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Date:      Wed, 06 Mar 2002 23:31:15 +1000
From:      Stephen McKay <mckay@thehub.com.au>
To:        "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>
Cc:        Stephen McKay <mckay@thehub.com.au>, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Browser wars (was Re: Taming Netscape Navigator?) 
Message-ID:  <200203061331.g26DVFe15485@dungeon.home>
In-Reply-To: <20020305105330.H3880@over-yonder.net> from "Matthew D. Fuller" at "Tue, 05 Mar 2002 10:53:30 -0600"
References:  <Pine.LNX.4.43.0203011634360.2796-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <3C7FB956.18428.510B414@localhost> <20020301201318.C3880@over-yonder.net> <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home> <20020305105330.H3880@over-yonder.net>

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On Tuesday, 5th March 2002, "Matthew D. Fuller" wrote:

>Well, my line of thinking goes something like this:
>A) Opera is a web browser
>B) Web browsers are designed and optimized for rendering HTML and related
>   tasks
>C) When you have more than one independant window in an area (be that
>   area a desktop, an individual application parent window, whatever),
>   there are a number of tasks involved in managing them, including
>   handling resizing, iconifying, maximizing, naming, selecting, etc.
>D) There is a class of programs called "window managers" that are
>   designed and optimized for managing windows
>
>So, given (A&&B)&&(C&&D), trying to make a web browser act like a window
>manager doesn't make much sense.

That's fairly convincing in theory.  In practice, I like what Opera does. :-)

I haven't yet seen a current generation window manager I can stomach,
and vtwm is good for a couple dozen windows, not hundreds.  Actually,
even so-called modern window managers are poor at handling 100 windows.

>Also, with all-in-one, it's impossible to interleave the browser windows
>with my other windows; additionally, it's practically impossible to see
>more than one webpage at a time, unless I make the Opera window itself
>a completely insane size, which then causes blocking of everything else
>on my screen.

Maybe more of my peculiar habits are relevant: I run a virtual desktop
and Opera gets 100% of one of them (ie it runs in full screen mode).
Within Opera, I only look at one page at a time, so it gets all the
screen minus the tab list.  At 1600x1200 with 100 windows open you
still have lots of visible window left.  Interleaving my browser
windows with other windows is not of interest to me.

>But in a X11 environment, when you can pick and choose among a number of
>WM's with great configurability and scalability...   what's the point?

I await your recommendation for a window manager that will do all the
things I like as well as these new fangled things you like.

>If it's obsolete, then what is my P133 laptop, P120 backup workstation,
>and 486/66 router?

They are obsoleter, of course. :-)

>You could, in theory I suppose, with such a setup simulate a dual 700
>with your single 1400 (and without having to deal with IPI's or cache
>synchronization).  But wouldn't you rather just have a dual 1400?

I'd rather not *pay* for a dual 1400.  Regardless, it is an interesting
idea to hard limit all processes to at most 1/2 the cpu.  I don't know of
anyone who has done this already.  And I don't know how much of the feel
of a real dual cpu box this would have.  Maybe one of us will have to
code up a hack and find out.

Stephen.

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