Beonex Communicator
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Beonex Communicator 0.6 displaying the Book of Mozilla
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| Original author(s) | Ben Bucksch |
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| Developer(s) | Beonex Business Services |
| Initial release | 0.6, 11 November 2000[1] |
| Discontinued | 0.8.2-stable / 21 March 2003 |
| Development status | discontinued |
| Written in | C++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD |
| Available in | English, German |
| Type | Internet suite |
| License | MPL/Netscape Public License[2] |
| Website | www |
Beonex Communicator was an open source Internet suite based on the Mozilla Application Suite (MAS) by Ben Bucksch, a German Mozilla developer.[3] It was intended to have a higher security and privacy level than other commercial products.[4][5][6]
The Internet suite contained a Web browser, an email and news client, an HTML editor (based on Mozilla Composer) and an IRC client (based on ChatZilla).[5][6][7]
Beonex Business Services offered the suite for free and provided documentation, easy install routines for third-party plug-ins, and tried to sell support and customer-specific changes on the browser.[8][9] The main goal was to implement Kerberos, OpenPGP, and LDAP in Beonex,[10] but that was marked as failed in mid-2004.[11]
Contents
History[edit]
Overall, this project seems most interested in staying as true to Mozilla as possible.[12]
The Mozilla Organization stated that the Mozilla Application Suite was only for developers and testing purposes and was not meant for end users.[13][14][15][16]
On 5 January 2001 Beonex was included in the Linux distribution kmLinux version S-0.4, but was removed in version S-0.5 released on 23 March 2001.[17]
Beonex 0.8 released in June 2002 received positive reviews about its speed.[18][19]
Beonex Launcher(BeOL, spoken B-O-L), was an additional upcoming product that never left alpha status which was a stripped down version of the Internet suite Beonex Communicator. It was a Web browser combined with an email client and a chat client.[20]
With a few preview releases of version 0.9 in mid-2002 he showed some new features he wanted to integrate, but before this version gained a stable status, he announced on 2 March 2004 that no new releases were planned until the Mozilla Foundation decided its future policy.[21] In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation officially changed its policies and created the Mozilla Corporation to provide end-user support.
Beonex Communicator 0.8.2-stable has several known security issues.[22] Beonex never received much market share.[14]
Comparison with Netscape and MAS[edit]
The browser disabled referrers by default and had the possibility to create a fake referrers.[23] The browser deleted all cookies when the program exited and also disabled several JavaScript functions which could have served as attack vectors.[6][24][25]
In the following comparison table not all releases of Netscape and MAS are included. For a more complete table see Gecko (layout engine).
| Mozilla Application Suite | Netscape | Beonex Communicator | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version | Releasedate | |||
| 0.6 | 6.0 | 0.6[1] | 14 November 2000 | |
| 0.9.2 | 6.1 | |||
| 0.9.4 | 6.2 | |||
| 0.9.4.1 | 6.2.2 | 0.7[1] | 8 November 2001 | |
| 1.0 | 0.8[26] | 5 June 2002 | ||
| 1.0.1 | 7.0 | 0.8.1[27] | 19 September 2002 | |
| 1.0.2 | 7.01 and 7.02 | 0.8.2[28] | 10 March 2003 | |
| 1.1 | 0.9pre | 27 August 2002[1] | ||
Differences to Netscape[edit]
In contrast to Netscape, Beonex had included nearly the same features except the proprietary parts like the integrated Net2Phone,[29] and the AOL Instant Messenger.[29] The chat tool ChatZilla was integrated[30] and the sidebar and the search engines were also preconfigured.[3][19] Beonex was less resource-intensive than Netscape.[31]
Beonex included a migration tool to include the old profiles from Netscape Communicator.[6][19]
Differences to MAS[edit]
Beonex Communicator was not a fork of MAS, it was a separate branch, so no significant changes were made.[32] HTML email and JavaScript had been turned off by default and thus displaying email only in plain text with bold and cursive additions[6][33] which was added later in MAS 1.1.[34] The search engines were compatible to the Mycroft project and were located in the sidebar providing more features.[35]
New features[edit]
Beonex integrated a special tool to change the user agent.[36]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d Bucksch, Ben (12 March 2003). "News". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
- ^ Bucksch, Ben. "Legal notices". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
- ^ a b "Mozilla-Entwickler mit eigener Browser-Distribution" (in German). Heinz Heise. 14 November 2000. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Huchler, Andreas (February 2001). "Frische Ware" (in German). LinuxUser. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ a b "Beonex". Kefk Network. 4 June 2002. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ a b c d e D'Hollander, Peter (February 2004). "Alternative Browsers". Personal Computer Magazine (in Dutch): 96, 97. ISSN 0772-8077.
