Linux SlimBoat Browser-Demo Test

[Night Wing]

Well, with Mozilla going to kill off the non Australis 24 ESR version of Firefox very soon leaving only the Australis 31 ESR version in its place, I decided to download and take the linux SlimBoat browser for a demo ride on my experimental linux laptop which is running an old outdated linux Mint 14 operating system.

Since I did not want to install linux SlimBoat, I decided to download the tarball and just run SlimBoat from it's executable file. Doing it this way meant I had to create the SlimBoat launcher icons for the Panel and Desktop which was not a problem and these were created using gui menus.

It is not a bad looking browser. It looks a little like Internet Explorer with an extra long Menu Bar. My favorite NoSquint extension for Pale Moon and Firefox ESR does not work, but there is a custom zoom which fills the bill nicely. I do not know if the custom zoom will stick when I exit out of the browser though. As for speed, it is very fast. Also, all of my important buttons; like Home, Back/Forward, Refresh, etc, are all to the left of the Address Bar. And it has a Status Bar.

Plays YouTube videos with no problem graphics wise or sound wise. I don't know if it will play videos in HD yet. It may not. Unlike the Windows only SlimBrowser, there is no skin coloring for linux SlimBoat. But, I do like the looks of it. It is integrated with lots of social "stuff" (Facebook), but this stuff can be disabled by choice. Tabs are classic rectangular too which is something I like.

When I first ran the executable file, it imported my Firefox bookmarks and these bookmarks came from my Pale Moon bookmarks since both Pale Moon and Firefox ESR are on this laptop. Now if one wants to import bookmarks from a USB flash thumb drive, then it gets "sticky". Linux SlimBoat does not accept json files. It needs html (htm) files. I found this out when Slimboat did not see my Firefox or Pale Moon json bookmarks which were in my Bookmarks folder on the Desktop. But, in this same folder were my IE9 bookmarks and it saw them.

Do I like linux SlimBoat better than linux Firefox 24.7.0 ESR? The answer is "no", but I like it better in looks than the Australis looking Firefox 31 ESR. There are other "quirks" too, but if I had to, I "think" I could live with linux SlimBoat as my backup browser to linux Pale Moon. Right now, I'm just experimenting with linux SlimBoat. I have to put this browser through more testing.

BTW, I'm typing this message using linux SlimBoat (v1.1.50).

[Night Wing]

This is a screenshot of linux SlimBoat and I'm using my 14" laptop. The resolution is 1366 x 768. You'll have to click on the attachment to make it larger and clearer to see.

[Night Wing]

My experiment to see if linux SlimBoat could replace linux Firefox ESR as my backup browser to linux Pale Moon is over.

SlimBoat was just a little too buggy and can not replace Firefox. Some of the bugs are listed below:

1) The "Go" button when unchecked in Customize hides the Go button. But, if one restarts the browser, the Go button re-appears even though the Go button is still unchecked in Customize.

2) The video and audio in YouTube videos which worked, both suddenly quit working. I couldn't fix it either.

3) When one first installs SlimBoat, it imported all of my Firefox bookmarks. From then on, when restoring Firefox bookmarks from a USB thumb/flash drive, they have to be in an htm/html file. But, SlimBoat wouldn't do it. It kept on importing the default files which came with SlimBoat. The oddity though, it worked perfectly if I imported my htm/html bookmarks file on a USB thumb/flash drive from Internet Explorer.

So, I'm still looking for a backup browser which can take the place of Firefox in linux and I hope to have this done before October 14th. My next test candidate is going to be linux SeaMonkey. I had used Windows SeaMonkey in the distant past many years ago and just realized this morning SeaMonkey has a 64 bit version for linux.