Beonex Communicator

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Beonex Communicator
Original authorBen Bucksch
DeveloperBeonex Business Services
Initial releaseNever
Preview release
0.8.2-stable / 21 March 2003
Repository
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Written inC++, XUL, XBL, JavaScript
Engine
    Lua error in Module:EditAtWikidata at line 29: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
    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

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    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]

    File:BeOL.png
    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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