iRider Web Browser
Tuesday, July 8, 2003 by DaWebMassa | Discussion: WinCustomize News
I've tried Opera, tried Mozilla, tried a few other browsers. Haven't managed to find something better than IE... until now. I am a regular reader of John C. Dvorak and know how critical he is about ANYTHING. After watching the video on iRider, I downloaded it. It is only free for 21days ($29 thereafter) but within 15 minutes I knew I would be buying this.
Browse ahead, thumbnail views, open/save/copy multiple pages/favorites/URLs at once, pin pages open and more. You have to see it to appreciate it.
Browse ahead, thumbnail views, open/save/copy multiple pages/favorites/URLs at once, pin pages open and more. You have to see it to appreciate it.
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Aqua.
Reply #2 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:34 PM
Reply #2 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:34 PM
I've been using this for close to a week now.
Positives:
* A very well done proof-of-concept thumbnail/tab sidebar
* Unique threaded sidebar tab/history list (annoying at first, but very useful afterwards)
Negatives:
* Super duper memory hog - this comes from keeping every single page you've visited in memory... at all times. After an hour or two of browsing this is like having 80+ tabs open in Mozilla.
* Mega right-click annoyance - there are no right click context menus, they've repurposed the right click for various uses, and when you right click on a link, it opens in a new tab instead of giving you a menu of options.
* IE rendering engine (the Mozilla Gecko engine renders pages much better than IE does often, and supports more advanced CSS features)
Overall Opinion:
This is something that most people here should download and will likely enjoy. However, it is not too good for actual use, it's more of a technology demonstrator to look over and discard when your curiousity is satisfied.
Positives:
* A very well done proof-of-concept thumbnail/tab sidebar
* Unique threaded sidebar tab/history list (annoying at first, but very useful afterwards)
Negatives:
* Super duper memory hog - this comes from keeping every single page you've visited in memory... at all times. After an hour or two of browsing this is like having 80+ tabs open in Mozilla.
* Mega right-click annoyance - there are no right click context menus, they've repurposed the right click for various uses, and when you right click on a link, it opens in a new tab instead of giving you a menu of options.
* IE rendering engine (the Mozilla Gecko engine renders pages much better than IE does often, and supports more advanced CSS features)
Overall Opinion:
This is something that most people here should download and will likely enjoy. However, it is not too good for actual use, it's more of a technology demonstrator to look over and discard when your curiousity is satisfied.
DaWebMassa
Reply #3 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:39 PM
Reply #3 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:39 PM
Aqua, in regards to your comment on right mouse usage, if you hold the right mouse button down for a second, it brings up the context menu. 
Chris
Reply #4 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:53 PM
Reply #4 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:53 PM
I've been trying it as well. You can change the surf-ahead feature from the right mouse click to the middle mouse click, which will gain you your right click context menu back.
Its supposedly supposed to be memory friendly. You can set how much memory it will use (haven't played with that yet).
The threaded sidebar is at first awkward, after being used to tabs, but after awhile I got used to it and think it's a better paradigm than the standard tabbed approach. It really lends itself to opening tons of pages (assuming its memory usage holds up as advertised).
However, there are two features that are really lacking. One is the a standard Favorites menu. Instead you have to open a favorites page and navigate it by clicking thought it (assuming you have your favorites organized into a hierarchy) in which each favorite folder corresponds to an entry on the sidebar.
This is really inefficient and awkward. What was once one click on a favorites menu now has become a click-fest.
The second thing missing is what Netcaptor, MyIE2, and CrazyBrowser have, namely aliases. Those browsers allow you to define aliases you can type in the address bar. For instance, in those browsers I can define an alias "wc" that corresponds to https://www.wincustomize.com So I can go to the address bar and type "wc", and just hit return
Its supposedly supposed to be memory friendly. You can set how much memory it will use (haven't played with that yet).
The threaded sidebar is at first awkward, after being used to tabs, but after awhile I got used to it and think it's a better paradigm than the standard tabbed approach. It really lends itself to opening tons of pages (assuming its memory usage holds up as advertised).
However, there are two features that are really lacking. One is the a standard Favorites menu. Instead you have to open a favorites page and navigate it by clicking thought it (assuming you have your favorites organized into a hierarchy) in which each favorite folder corresponds to an entry on the sidebar.
This is really inefficient and awkward. What was once one click on a favorites menu now has become a click-fest.
