. This can include adverts or massive avatars we all see in forums these days!

 

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As you can see, Avant is very fully featured. It isn't for everyone, but it's certainly worth a look if you want to add tabbed browsing and a multitude of other useful features to Internet Explorer.

 

For a fuller feature list and to download the program, visit the Avant website HERE.

[Steve]

Security Vs. Functionality

 

Just a side note about ActiveX and VBScript. Both of these are supported in Microsoft's Internet Explorer but not Mozilla's Firefox or Opera. The main reason for Mozilla taking this approach is that both can be exploited to compromise your PC or install Spyware etc. Also, neither are strictly a "web standard". They are Microsoft creations.

 

Plus points of omitting these from a browser are obvious. You cannot be infected by spyware or a virus that exploits weaknesses in these technologies if your browser doesn't support them in the first place.

 

On the negative side of things, by not supporting a technology, to some extent you are restricting what you can see and do on the World Wide Web. The main example always used is Windows Updates. That uses ActiveX which is why when you go to that site with a browser that doesn't support it, it doesn't work. This goes for any site that has an online virus scanner, one example being Housecall. Other sites that use ActiveX are sites such as PC Pitstop which allows you to scan your PC and see if any improvements in performance can be made via online tweaks.

 

Moving on to VBScript, several online stores use this technology to enable you to pay for goods and services. This is called client side VBScript and again, it's not supported in Firefox or Opera. The worst case scenario is that you are half way through a transaction and you cannot proceed due to lack of VBScript support. One example of this is the online movie ticket retailer MYWAY.

 

 

Other Differences

 

You may know that Mozilla's browsers adhere strictly to the WC3 web standard. This is a standard which states which code you should use in the design of your website. Internet Explorer is less fussy in this respect and will render pages with slight errors in the code. So which is better?

 

I'm not a web designer. Are you? Do you know any? Obviously, in an ideal world it would be better to strictly adhere to the WC3 standard when designing a website. The thing is, what if you don't know what it is? Many tools available to aid users in creating their own personal sites do not adhere to these standards. This means that the page will render correctly as defined by the WC3 standard, but perhaps will not look the way the user intended it to look.

 

CSS. Cascading Style Sheets is a method for adding formatting (colours, layout) etc. to a webpage. Again this is governed by the WC3 standard. However, people have discovered you can do more advanced stuff with CSS that is not in the WC3 standard. One example of this is assigned colours to scrollbars. That is not in the standard, but it can be done and viewed in some browsers.

 

Tooltips. When you hover your mouse over an image, a description of that image may pop up in a little box. This can be done in two ways. Firstly with an ALT and TITLE tag. Secondly with just the ALT tag. The WC3 standard recommends using both tags to display tooltips. Many sites use only the ALT tag though as it's simpler and has no impact on security or anything else. Hover your mouse over an image that just has an ALT tag with a browser that strictly adheres to WC3 and you will not see the tooltip appear.

 

Sites that use non-standard coding exist. There's nothing that can be done to change that unless the site owner spends time and money updating their site. Look at this site for example........

 

http://www.odeon.co.uk/Odeon/home.html

 

Do you see just a blank page with an image on it or do you see 5 menu buttons appear? This is down to bad coding, but with a browser that doesn't give leeway to this, you cannot access the site.

 

 

Conclusion

 

In a browser that supports ActiveX and VBScript, you can disable these items if you wish. You can also set the browser to ask if you want to display items on a website using these technologies. A browser without these technologies built in simply will not be able to view the page. You'll have to roll out a browser that can. The question then is of security vs. functionality. Would you rather see all of the Web and receive prompts about any impeding security threats, or would you rather remove these threats totally, but limit your browsing experience?

[Steve]

One example of a website strictly adhering to WC3 is the Mozilla site (obviously). I definitely agree this is correct because if there is no standard to adhere to from now on, the problems with incompatibilty will only continue. The problem is if I view this page in I.E...........

 

http://update.mozilla.org/themes/?application=firefox

 

........it doesn't render correctly. Mozilla are right, Microsoft are wrong in this case. It's a bit of a no-win situation.

[Steve]

A semi-solution for Mozilla Firefox users is to install this.........

