iRider

April 5, 2006 10:18 AM

iRider. Is it more than just an IE shell? Could it possibly be worth paying for? Can it really do anything that Firefox can't? Discuss.
posted by bingo (49 comments total)

I have to say, one thing that I like is that it displays popup ads in a new tab. That's a good way of keeping them out of your way while still giving the site a chance to earn revenue from the ads instead of from subscriptions.
posted by bingo at 10:20 AM on April 5, 2006

It looks like the PowerPoint application interface applied to the web. My page history is shown as slides in a sidebar? Meh.
posted by mathowie at 10:26 AM on April 5, 2006

iWould just like to say that iAm sick of iProductnames. If iWere a marketing squid, iWould try harder.
posted by CheeseburgerBrown at 10:26 AM on April 5, 2006

Pop-up ads open under your current page, so they don't get in your way. .....Pop-up blockers have also just encouraged advertisers to use more obnoxious kinds of ads, such as layer ads that appear within pages.

Oh yeah, I'm loving that. All FireFox does is disable 99% of all pop ups (and allow the easy single use. And because advertisers will resort to other methods we're supposed to just accept the pop ups? Not on my intarnets.

It looks like its got some interesting new functionality (particularly the Pin pages thing since FireFox's locktab never seems to work for me).

But it will fail because of this Buy iRider and all version 2 updates for $29. When the options are free or not-free, people tend to go with free. Crazy.
posted by fenriq at 10:30 AM on April 5, 2006

So, rather then tabs, you get thumbnails? That's kinda nice, but I remain unempressed.
posted by delmoi at 10:31 AM on April 5, 2006

Woops, forgot to complete the parenthetical.
FireFox makes it easy to allow pop ups from a site if you need or want them. I much prefer the choice.
posted by fenriq at 10:31 AM on April 5, 2006

It's cute that they expect people to pay for a web browser.
posted by driveler at 10:32 AM on April 5, 2006

Funny how all the reviews compare it to firefox. Looks like it has some potential, though. I'll give it a try at home and give an honest review. Check back in a few hours!
posted by Citizen Premier at 10:32 AM on April 5, 2006

Is it still the Trident rendering engine? If so, then it fails out of the gate.
posted by Fezboy! at 10:33 AM on April 5, 2006

Oh, it also looks like you get a tree-based history, which is kind of nice.

The "back" and "forward" buttons in browsers are the lamest navigation system EVAR. Surfing the web isn't linear, it's like a tree. You could do away with tabs and tons of windows if you just used a navigation system that incorporated that model, rather then the linear model split among lots of windows/tabs.

I would imagine such a thing could be implemented as a firefox plugin, but I'm much to lazy for that.
posted by delmoi at 10:34 AM on April 5, 2006

Can it really do anything that Firefox can't?

You mean like restrict itself to Windows only? Yes it can!
posted by unixrat at 10:35 AM on April 5, 2006

And yeah, anything that uses IE = Teh lame. Why not use the firefox rendering engine?
posted by delmoi at 10:35 AM on April 5, 2006

Is it more than just an IE shell?
No.

Could it possibly be worth paying for?
No.

Can it really do anything that Firefox can't?
No.

Discuss.
No.
posted by anomie at 10:35 AM on April 5, 2006

"Is it still the Trident rendering engine? If so, then it fails out of the gate."

oh yes it is! So it's essentially some decorative curtains draped around a POS. Nice.
posted by Fezboy! at 10:37 AM on April 5, 2006

delmoi, check this out.
posted by tumult at 10:39 AM on April 5, 2006

iRider doesn't look particularly innovative to me. Opera already does lots of that fancy page-management / session-management stuff, no extensions required.

That's a good way of keeping them out of your way while still giving the site a chance to earn revenue from the ads instead of from subscriptions.

That's click-fraud, no? Charging the advertiser for an impression or a page-view that never actually hits a retina?
posted by Western Infidels at 10:40 AM on April 5, 2006

"After all, why would you want to shop for a $60,000 car using a ten-cent browser?" (from here)

????

I do like the hierarchical history, though.
posted by rafter at 10:47 AM on April 5, 2006

I actually like the thumbnail tab sidebar. And you can toggle the thumbnails bigger and smaller.

I also like the fact that you can open a bunch of pages and then 'Next Page' to the next one that's loaded, as opposed to the next one in chronological order of how you clicked the links.

In their demo, they brag about their great memory management. If it's based on IE, can they really change the way IE manages memory?

I agree that asking people to pay for a browser that is not already phenomenally popular (if at all) is asking a lot.
posted by bingo at 10:49 AM on April 5, 2006

Being superficial for a second: the icons are ugly, and unnecessarily noisy UI scheme -- it could do with less borders and background gradients and more contextual/automatic highlighting/detailing. It would make a big difference to me.

The history features look interesting -- there was some research done back in 1998 with more complex history lists like this, and other similar graph-based lists. I guess one would have to try it out to determine if it is really an improvement.
posted by bhouston at 10:49 AM on April 5, 2006

/confused as hell
Why would anyone, ever pay for a web browser?
I think my brain just stopped working.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:57 AM on April 5, 2006

Why would anyone, ever pay for a web browser?

For a long time, I bought Opera, starting with... 3.52? It was a great browser at the time and I ran it on older hardware, which made things really nice. Then they released a Linux version (5, I think?) and I bought that too.

Eventually Moz overtook it as my browser of choice, so I never bothered to upgrade to 8.

