Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 23:10:02 -700
From: Walter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Comparing Bobcat To Net-Tamer's Web Browser
After experimenting with Bobcat E07, as a matter of curiosity when
some had discussed or asked about Bobcat here recently, I find myself
both enticed and disappointed by Bobcat. It's a really good
text-based web browser in want of more conventional memory than most
older computers have to offer. If not for the fact Bobcat often crashes due
to insufficient memory to load a web page, or a second page down from
the first, Bobcat would be all I'd ask for in a text-based web browser
-- save for the ability to use HTTPS secure servers for confidential
transactions. Bobcat's layout of HTML text is nearly perfect. Color
customization and bolding help make sense out of screens of text from
various websites. The format of text -- I. E. alignment of columnar
text -- is usually right on instead of skewed or jumbled, as is often
the case in Net-Tamer. Forms expand as they should and search requests
are submitted properly. I really have little to complain about other
than the memory issues. That's too bad. And it's equally too bad that
it seems somewhere between difficult and impossible to write a good
text-based web-browser for computers that are less than modern yet
still useful. But, even on a PENTIUM II, Bobcat can't pull through in
far too many situations.
At present, it seems the best of the DOS web browsers is Arachne. You
need a rather powerful machine to run that software properly and at
better than a crawl. As much as we complain about David Colston's web
browser, at least it doesn't stop downloading a link from a webpage
because it only had enough memory to load the original page. And,
although it takes a long time to parse, it doesn't take so long
downloading a page -- parsing as it downloads -- that the website
times out and closes the connection before the download is finished.
It seems that one's options are to (1) live with Net-Tamer's
limitations, (2) graduate to a well-endowed 80386 or better system and
use Arachne -- if limited or non-existent eyesight is not an issue you
must deal with -- or (3) use the UNIX-based Lynx browser from remote.
I'm guessing it's now only a dream to have a good text-based web
browser for a PC that's less than a 386 with lots of conventional and
EMS/XMS RAM. That's somewhat frustrating in that there are STILL some
8086 and 80286 computers around. (this message was composed and mailed
on an 8086 laptop) It was frustrating to watch Bobcat today as it
would do so many things well but ultimately crash or terminate webpage
download because its available memory had been "exhausted" -- all 498K
of it after the packet driver had been loaded. I was so close, yet so
far from seeing competently designed and implemented web browser
software for minimalist hardware -- hardware that may go to a
recycling center before it has suffered critical failure.
Walter Scott
[[[[[ News & Views 24 Hours A Day, 7 Days A Week. That's The Net ]]]]]
Net-Tamer V 1.09.2 - Registered
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