Software:Beonex Communicator

From HandWiki
Short description: Internet application suite
Beonex Communicator
Beonex-icon.png
Beonex.6-book-of-mozilla.png
Beonex Communicator 0.6 displaying the Book of Mozilla
Original author(s)Ben Bucksch
Developer(s)Beonex Business Services
Initial releaseNever
Preview release
0.8.2-stable / 21 March 2003
Written inC++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD
Available inEnglish, German
TypeInternet suite
LicenseMPL/Netscape Public License[1]
Websitewww.beonex.com

Beonex Communicator is a discontinued open-source Internet suite based on the Mozilla Application Suite (MAS) by Ben Bucksch, a German Mozilla developer.[2] It was intended to have a higher security and privacy level than other commercial products.[3][4][5] The Internet suite contains a Web browser, an email and news client, an HTML editor (based on Mozilla Composer) and an IRC client (based on ChatZilla).[4][5][6]

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.[7][8] The main goal was to implement Kerberos, OpenPGP, and LDAP in Beonex,[9] but that was marked as failed in mid-2004.[10] It was discontinued before reaching production release stage.

History

Overall, this project seems most interested in staying as true to Mozilla as possible.[11]

Mozilla Organization stated that the Mozilla Application Suite was only for developers and testing purposes and was not meant for end users.[12][13][14][15]

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.[16] Beonex 0.8 was released in June 2002 received positive reviews about its speed.[17][18]

a BeOL preview

Beonex Launcher (BeOL, spoken B-O-L), was an additional upcoming product that never left alpha status; it was a stripped-down version of Beonex Communicator: a Web browser combined with an email client and a chat client.[19]

With a few preview releases of version 0.9 in mid-2002, Bucksch 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.[20] 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.[21] Beonex never received much market share.[13]

In October 2020, the distributor of Beonex joined the Coalition for App Fairness, which defends the rights of app developers.[22]

Comparison with Netscape and MAS

The browser does not transmit referrers by default and has the possibility to create a fake referrers.[23] The browser deletes all cookies upon exiting and disables several JavaScript functions which could have served as attack vectors.[5][24][25] Beonex also allows changing the user agent.[26]

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 Release date
0.6 6.0 0.6[27] 14 November 2000
0.9.2 6.1
0.9.4 6.2
0.9.4.1 6.2.2 0.7[27] 8 November 2001
1.0 0.8[28] 5 June 2002
1.0.1 7.0 0.8.1[29] 19 September 2002
1.0.2 7.01 and 7.02 0.8.2[30] 10 March 2003
1.1 0.9pre 27 August 2002[27]

Differences from Netscape

In contrast with Netscape, Beonex has included nearly the same features except the proprietary parts like the integrated Net2Phone,[31] and the AOL Instant Messenger.[31] For online chatting, ChatZilla was integrated[32] and the sidebar and the search engines are also pre-configured.[2][18] Beonex is less resource-intensive than Netscape.[33]

Beonex includes a migration tool to import old profiles from Netscape Communicator.[5][18]

Differences from MAS

Beonex Communicator was not a fork of MAS; rather, it was a separate branch, so no significant changes were made.[34] HTML email and JavaScript are turned off by default and thus, it displays email only in plain text with bold and cursive additions[5][35] which were added later in MAS 1.1.[36] The search engines is compatible with the Mycroft project and is located in the sidebar providing more features.[37]