The second thing missing is what Netcaptor, MyIE2, and CrazyBrowser have, namely aliases. Those browsers allow you to define aliases you can type in the address bar. For instance, in those browsers I can define an alias "wc" that corresponds to https://www.wincustomize.com So I can go to the address bar and type "wc", and just hit return
DaWebMassa
Reply #5 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:58 PM
Reply #5 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 6:58 PM
Chris,
As for the favorties, you can have multiple favorite tabs open at once thus get to a page by two clicks.
I didn't even realize MyIE2 had aliases so you just taught me something.
I am finding that some of this is not that great for casual browsing but for research, this browser is slick seeing as how I can keep open the pages I want.
As for the favorties, you can have multiple favorite tabs open at once thus get to a page by two clicks.
I didn't even realize MyIE2 had aliases so you just taught me something.
I am finding that some of this is not that great for casual browsing but for research, this browser is slick seeing as how I can keep open the pages I want.
Hus
Reply #6 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 7:11 PM
Reply #6 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 7:11 PM
I'm not going to try it. It's a trial-version, and I don't see the point to pay $30 for a Web Browser, when the top browsers on the market are free. It seems like a cool idea, I did watch the demo. It just doesn't seem right to pay $30 for a browser...
Grfx Guru
Reply #7 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 7:14 PM
Reply #7 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 7:14 PM
Hey, ya know I never knew MyIE2 has aliases either! So ya taught me too, and yes yes I know........if I ever bothered to read the readme's it's probably in there, but I'd rather just leap head first in to an app and be sorry later hahaha!
geekboy2000
Reply #8 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 8:44 PM
Reply #8 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 8:44 PM
MyIE2 and AvantBrowser are both excellent MDI/tabbed browsers, and are both free. While iRider looks interesting, it doesn't appear to offer anything significant that I'd use, let alone pay for.
iRiderDave
Reply #9 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:02 PM
Reply #9 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:02 PM
" Super duper memory hog - this comes from keeping every single page you've visited in memory... at all times. After an hour or two of browsing this is like having 80+ tabs open in Mozilla. "
That's not quite right. iRider utilizes available memory to cache pages, but will purge them to accomodate other applications or other pages. Mozilla doesn't do this -- open lots of tabs and it'll thrash.
http://www.irider.com/help/ToolsMenu.htm#MemoryTab
" IE rendering engine (the Mozilla Gecko engine renders pages much better than IE does often, and supports more advanced CSS features) "
IE does seem to be falling behind the latest standards, but I think "much better" is a stretch. It's extremely rare to run into problem sites with IE/iRider, for the very reason that IE is so common (for better or for worse ).
" However, there are two features that are really lacking. One is the a standard Favorites menu. Instead you have to open a favorites page and navigate it by clicking thought it (assuming you have your favorites organized into a hierarchy) in which each favorite folder corresponds to an entry on the sidebar. "
Compare the two. In other browsers with a menu:
-- Click the Favorites menu. (In IE this'll be a single column with its silly scrolling feature)
-- Click intermediate folders if necessary
-- Click an item to open a page
(Then do the above again if you want to open more than one.)
With iRider:
-- Click the Favorites icon, or the item in the page list (which can be a subfolder), or press F8
-- Click intermediate folders if necessary
-- Click an item (and possibly more than one with Surf-Ahead or opening selected bookmarks)
Granted, there's more mouse motion, but the number of steps is the same, isn't it? And there are mitigating advantages. When you're on a page (perhaps a page you want to remove from Favorites), click Parent (F9) and you're on the Favorites folder where it came from.
" It just doesn't seem right to pay $30 for a browser... "
Yeah, I mean after all, there are some games that cost that much! I've been granted permission to say that sales are brisk.
" MyIE2 and AvantBrowser are both excellent MDI/tabbed browsers "
If tabs do the job for you, then there are freebies out there. We believe iRider is qualitatively different: a visual map of pages, organized by site, that you can riffle through, opening multiple links/bookmarks at once in various ways, bookmarking multiple pages, etc.
Dave
Wymea Bay - iRider
That's not quite right. iRider utilizes available memory to cache pages, but will purge them to accomodate other applications or other pages. Mozilla doesn't do this -- open lots of tabs and it'll thrash.
http://www.irider.com/help/ToolsMenu.htm#MemoryTab
" IE rendering engine (the Mozilla Gecko engine renders pages much better than IE does often, and supports more advanced CSS features) "
IE does seem to be falling behind the latest standards, but I think "much better" is a stretch. It's extremely rare to run into problem sites with IE/iRider, for the very reason that IE is so common (for better or for worse
)." However, there are two features that are really lacking. One is the a standard Favorites menu. Instead you have to open a favorites page and navigate it by clicking thought it (assuming you have your favorites organized into a hierarchy) in which each favorite folder corresponds to an entry on the sidebar. "
Compare the two. In other browsers with a menu:
-- Click the Favorites menu. (In IE this'll be a single column with its silly scrolling feature)
-- Click intermediate folders if necessary
-- Click an item to open a page
(Then do the above again if you want to open more than one.)