 

http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#ieview

 

It's an add-on that allows you to view pages in I.E. should Firefox have a problem with them. Again, it all comes down to incompatibility. If Microsoft learned some lessons from Mozilla but kept the functionality of I.E. we'd have one great browser and no problems.

[Guest Deeswift]

People need to email the webmaster of the site with the problems and explain that they are cutting off access users of other broswers other than Internet Explorer and their badly coded webpages don't make the grade for 2004.

 

You will always need Internet Explorer for Windows Update, so until that changes there's no chance of anyone using an open source browser such as Firefox as their default browser 100% of the time. Personally, I feel this is unfair of Microsoft and in some ways pushes other software developers aside. Typical Microsoft tactics, of course, being forced to choose software you might not want to use because you feel there is a better piece of software that should be able to handle it.

 

I should point out Microsoft's eight year delay in fixing IE's lack of support for alpha-transparency, which should have been fixed in IE4. Mozilla and other browsers already support this.

 

This page is a prime example. Note the logos in the top left and right corners:

 

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=firefox

 

When it comes down to it, I would rather use Firefox 99% of the time, and only roll out IE for Windows Updates and the 1% (or less) of sites on the Internet that require using it. I don't personally use any of those, so I couldn't care.

 

BTW, I know web designers.

[Steve]

Well I agree with you. This thread isn't about battle of the browsers. It's just that I think ActiveX is a useful technology in the right hands and by ignoring the fact it exists, people are missing out on good sites. PC Pitstop is a wicked site, and I've used Housecall in the past. In fact Housecall found some dodgy bit of Java code that crept on to my PC by using an outdated version of Sun's Java and that's something that AVG or NOD32 didn't do.

 

I agree that people should update their websites, but for the average user with some home made site, they ain't gonna know what the hell to do. Also, imagine redesigning a site the size of Amazon or BBC if it didn't fit in with the standards. I bet some non-WC3 compliant sites are more than aware of the situation but they don't have the resources to deal with it.

 

At the end of the day I'm saying people should have a choice. If a technology exists I want to be able to use it, especially as some sites make a good use of it.

 

Oh yeah, as for the Windows Updates thing, if an ActiveX plugin for Firefox ever becomes available then you'll be able to access the site. Only problem is, you'll be as vulnerable as all the other people that use I.E. but don't know how to configure it.

 

BTW Dee - I dunno if you saw the two further posts I added while you were reading the longer one but I mentioned that Firefox page.

[Guest Deeswift]

People are not ignoring the fact that Active X exists, it's a choice of either being able to use a couple of sites or a more secure browser. As I said, for the sites that require it, roll out IE, it's built into your OS and there's nothing wrong with having two or more browsers installed on your computer. I've come across not a single site in over a year that I couldn't use because of Firefox. What people are ignoring is the fact that other browsers exist, and these are the people making badly coded webpages.

 

What's easier -- for the website page designer to write code correctly or to stop producing alternative software to IE? There's more unsupported standards in IE than there is in Firefox. You do have a choice though, why would you suggest that you don't?

 

Bottom line -- have as many browsers as you wish, try them all and use the one you like most of all, whatever suits your needs the best.

 

EDIT: Yes, I think you added those posts as I was writing my reply mate, sorry. It's just for reference to the alpha-transparency issue though.

[Steve]

Yeah but I set ActiveX to prompt. I go to PC Pitstop and a box comes up and I click Yes or No. Obviously in that case I click Yes but in others I would click No. In Avant there is a button that you click and ActiveX is disabled. The same with scripts. The point I'm trying to make is I can still run them if I want to without having two products on my machine that do essentially the same thing.

 

If it's that easy to produce the correct code why do sites exist with incorrect code? Also if emailing the company would correct the situation, why haven't Microsoft fixed a problem they've known about for 4 years?

[Steve]

For an example of the web designer thing, look at us! Are we making sure the code we add to this board is compliant or are we trying something and if it works, we leave it there?

