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Firefox vs Cometbird

V

vitalym

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 12, 2008
Messages
295
I've been using Firefox for about a year now and I love it.
The other day I heard about Cometbird. From reviews it is supposed to be pretty much similar to Firefox but a lot faster. I looked through their addons, and they are the same ones Firefox uses.

Has anyone used both extensivly that could let me know about some differences between them and if it's true that Cometbird is faster and better.
 
I just started using it a little while ago and so far I think it's good. It seems to be based off the same engine as firefox. I have noticed that it starts up quicker and has less interface clutter. I'm going to continue using it for a while and keep you posted on what I think.
 
From the Cometbird homepage:

Why CometBird

CometBird is a totally free software with superior speed and perforamce. The upgraded version has many advantages both in performace and privacy protection.
Click to expand...

Guess they're not using their own browser to check spelling errors, eh? :) And those are just two, the front page and the whole website is loaded with 'em, all over the place, so yeah, I understand it's not a true English-speaking development team it seems...

I'll check it out later and see whether it's up to snuff or not. If it's still the Gecko core and faster, hey, I'm all for it. Some of the features look useful as long as they work without issues.
 
I have now been using Cometbird for over 27hrs and seem to be liking it. It is stable and all the features I have tested seem to be working. It does open faster which is also a pretty nice bonus.
 
Joe Average said:
From the Cometbird homepage:



Guess they're not using their own browser to check spelling errors, eh? :) And those are just two, the front page and the whole website is loaded with 'em, all over the place, so yeah, I understand it's not a true English-speaking development team it seems...
Click to expand...

I would agree, mainly because their slogan is "Open you eyes". :D
 
It looks exactly like Firefox. Do they share resources?

screenshot8.png
 
It is Firefox, more or less, just more customized. The whole thing is open source so anybody with the skills can just take everything Mozilla cranks out and re-arrange/modify it to their heart's content and create their own browser if that's your thing - which is what the creators of CometBird have done. They're both based on the Gecko core and codebase so, yep, when you compile it it's going to be similar in many ways.

Installed it yesterday and used it for an hour or two, nothing in it that gives me that "Oh shit, this is too cool, screw Firefox..." kinda impression. Same addons, etc, just a few additions to the base browser, so I'll stick with Firefox.
 
They mention antivirus scanning....but I've yet to find where/what this "scanner" is. Would be a neat feature...additional proxy-ish scanning of web traffic. Although since it's open source, it's probably just Clam...which can't find a hole in a bagel.

The built in bookmark syncher is cool for those with multiple PCs..although sure FF has had those as separate add-ons.
 
Hadnt heard of cometbird. Being a browser junkie, decided to try it out. Its great. Looks like they took a copy of firefox 3, tinkered around with its settings, probably changed a bit in the source, and put some addons on it. I like what they did- it feels cleaner and quicker than regular firefox.
I also like many of the addons they put in there.
 
Built in cloud based bookmark syncing is enough for me. I'm sold. Downloading now...

Interesting, the bookmark syncing looks to be a variation of Xmarks, the Firefox extension I currently use already for this task.

EDIT

SERIOUS bug found. If I open one of my bookmarks in my bookmark toolbar, then go to open another one nothing happens.... I have to actually right click the bookmark and select "Open" for it to actually open. Its a shame because I had already unpinned Firefox from my Windows 7 taskbar.
 
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Is this Cometbird on top of their game when it comes to security flaws? I don't want to use any browser that may become a security risk down the road because they are lax in providing fixes to security flaws.
 
Like it has been mentioned, its based on the current Firefox code, so... :)
 
OK, I''ll check it out. Latest I've been using is SWare Iron which is based on Chrome but with the google privacy issues removed.
 
I've downloaded the most recent version of cometbird
 and it works fine. Way better than Google Chrome for people who work online all the time.
______________________________
Steve Works
 
I would be real careful when you read things are "faster".

I recently rolled back to Firefox 3.6 just to see if I would notice a difference and just browsing around the web and such it did not feel any slower than FF 17, but people wouldn't want you to believe that.

Browsing is the same with Chrome. Chrome has the advantage that the Windows minimizing/maximizing etc draw faster than Firefox so it appears to be a faster browser, yet web pages load at the same rate. The order in which content pops in/appears may be slightly different but fully loading the pages has never been different to me at least.

The truth is all web browsers (even IE9/10) are about the same when it comes to speed of web browsing, just use one based on the features you like. In the event that you need something like slightly faster rendering of something specific/Java/whatever, then you may want to go with a particular browser over another.
 
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I don't see Comet adding any value to the copied codebase beyond color tweaks and baking in some trivial FF addons.

The best you could achieve from Comet is "equal to FF".
 
Plus the idea that FF is some how holding back performance, waiting to bust out, is preposterous.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
They mention antivirus scanning....but I've yet to find where/what this "scanner" is. Would be a neat feature...additional proxy-ish scanning of web traffic. Although since it's open source, it's probably just Clam...which can't find a hole in a bagel.

The built in bookmark syncher is cool for those with multiple PCs..although sure FF has had those as separate add-ons.
Click to expand...

I LOL'd.:D
 
Where's the source code for this? Looked around on their website and forums for a bit and couldn't find it. If it's a fork of Firefox (it is) it needs to provide the source for download to be in compliance with the license. Is it included with the binary/installer when you download that?
 
It's probably is your standard recompile that was optimized for modern processors like waterfox and some of the others. It may actually be a little faster in some benchmarks but not earth shakingly faster.
 
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