- ^ "Beonex User Agent Strings". UserAgentString.Com. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ "Vielversprechender Netscape 6 Konkurrent" (in German). Blindschleiche.de. 26 November 2000. Archived from the original on 16 October 2004. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Foster-Johnson, Eric (30 November 2003). "Just browsing, thanks". ComputerUser. IDG. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- ^ "Announcing Beonex". Mozillazine. Mozilla. 29 November 2000. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ "Bug 124026 - Roaming - funding via Beonex". Mozilla. 24 May 2004. Retrieved 30 January 2011.
- ^ "Beonex Communicator 0.6 Pre". Tucows. 30 November 2000. Archived from the original on 14 November 2002.
- ^ "технологии – Mozilla празднует 10-летие" (in Russian). CyberSecurity.ru. 23 January 2008. Retrieved 30 January 2011.
- ^ a b Metzger, Holger. "Über Mozilla" (in German). Retrieved 30 January 2011.; shorten English version available here
- ^ Violka, Karsten (2002). "Zahmes Monster". C't (in German) (Heinz Heise) 13: 218.
- ^ Bager, Jo (2002). "Surfen ohne e - Mit Opera und Mozilla sicherer ins Netz". C't (in German) (Heinz Heise) 25: 106.
- ^ "Entwicklungsgeschichte". Schleswig-Holstein. 6 December 2004. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ Kluge, Oliver (2002). "Jagdgesellschaft" (in German) (12). Linux-Magazin. p. 2. Retrieved 29 January 2011.[dead link]
- ^ a b c Behrens, Fionn (2 December 2000). "Slimfast für Mozilla" (in German). Linux-Community.de. Archived from the original on 12 July 2002. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Bucksch, Ben. "BeOL". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
- ^ Kluge, Oliver (September 2005). "Soll der Fuchs ihn holen" (in German) 9. LinuxUser. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
- ^ "Mozilla Browser Cross Domain Violation Vulnerability". Security Focus. 16 April 2003. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Schulzki-Haddouti, Christiane (31 January 2003). "Digitale Spuren - Surfer hinterlassen im Netz Spuren". Telepolis (in German). Heinz Heise. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ "Beonex-Browser: Mozilla 1.0 mit mehr Sicherheitsfunktionen". Golem.de. 7 June 2002. Retrieved 30 January 2011.
- ^ Huchler, Andreas (March 2001). "Tore zur WWWelt - Sieben aktuelle Web-Browser im Vergleich" (in German) 3. LinuxUser. Retrieved 8 February 2011.
- ^ "Open-Source-Browser Beonex Communicator in Version 0.8" (in German). Heinz Heise. 7 June 2002. Retrieved 5 April 2011.
- ^ Bucksch, Ben. "0.8.1". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Bucksch, Ben. "Release-notes". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ a b "Zweiter Ableger vom Mozilla" (in German). GIGA Television. Archived from the original on 3 December 2002. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Behme, Henning (2001). "World Wide Web". iX (in German) (Heinz Heise) 1: 26.
- ^ "Netscape 6: Fett, aber schnell (Update)" (in German). Heinz Heise. 14 November 2000. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Bucksch, Ben. "We are accepting patches". Beonex Communicator. Retrieved 30 January 2011.
- ^ Violka, Karsten (2002). "Nur-Text-Mails im Mozilla". C't (in German) (Heinz Heise) 17: 188. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
- ^ "Mozilla 1.1 Alpha ist da" (in German). Golem.de. 12 June 2002. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
- ^ Krause, Ralph (1 March 2002). "Browser Comparison". Linux Journal. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ Лепихов, Константин (17 March 2004). Прыткая ящерица (in Russian). Computerra.ru.
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