With iRider:
-- Click the Favorites icon, or the item in the page list (which can be a subfolder), or press F8
-- Click intermediate folders if necessary
-- Click an item (and possibly more than one with Surf-Ahead or opening selected bookmarks)
Granted, there's more mouse motion, but the number of steps is the same, isn't it? And there are mitigating advantages. When you're on a page (perhaps a page you want to remove from Favorites), click Parent (F9) and you're on the Favorites folder where it came from.
" It just doesn't seem right to pay $30 for a browser... "
Yeah, I mean after all, there are some games that cost that much!
I've been granted permission to say that sales are brisk. " MyIE2 and AvantBrowser are both excellent MDI/tabbed browsers "
If tabs do the job for you, then there are freebies out there. We believe iRider is qualitatively different: a visual map of pages, organized by site, that you can riffle through, opening multiple links/bookmarks at once in various ways, bookmarking multiple pages, etc.
Dave
Wymea Bay - iRider
geekboy2000
Reply #10 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:29 PM
Reply #10 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:29 PM
First, thanks for dropping by and providing some feedback here directly.
>>If tabs do the job for you, then there are freebies out there. We believe iRider is qualitatively different: a visual map of pages, organized by site, that you can riffle through, opening multiple links/bookmarks at once in various ways, bookmarking multiple pages, etc.<<
I certainly don't mean to imply that iRider is useless, but I don't regularly and repeatedy browse sites in outline form, roadmap form, or any other particular order. To the contrary, I think most folks might search a site once or twice for the particular pages/sections that interest them, and then simply bookmark *those* pages. It's for that reason that I think a tabbed interface is probably more than sufficient for the general population. Perhaps students/educators would find iRider quite beneficial. In any case, good luck with it. The more browser alternatives there are, the better off we all are.
>>If tabs do the job for you, then there are freebies out there. We believe iRider is qualitatively different: a visual map of pages, organized by site, that you can riffle through, opening multiple links/bookmarks at once in various ways, bookmarking multiple pages, etc.<<
I certainly don't mean to imply that iRider is useless, but I don't regularly and repeatedy browse sites in outline form, roadmap form, or any other particular order. To the contrary, I think most folks might search a site once or twice for the particular pages/sections that interest them, and then simply bookmark *those* pages. It's for that reason that I think a tabbed interface is probably more than sufficient for the general population. Perhaps students/educators would find iRider quite beneficial. In any case, good luck with it. The more browser alternatives there are, the better off we all are.
Aqua.
Reply #11 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:29 PM
Reply #11 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:29 PM
As for the memory, I went to "Great Rides" page, clicked on the "California Coastal Records Project" link and memory usage zoomed well past 200Mb. Fortunately, I have 512Mb RAM and so I was able to keep working, but it would have super slowed my old computer that I got rid of in May. Even so, it took several hours for all of those links to load (over dial-up). On the positive side, once I closed out all that stuff and went back to the original list, it released its memory much better than the Mozilla based browsers do when you close tabs. I was also able to keep memory usage around only 35Mb by changing it to navigate within the same window instead of opening a new tab. Of course, this eliminates part of what they were trying to do about having a graphical history, but I think that is overrated.
Usability increased (for me) once I moved the surf ahead to the middle mouse button and made the context menus available normally through the right mouse button.
Another positive I didn't mention above, their search page is excellent, very useful, well thought out categories, and good layout.
A minor complaint: Nearly all Windows apps skin well with WindowBlinds, but iRider doesn't. What I'm mainly referring to is the background of the toolbars and stuff which are just a plain gray.
And since it seems an iRider guy is here, a suggestion: Have the sidebar start out with the largest size thumbnails, when the list of pages goes below the bottom of the pane, have the thumbnail size decrease, keep repeating this until it's just a plain button/tab list
Usability increased (for me) once I moved the surf ahead to the middle mouse button and made the context menus available normally through the right mouse button.
Another positive I didn't mention above, their search page is excellent, very useful, well thought out categories, and good layout.
A minor complaint: Nearly all Windows apps skin well with WindowBlinds, but iRider doesn't. What I'm mainly referring to is the background of the toolbars and stuff which are just a plain gray.
And since it seems an iRider guy is here, a suggestion: Have the sidebar start out with the largest size thumbnails, when the list of pages goes below the bottom of the pane, have the thumbnail size decrease, keep repeating this until it's just a plain button/tab list
Aqua.