References

  1. ↑ Bucksch, Ben. "Legal notices". Beonex Communicator. http://www.beonex.com/communicator/legal/. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Mozilla-Entwickler mit eigener Browser-Distribution" (in de). Heinz Heise. 14 November 2000. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Mozilla-Entwickler-mit-eigener-Browser-Distribution-27527.html. 
  3. ↑ Huchler, Andreas (February 2001) (in de). Frische Ware. LinuxUser. https://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2001/02/007-software/software-02.html?print=y. Retrieved 1 February 2011. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Beonex". Kefk Network. 4 June 2002. http://kefk.net/Open_Source/FS/Beonex/index.html. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 D'Hollander, Peter (February 2004). "Alternative Browsers" (in nl). Personal Computer Magazine: 96, 97. ISSN 0772-8077. 
  6. ↑ "Beonex User Agent Strings". UserAgentString.Com. http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Beonex/. 
  7. ↑ "Vielversprechender Netscape 6 Konkurrent" (in de). Blindschleiche.de. 26 November 2000. http://www.blindschleiche.de/shownews.php3/258. 
  8. ↑ Foster-Johnson, Eric (30 November 2003). "Just browsing, thanks". ComputerUser. IDG. http://www.computeruser.com/articles/just-browsing-thanks.html. 
  9. ↑ "Announcing Beonex". Mozillazine. Mozilla. 29 November 2000. http://mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=1745. 
  10. ↑ "Bug 124026 – Roaming – funding via Beonex". Mozilla. 24 May 2004. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124026. 
  11. ↑ "Beonex Communicator 0.6 Pre". Tucows. 30 November 2000. http://linuxberg.surfnet.nl/x11html/preview/154164.html. 
  12. ↑ "технологии – Mozilla празднует 10-летие" (in ru). CyberSecurity.ru. 23 January 2008. http://www.cybersecurity.ru/net/40269.html. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Metzger, Holger. "Über Mozilla" (in de). http://www.holgermetzger.de/faqabout.html. ; shorten English version available here
  14. ↑ Violka, Karsten (2002). "Zahmes Monster" (in de). C't (Heinz Heise) 13: 218. 
  15. ↑ Bager, Jo (2002). "Surfen ohne e – Mit Opera und Mozilla sicherer ins Netz" (in de). C't (Heinz Heise) 25: 106. 
  16. ↑ "Entwicklungsgeschichte". Schleswig-Holstein. 6 December 2004. http://www.lernnetz-sh.de/kmLinux/changes.html. 
  17. ↑ Kluge, Oliver (2002) (in de). Jagdgesellschaft. Linux-Magazin. p. 2. http://www.linux-magazin.de/Heft-Abo/Ausgaben/2002/12/Jagdgesellschaft/(offset). Retrieved 29 January 2011. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Behrens, Fionn (2 December 2000). "Slimfast für Mozilla" (in de). Linux-Community.de. http://www.linux-community.de/Neues/story?storyid=691. 
  19. ↑ Bucksch, Ben. "BeOL". Beonex Communicator. http://www.developer.beonex.com/beol/. 
  20. ↑ Kluge, Oliver (September 2005) (in de). Soll der Fuchs ihn holen. 9. LinuxUser. http://www.linux-magazin.de/Heft-Abo/Ausgaben/2005/09/Soll-der-Fuchs-ihn-holen. Retrieved 7 February 2011. 
  21. ↑ "Mozilla Browser Cross Domain Violation Vulnerability". Security Focus. 16 April 2003. http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/7363. 
  22. ↑ "Coalition for App Fairness, a group fighting for app store reforms, adds 20 new partners" (in en-US). https://social.techcrunch.com/2020/10/21/coalition-for-app-fairness-a-group-fighting-for-app-store-reforms-adds-20-new-partners/. [yes|permanent dead link|dead link}}]
  23. ↑ Schulzki-Haddouti, Christiane (31 January 2003). "Digitale Spuren – Surfer hinterlassen im Netz Spuren" (in de). Telepolis. Heinz Heise. http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/14/14052/1.html. 
  24. ↑ "Beonex-Browser: Mozilla 1.0 mit mehr Sicherheitsfunktionen". Golem.de. 7 June 2002. http://www.golem.de/0206/20223.html. 
  25. ↑ Huchler, Andreas (March 2001) (in de). Tore zur WWWelt – Sieben aktuelle Web-Browser im Vergleich. 3. LinuxUser. http://www.linux-community.de/Internal/Artikel/Print-Artikel/LinuxUser/2001/03/Sieben-aktuelle-Web-Browser-im-Vergleich. Retrieved 8 February 2011. 
  26. ↑ Лепихов, Константин (17 March 2004). "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}" (in ru). Computerra.ru. http://www.computerra.ru/hitech/32389/print.html. 
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Bucksch, Ben (12 March 2003). "News". Beonex Communicator. http://www.beonex.com/support/announce/news.html. 
  28. ↑ "Open-Source-Browser Beonex Communicator in Version 0.8" (in de). Heinz Heise. 7 June 2002. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Open-Source-Browser-Beonex-Communicator-in-Version-0-8-62640.html. 
  29. ↑ Bucksch, Ben. "0.8.1". Beonex Communicator. http://www.beonex.com/communicator/version/0.8/release-notes/security-alert/081.html. 
  30. ↑ Bucksch, Ben. "Release-notes". Beonex Communicator. http://www.beonex.com/communicator/version/0.8/release-notes/. 
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 "Zweiter Ableger vom Mozilla" (in de). GIGA Television. http://www.giga.de/dbout/reporter5/fullstories/nr20925.html. 
  32. ↑ Behme, Henning (2001). "World Wide Web" (in de). iX (Heinz Heise) 1: 26. 
  33. ↑ "Netscape 6: Fett, aber schnell (Update)" (in de). Heinz Heise. 14 November 2000. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Netscape-6-Fett-aber-schnell-Update-27315.html. 
  34. ↑ Bucksch, Ben. "We are accepting patches". Beonex Communicator. http://www.developer.beonex.com/communicator/patches/. 
  35. ↑ Violka, Karsten (2002). "Nur-Text-Mails im Mozilla" (in de). C't (Heinz Heise) 17: 188. http://www.heise.de/ct/hotline/Nur-Text-Mails-im-Mozilla-312910.html. Retrieved 7 February 2011. 
  36. ↑ "Mozilla 1.1 Alpha ist da" (in de). Golem.de. 12 June 2002. http://www.golem.de/showhigh2.php?file=/0206/20285.html. 
  37. ↑ Krause, Ralph (1 March 2002). "Browser Comparison". Linux Journal. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5413?page=0,1. Retrieved 29 January 2011. 

External links



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