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REVIEW - OFFBYONE WEB BROWSER

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

As is often the case when I find out about software, this started with a problem I wanted solving. Once again, the problem concerned the use of Flash content on web pages.

At work I have a select list of web pages that I look at every day to catch up with the news. A number are concerned with Space activity, some are based around general computing news and some are links to Linux news. One of these pages is the news archive of Computing magazine, at http://www.computing.co.uk/news/all.

The news archive page of Computing is a set of links to the news stories of the last 7 days, split up into each day. This enables one to very quickly review what has been happening and to select the items on which to get further details. Well, it would be quick if the page wasn't festooned with adverts. It is bad enough having the news pages themselves having adverts, but the index page is really annoying. As you flip back and forth between news item and then index you constantly have to wait while different adverts are displayed. This was not so bad when the adverts were simply images, as the network speed is very fast at work. However, more and more of the adverts are in Flash format now. The delay in loading time, as well as the extra clicking to say I do not want to install Macromedia Flash, every time I view the index page, is very tiresome. For some reason, my very ancient version of Netscape at work just crashes when it sees Flash now, so I could not use that.

As I am at work I cannot install the No Flash! Program that I use at home to solve this problem. What to do?

My first thought was to get a text only browser. I did a web search and Lynx was the one most predominantly mentioned. I had heard about it before, so decided to see if this would fit the bill. It is easy enough to find. The primary version works at the DOS level, but there is a version that works with Windows. I found two problems with Lynx.

First you had to set up a configuration file to make it work. Effectively, you needed to set up all the network addressing to allow connection to the Internet. While I had obtained all the strange details before, when setting up a Linux web browser, it is still a fiddly task. It is made worse by our network administrators who change the addresses occasionally to keep you on your toes. Because of this latter problem I never got the DOS version of Lynx to work.

I downloaded the version of Lynx that was supposed to work with Windows. Great, except that it came as an install file. This meant I did not know what it was going to do, so I could not risk installing it on my machine at work. I am not going to install anything at work that I cannot remove easily, in case it messes up the normal set up. We are not supposed to install anything at work, so I much prefer to use stand alone files to click and go.

Having decided that Lynx was not going to solve my problem, I decided to do another web search for alternative web browsers. One of those I came across, OffByOne, seemed to have the right credentials. No install required, did not mess with the registry, did not mess with the system files and did not support Flash! Another slice of FAB (Free and Acceptably Behaved) software. It does add an additional ob1.ini file in the Windows directory, but I can live with that.

Update - Putting the ob1.ini file in the Windows directory is the default action. However, once it is formed after first running OffByOne, ob1.ini can be moved to the same directory as the OffByOne exe file. Windows can thus be kept prinstinely clean.

OffByOne, (OB1), comes from http://www.offbyone.com as a zip file. You simply unzip it to a folder of choice and the installation is complete, unless you want to create some Start Menu items or desktop icons. You have precisely 4 files, one of which is a readme, 2 are only needed if you want Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support and the OB1.exe file itself. The latter is less than 1.2Mb in size so will comfortably fit on a floppy if you want a portable web browser.

To start OffByOne simply click the OB1.exe file. If you have an internet connection it will start immediately and display the OffByOne web page. If you use dial up your dial-up networking login box comes up, which you fill in as normal and then you are online. It is no different to using Internet Explorer (IE).

As far as the copy I used at work was concerned all I had to do was tell it the address of the proxy server and I was away.

One of the idiosyncrasies of OB1, though it does save screen estate, is the lack of an Address Bar. To give it a web page to access you have to click the URL button. Then you have to give the address, INCLUDING the 'http://www' bit. Slightly annoying, but once you have built up a favourites list it is no great problem.

You would think by its small size, compared to IE, that OB1 is not very powerful. However, just like Obi Wan, OB1 has got the force! (Sorry - Couldn't resist that pun!). It has got limitations, but that is what makes OB1 useful. Its limitation in not supporting Flash was why I wanted it. In addition, it does not support Javascript or save a History file between sessions and all the cookies are stored in one file, which can very easily be deleted between sessions should you wish to remain anonymous.

The lack of support for Javascript could well be a hindrance with normal web surfing, because so many sites use it. However, if you slightly dubious about the pages you are checking out it will stop those nasty trojans getting installed as well. Similarly, the lack of a history file can be a drawback, but it will stop others finding out where you have been surfing, should you be worried about such things.

OB1 will display images, including animated gifs, and you can save pages and images offline should you wish to. If they were in any form of directory structure online this will have to be determined and recreated offline to enable the pages to be viewed offline.

OB1 has all the usual functionality you expect, such as printing pages, finding words on a page, and keeping a favourites list, (which links into your existing IE list). It has a few you would not expect as well. It can show multiple tabbed web pages, which IE still cannot do. Viewing the page info displays not only the source HTML, but other info such as the server pushing it and so on. It has a Hotlist facility that allows you to choose 8 web pages as super-favourites that can be selected from the Hotlist drop down menu.

OB1 allows a certain amount of customisation. You can disable cookies, SSL, image display and animation and a host of things that I do not know the meaning of! You can select a start page to display on start and a home page to display when you click the Home button.

OB1 is created by Home Page Software to demonstrate their web browser control that you can purchase to install in your own applications. It is a pretty impressive demonstration.

OffByOne is not a replacement for a full blown web browser such as IE or Firefox, but it is a very useful tool to have for those times when you want a fast, more secure browser to view those pages when text and standard images are all you want to see.

January 2006

For the new year, OffByOne has been updated. Apart from some minor behind the scenes changes, OffByOne now supports the mouse scroll wheel. Very useful. Once you get used to a scroll wheel it is hard to do without it and it was a slight irritation to go back to the vertical scroll bar with the previous version of OffByOne. Things just keep getting better!

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