Reply #12 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:38 PM
Reply #12 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:38 PM
geekboy, the idea of having a list of tabs with thumbnails of their pages is (to me) quite useful. The Mozilla folks are working on something similar to what iRider has done, I seem to recall there are several other browser doing the same thing as well.
It's an idea who's idea has come, iRider is (I think) just the first to implement it and release it to the public.
I definitely agree that the more alternatives that are out there, the better off we all are.
I also expect to see many more Gecko based browsers coming out, one of the main goals for upcoming version of Gecko is to make it just as easy to create a browser based on that engine as it is on the IE engine (which you can now basically drag and drop into a program using their editor)
It's an idea who's idea has come, iRider is (I think) just the first to implement it and release it to the public.
I definitely agree that the more alternatives that are out there, the better off we all are.
I also expect to see many more Gecko based browsers coming out, one of the main goals for upcoming version of Gecko is to make it just as easy to create a browser based on that engine as it is on the IE engine (which you can now basically drag and drop into a program using their editor)
Chris
Reply #13 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:58 PM
Reply #13 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 10:58 PM
Thanks for responding to us
I really really like the thumbnail images organized in a threaded fashion. I like to have alot of pages open and with tabs, they end up displaying in a multiple tab rows. And when you click a tab, that row comes to the forefront which is really confusing since it throws off my sense of "tab location". The threaded thumbnail list gets around this.
Sorry, but I still don't like the way the favorites are organized. It's actually only two clicks with a favorites menu. One click to pull down the menu, then mouse over a favorites folder to expand that section, then click a second time to launch the favorite. For me, that's much faster and quicker than navigating a tree control, especially if whatever node I click in the control has their own entry in thumb nail list. That's just more stuff that I have to clean up and close. That's just not a paradigm that feels efficient in the way I want to navigate my favorites.
What I'd really love to see is aliases for the address bar entries as I outlined above. This really is a time saver and is much quicker for semi-frequently accessed pages (some thing that's referenced more than most favorites, but does not warrent "pinning") rather then hunting and pecking with the mouse.
Basically, I hate unnecessary mouse clicks and GUI-navigating to get at functionality which should be quickly available
BTW, for some reason, I could not get the mouse wheel to cycle through the thumbnails. I had to hold the left mouse click down and move the mouse up and down the list. Perhaps I needed to change some configuration setting or I misunderstood the concept
I really really like the thumbnail images organized in a threaded fashion. I like to have alot of pages open and with tabs, they end up displaying in a multiple tab rows. And when you click a tab, that row comes to the forefront which is really confusing since it throws off my sense of "tab location". The threaded thumbnail list gets around this.
Sorry, but I still don't like the way the favorites are organized. It's actually only two clicks with a favorites menu. One click to pull down the menu, then mouse over a favorites folder to expand that section, then click a second time to launch the favorite. For me, that's much faster and quicker than navigating a tree control, especially if whatever node I click in the control has their own entry in thumb nail list. That's just more stuff that I have to clean up and close. That's just not a paradigm that feels efficient in the way I want to navigate my favorites.
What I'd really love to see is aliases for the address bar entries as I outlined above. This really is a time saver and is much quicker for semi-frequently accessed pages (some thing that's referenced more than most favorites, but does not warrent "pinning") rather then hunting and pecking with the mouse.
Basically, I hate unnecessary mouse clicks and GUI-navigating to get at functionality which should be quickly available
BTW, for some reason, I could not get the mouse wheel to cycle through the thumbnails. I had to hold the left mouse click down and move the mouse up and down the list. Perhaps I needed to change some configuration setting or I misunderstood the concept
Chris
Reply #14 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:03 PM
Reply #14 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:03 PM
Argghhh. I wish we had an edit comments feature. I meant to add that though I prefer the traditional favorites menu for quick access to favorties, I do see the value in the folder / thumbnail-entry navigation approach for more intense surfing / favorites management
DaWebMassa
Reply #15 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:09 PM
Reply #15 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:09 PM
I sent iRider an email about posting this newthread and am very happy to see someone show up in person. If nothing else it shows they're on the ball.
I prefer the iRider idea to tabs mainly because when I am hunting for info, shopping for products or whatever involves lots of research, having the thumbnails there is more intuitive than tabs.
If any of you have had the opportunity to see the videos MS did showing their research on interfaces, it proved that the mind is better at remembering spacial information than any other kind. Having thumbnails has proven that theory to me. I can quickly scroll down and my eye catches the visual of the page before I even have to see the name.