And then they started to give 8 away for free, so I'm back on the O train again. :)
posted by unixrat at 11:03 AM on April 5, 2006

I also bought Opera at one point, before there was such a thing as Firefox.
posted by bingo at 11:07 AM on April 5, 2006

takes up a fair amount of screen space...
posted by RufusW at 11:08 AM on April 5, 2006

So, rather then tabs, you get thumbnails? That's kinda nice, but I remain unempressed.

OmniWeb has had thumbnail tabs for a couple of years now.
posted by cillit bang at 11:16 AM on April 5, 2006

Tab Sidebar adds thumbnail tabs to Firefox.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 11:21 AM on April 5, 2006

One of the flaws with trying to charge for a browser is that soooner or later (usually sooner) somebody will create a Firefox extension that does the same thing. Case in point: Tab Sidebar. Never heard of it before, just searched for it after reading this, and I kind of like it.

Dynamically updates the pages, scales them as you resize the sidebar, and lets you navigate back/forward in each tab without needing to switch to another tab. There's no page grouping, and it would be nice to see some of the customisability that Tab Mix Plus offers.
posted by sysinfo at 11:22 AM on April 5, 2006

Gah, beaten to the punch. So that's what preview's for...
posted by sysinfo at 11:23 AM on April 5, 2006

This isn't anything new...I remember reading about it in Dvorak's PC Mag column from 2003. I downloaded it to have a look, but there wasn't anything that impressed me.
posted by pretzel at 11:37 AM on April 5, 2006

too lazy to MeTa this, but can we declare a moratorium on the dumabass "discuss" imperative?

it's cliche', it's annoying, it makes you sound like a twat. and i'm very concerned with how you sound, bingo.
posted by Hat Maui at 11:48 AM on April 5, 2006

Discuss.

I think you are getting verklempt.
posted by caddis at 11:48 AM on April 5, 2006

I tried it a year ago - it was kind of cool for like a minute but then I realized it wasn't at all. Don't worry about it.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:38 PM on April 5, 2006

So, rather then tabs, you get thumbnails? That's kinda nice, but I remain unempressed.

Umm, press F12
posted by FeldBum at 1:00 PM on April 5, 2006

I am still too busy paying my iStudentLoan.
posted by srboisvert at 1:06 PM on April 5, 2006

So, rather then tabs, you get thumbnails? That's kinda nice, but I remain unempressed.

Umm, press F12

Umm, okay..?
posted by delmoi at 1:22 PM on April 5, 2006

Somewhat reminds me of NeoPlanet. :) I really used to like NeoPlanet, though. :) Pity it's not been updated in a really long time!
posted by Vamier at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2006

OmniWeb has had thumbnail tabs for a long time now.

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/gallery/
posted by Mikey-San at 2:03 PM on April 5, 2006

"it's cliche', it's annoying, it makes you sound like a twat. and i'm very concerned with how you sound, bingo."

I think Hat Maui is being a sanctimonious turd.

Discuss.
posted by stenseng at 2:10 PM on April 5, 2006

everyone is getting verklempt
posted by caddis at 2:21 PM on April 5, 2006

I think

that's when i knew stenseng was lying.
posted by Hat Maui at 3:00 PM on April 5, 2006

Oh wait, you have to pay for it.

Well, fuck that.
posted by Citizen Premier at 3:19 PM on April 5, 2006

bingo, i'm annoyed at you for posting this and i'm annoyed at the dumbass flash demo. i'm annoyed that on the cusp of ie7's introduction, some random company thinks they can charge money for a browser. dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. if there are in fact any new concepts in this browser... like "new"... brand new... not obscure... or forgotten... but "new"... what's to stop the firefox community from creating an extension to do the same thing? it was one thing for microsoft to go up against netscape. it was another thing for firefox to go up against microsoft. but for god's sake, why in the hell would you go up against microsoft and a large community of people innovating for free?
posted by VulcanMike at 6:08 PM on April 5, 2006

Shiira is worlds ahead of this on the features. It has thumbnail tabs (Very adjustable too!)

And Tab Exposé!

It uses the Webkit rendering engine that Safari uses. It's kind of like the development bleeding-edge Safari. It's also not yet another motherfucking skin to Internet Explorer.
posted by blasdelf at 7:23 PM on April 5, 2006

There are heaps of free featurlicious IE-renderer-wrapper browsers out there. I used Maxthon for a few years (and still do at work), until I switched to Firefox when it hit 1.5.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:58 PM on April 5, 2006

I want a single browser that can have two or more tabs open at once.
posted by 6am at 8:07 AM on April 6, 2006

VulcanMike: I have to problem with anything you're saying; I really thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about this. No need to get annoyed at *me*...I didn't invent the damn thing.

and I kind of liked the flash demo
posted by bingo at 9:59 AM on April 6, 2006

s/to problem/no problem
posted by bingo at 9:59 AM on April 6, 2006

6am: Like this? That's Opera, there.
posted by mendel at 10:05 AM on April 6, 2006

Pepsi Blue. Is it more than just an Blue Soda? Could it possibly be worth paying for? Can it really do anything that Coke Cyan can't? Discuss.
posted by Dreamghost at 1:38 PM on April 6, 2006

bingo wrote "No need to get annoyed at *me*...I didn't invent the damn thing."

So sorry... definitely nothing personal. I forgot my rant tags...
posted by VulcanMike at 2:02 PM on April 8, 2006