Avant Browser: Close, But No Cigar!
Jun 29 '03
The Bottom Line Although it has the potential, I would avoid this until most of the bugs are corrected.
Never being a huge fan of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, I hung onto Netscape Communicator for as long as I could, or until compatibility became an issue.
Opera Browser was another alternative to MSIE that I used, but since most sites are optimized for MSIE, it too was, to me anyways, a novelty.
Over a year ago I tried a browser which uses the MSIE engine, but added features found in Opera. At the time it was called IE Opera, but now carries the title, Avant Browser.
What is Avant Browser
To me, it’s the best of MSIE and Opera rolled into one. Using the MSIE engine, Avant takes the browser a step further by adding easy to access shortcuts and features found in other browsers.
This opinion is based on Avant Browser v8.01 builb 108 Final, running Windows XP, 512 MB RAM, 1.33 GHz Athlon T-Bird.
Requirements
Pentium 166 PC+, at least 16 MB RAM. Windows 9X through XP. It’s recommended that you use version 6+ of MSIE to harness all of Avant’s features.
Setup/Install
The download is quite small (about 900 K ) since we’re not downloading a whole browser, just added features to MSIE.
The install is quick and painless, and you’re afforded the opportunity to create various shortcuts instead of forcing them down your throat.
Interface
One of the first things you’ll notice is the series of icons across the upper-right corner.
• A left and right arrow to navigate open pages within the browser.
• The next three are ;Cascade and Tile All windows (both vertically and horizontally)
• Maximize All
• Close All, then Close All except the current window.
The last three are your basic Window functions.
Features
Most of the features included with MSIE are included with this version of Avant. The previous version I was using was 7, and it was at times buggy. I attempted to run several builds of v8 beta with varying success, so I opted to stick with v7 until this final release.
• Block Macromedia Flash animation or images by toggling it on or off in the toolbar.
• Block pop-up ads in the same manner. Be sure to toggle the sound off, otherwise prepare to be annoyed. Occasionally, maybe one in 50 pop-ups makes it through. How or why, I don’t know.
• A skin feature which I’ve tried but don’t use. It’s default is on, but can be quickly disabled.
• Safe Recovery- A feature found in Opera that will reopen your last opened windows after a crash!
• An additional full screen mode called Full Desktop. Basically like MSIE’s full screen mode, but the taskbar, and Avant toolbars are visible on mouser-over. Or choose the default full screen.
• Multi-Window- Much like Opera’s tabbed browsing feature. Open new browser windows within one instance of Avant.
• Spyware Free- Well, so it says. I have seen no indication to think otherwise.
• From the Tools menu, control everything from blocking images, ActiveX, Java applets, and sounds.
• A feature I rarely use myself is Mouse gesturing, part of Opera, it’s a poor man’s way of getting around a Microsoft Explorer mouse! ;) By right or left-clicking, and holding, and then clicking the opposite button, you can navigate both forward and backward in pages.
Some Browser Options Worth Mentioning
• Open multiple start pages on browser start-up. If you’re like me, I stop at about 4-5 sites every time I get online. Why not open them automatically?
• Double-Click an open space on the Avant taskbar to open a new window. Click an open window on the bar with the scroll wheel button to close.
• Or use the very same scroll button to open a link in new tabbed window.
• When closing Avant, choose to clear anything from cookies, temporary cache, auto-complete passwords, files, browser history and more. Just check off which to delete and which to keep.
• On minimize, you can send the browser to the tray and take up less real estate on your taskbar.
Now For The Bad Stuff
Let’s start with the biggest of them all! When exiting Avant, it doesn’t want to let go of XP. Using Task Manager after exit, Avant will sit there and suck up about 95% of your CPU cycles and hang on to about 100 MB RAM in the process. While it’s easy to end the process, it’s a bug nonetheless. The developer is currently working on the problem and has been for nearly a month. It doesn’t seem to affect Windows 98/ME, just 2000 and XP.
Still on bug, occasionally while browsing for an extended period of time, the browser becomes sluggish and barely usable. This forces me to open the Task Manager, and ending the process. Once restarted, all is fine until next time.
The rest are minor annoyances.
For example:
• Some popups sneak their way through.
• When typing in one tabbed window and typing in a URL, if you switch to another window and then back, the URL disappears.
• You can’t edit Favorites by right-clicking from the menu, nor can you change the icon on the links bar.
• Also in Favorites, the order is sorted alphabetically with no way to change it.
• Sometimes when opening a duplicate window, your scroll wheel refuses to perform its duties; instead the URL window opens and scrolls. After several clicks on the actual page, all goes back to normal.
Overall
Would I recommend this browser? In it’s buggy current state, no! I will continue to use it sparingly though, at least until most of these fixes are in.
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