Tomorrow I will do a comparison with memory usage of this versus MyIE2 and see if it really makes a difference. I haven't noticed any problems here and I had 62 windows open at one point.
I second Chris' motion for aliases... great idea,
I prefer the iRider idea to tabs mainly because when I am hunting for info, shopping for products or whatever involves lots of research, having the thumbnails there is more intuitive than tabs.
If any of you have had the opportunity to see the videos MS did showing their research on interfaces, it proved that the mind is better at remembering spacial information than any other kind. Having thumbnails has proven that theory to me. I can quickly scroll down and my eye catches the visual of the page before I even have to see the name.
Tomorrow I will do a comparison with memory usage of this versus MyIE2 and see if it really makes a difference. I haven't noticed any problems here and I had 62 windows open at one point.
I second Chris' motion for aliases... great idea,
Chris
Reply #16 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:15 PM
Reply #16 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:15 PM
BTW, regarding $30 for a browser: it depends. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me if a product has features that I find appealing. Heck I paid $30 for Netcaptor years ago and never regretted it. Granted, that was before all the other tabbed browsers started springing up all over the place
Paul Doland
Reply #17 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:38 PM
Reply #17 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:38 PM
I started a thread in the Message Board about alternative browsers, and mentioned iRider. Since it doesn't do skinning, I didn't think that it was a suitable topic for the news section on this site. But, since it is here, well, I love iRider, and paid for it. But I think $30 is a trivial amount of money for a good product, even if good products are also available for free.
I personally found that adding a new page for every single navigation to be way too much, which is the default. But you can set the navigation to stay in current page. Then new pages are created only on demand. Much less clutter on the pages tab.
Some may say that then I might as well use any other tabbed browser, and it is true that I'd probably be satisfied with other tabbed browsers. In fact, some other options do have features that iRider doesn't. But, some of the nice touches like the way they do the search, and the browse ahead to me made the difference to be worth using it instead of the free options.
Whether or not it is a memory hog or not, I don't really notice. I have lots of RAM, so if iRider uses it in order to make my surfing faster, that is fine by me. But I can say that I'm a fairly "hard" user, in that I'm on the web for hours a day, most days. And although I've only been using iRider for about a week now, I've had no problems with it. So to the person that said iRider is fine for playing with, but not full time, I disagree. I'm using it full time and am happy.
But I hope they add skinning in 3.0!
I personally found that adding a new page for every single navigation to be way too much, which is the default. But you can set the navigation to stay in current page. Then new pages are created only on demand. Much less clutter on the pages tab.
Some may say that then I might as well use any other tabbed browser, and it is true that I'd probably be satisfied with other tabbed browsers. In fact, some other options do have features that iRider doesn't. But, some of the nice touches like the way they do the search, and the browse ahead to me made the difference to be worth using it instead of the free options.
Whether or not it is a memory hog or not, I don't really notice. I have lots of RAM, so if iRider uses it in order to make my surfing faster, that is fine by me. But I can say that I'm a fairly "hard" user, in that I'm on the web for hours a day, most days. And although I've only been using iRider for about a week now, I've had no problems with it. So to the person that said iRider is fine for playing with, but not full time, I disagree. I'm using it full time and am happy.
But I hope they add skinning in 3.0!
Chris
Reply #18 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:50 PM
Reply #18 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:50 PM
I'm still playing with the browser and am liking it more and more as I use it. Yeah, I had to change a couple of the default settings as it was opening new browser page for every click. I do wish it had user configurable popup suppression.
As for skinning. I don't want it. I hope it still uses standard Windows controls so that WindowBlinds can still skin it
As for skinning. I don't want it. I hope it still uses standard Windows controls so that WindowBlinds can still skin it
joetheblow
Reply #19 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:54 PM
Reply #19 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 11:54 PM
so many browsers, so little time.... and it DOESN"T SKIN!!! OMG
Well, it still sounds good.
Well, it still sounds good.
Aqua.
Reply #20 Wednesday, July 9, 2003 12:44 AM
Reply #20 Wednesday, July 9, 2003 12:44 AM
Like Chris, I don't want them to use their own skinning engine persay, I just want it to be fully skinned by WindowBlinds like most apps are.
I'm at the point that I'll use it during the trial period, but I don't like enough to actually buy it. Perhaps I'll buy a more mature version in the future, but for the moment I'll stick to the Firebird browser.
I'm at the point that I'll use it during the trial period, but I don't like enough to actually buy it. Perhaps I'll buy a more mature version in the future, but for the moment I'll stick to the Firebird browser.
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Reply #1 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 5:23 PM