[Guest Deeswift]

I'm trying this site in both IE and Firefox, and so far it's fine. If it doesn't work I will look for a solution and hopefully find a cross-browser version of the same code. Most of the people I know online use Firefox (especially on the AMD board which has 20,000 members or more) and it's quite astonishing the amount of people who have switched to FF. I wouldn't wanna rule those people out because I was personally too lazy to look for a 100% fully working code.

 

Maybe there will be (or already is) an option to allow active X in Firefox, I am not sure. I have never needed it, so I know very little about it.

 

My conclusion on the Microsoft thing is that they don't care about correcting situations like you mentioned because it's another excuse to force people to use their software. Why does anyone think they're the biggest company in the world?

 

EDIT: Seems I spoke too soon -- both IE and Firefox display different logo's on this site. IE has a "DV2" logo, and Firefox has an "Under Construction" logo. This needs fixing for starters.

 

EDIT: It's OK now. Never mind.

[Steve]

The only difference I've found with this site between the two browsers is when you posted a big picture it I got that grey bar thing and you didn't. When I posted a long torrent link though, it wrapped onto two lines for me, but stretched Clown's screen when he was using Firefox.

 

I just realised, this board actually tells you when someone is typing a reply.

[Guest Deeswift]

I get shortened URL's in Firefox like http://www.blahbla....html, I have no idea why Clown doesn't. Mine replaces long lines with dots.

[Steve]

Weird. Perhaps there is an option in the FF settings somewhere to display the full URL.

[Guest Deeswift]

Probably, but it's enabled by defaualt, I never changed anything. Images are also resized to fit into the browser window.

 

I just discovered a whole load of options which I didn't know were there a second ago, including ability to install different languages.

 

YAY...

[Steve]

Images are resized to fit in the window for me too. That pic you had up easily fitted into the screen size, but not the box it was in. Fuck knows man. I should have done a HTML course when I was at Uni instead of all the mathematics and algorithms stuff.

[2ndhand]

activex components rock!

 

i use them in my vb programs, to have heavy processes running in a separate thread (memory space) so that the main UI doesn't grind to a halt.

 

i can also compile my vb prog into an activex, and run it in a browser window. it gets tricky though. and the user has to agree to accept the control. this has been ruined by DICKS writing activex stuff that installs diallers and the like. DICKS.

[Steve]

Yeah it's shit. It's got to the point where there's probably dozens of bad ActiveX scripts out there for every good one. I post on the Computeractive forums and the amount of people that click YES to everything is unbelievable. Then they moan when they get a dialler.

 

There's a guy I'm helping on there now that just has the least knowledge of computing I've come across. He had a dialler so he went into the registry deleting everything he deemed to be suspicious and surprise, surprise, his PC doesn't work properly now. I told him to download this program and when he tried to it gave him a list of mirror sites for the download. He couldn't get the program to work, but said it was because he'd chosen the mirror in Switzerland and maybe it was meant only for the Swiss.

 

SP2 for XP deals with some ActiveX issues. Basically it changes your settings so they're pretty much the same as mine are now.

[Huw]

'scuse my ignorance, but what is ActiveX?

[Steve]

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/java-vs-activex.html

[Steve]

You should treat ActiveX like you would an email attachement. Unless you are 100% sure you know what it is, don't open it/accept it.

[Steve]

Loads of skins for Avant Browser can be found HERE.

[Clownstyle]

I tried avant but i think it looks too cluttered.. Is there any way to remove some of the buttons, i didnt really check it out for too long. I think i prefer mozilla

[Steve]

I tried avant but i think it looks too cluttered.. Is there any way to remove some of the buttons, i didnt really check it out for too long. I think i prefer mozilla

 

Yeah just click View then Customise Buttons and you just untick the box next to any you don't want. You can remove any menus "File Edit View etc." that you don't want there too.

[Clownstyle]

I tried avant but i think it looks too cluttered.. Is there any way to remove some of the buttons, i didnt really check it out for too long. I think i prefer mozilla

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah just click View then Customise Buttons and you just untick the box next to any you don't want. You can remove any menus "File Edit View etc." that you don't want there too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thanks.. I will take some time to check it out soon!

[Steve]

Even if you save Avant for the times you can't use Firefox, it's still worth having as an extension to IE. Just get it customised to the way you want and you'll be sorted.