Recently I read that the next generation of Mozilla would be based on the Phoenix branch. So, I thought I would try out Phoenix.

I really like Phoenix. It's much leaner than Mozilla, and as a result loads very quick. Dialogs like Find (CTRL-F) appear in milliseconds, unlike Moz (and even IE) where they are noticeably slow. While it still supports themes like Moz, by default it looks native. This means that it will support your Windows' (or other OS') default colors. It also means if you run a full-OS skinning engine like WindowBlinds, it will be properly skinned to match your overall look.

It supports most of the plugins I was using in Mozilla, and has additional plugins that bring in most of the features that exist in Mozilla that Phoenix doesn't have by default. I've found that any Moz plugin will install, but they don't always work. For instance, NewsMonster doesn't work properly. I really like NewsMonster. It's the only reason I haven't uninstalled Mozilla. Apparently, NewsMonster will support Phoenix some time in the future. I look forward to that. Googlebar works in Phoenix, though the options cannot be brought up. I can't use a browser without a Googlebar. I had to have it to switch off of IE, and now I had to have it to switch to Phoenix. Luckily the default settings are pretty good.

The Phoenix interface is very customizable, much more-so than Mozilla. Though hardly intuitive at first, after some tinkering I was able to entirely customize my interface to match what I'm used to. I was never able to do this in Mozilla.

One major bug is that the bookmark import functions don't work at all. I worked around this by going to the C:\Documents and Settings\Dan Martin\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\25tauve4.slt and copying the bookmarks.html into the equivalent Phoenix directory.

Overall, I really do like Phoenix. I look forward to Mozilla's focus being directed at Phoenix.

[Update] Phoenix later became Firebird, then later became Firefox.  The rest is history.