CometBird

[MidnightCowboy]

OK, I need some help with this one. Having decided to try it out I've hit some serious issues which I can't yet cope with.

It loads faster than Firefox
It takes Firefox skins (the full bazonky and not just some blurry icons and a smudge in the corner calling itself a 'persona')
It takes all of my Firefox extensions
It has really good security options including private browsing
It has good bookmark and media file management options
It uses less memory than Firefox
Its fast in use
It doesn't crash

How on Earth am I supposed to cope with a browser that works?!

Anyone else tried this one yet?
Attachment 449

[dre]

There was a attachment to the post i believe? i logged in and it was gone...Sounds interesting MC will take a look at it...

[dre]

There it's back again. Anyway will download and try it out.

[dre]

Looks just like FF. Also is called CometBird 3.6. Even the installation process exactly the same as FF. Different features to it i see though... Will commence testing later... Will be interesting to way up resources with FF with add-ons and so on installed...

[Anupam]

I tried CometBird out, and I was not impressed at all.

It is based on Firefox, so you can overlook the fact that everything looks like Firefox. The installation is the same, the interface, options, bookmarks management, add-ons, everything is same. Even the option to import bookmarks from Opera, or IE while installation, is the same. They could have added Firefox to that list, since the browser is based on Firefox. Shame!

The browser must be based very heavily on Firefox, because all Firefox extensions work with the browser, and it opens the Mozilla add-ons site, when you want to look for extensions.

Speed is no different from Firefox 3.6, might be same, or slower. I found Firefox better.

Memory use is no different from Firefox.

For bookmarks synchronization, which is listed as its main feature, it uses CometMarks, which looks like a cheap imitation of Xmarks... and it is available as add-on, preinstalled on the browser. Unimpressive. The site of CometMarks looks like XMarks too.

For downloading media files, it makes use of another add-on, which is preinstalled with the browser... BitComet Video Downloader. Again, not a built-in feature. Can be achieved with any other add-on for Firefox. Unimpressive again.

CometBird feature Notes, and an icon is also there in the bottom right, but I could not figure it out, how to get it started. Clicking on icon won't work, neither I could find it anywhere in the menu.

Other thing was the Softwares Menu, I don't know why it was presented at all. Just to be different. It was more of an annoyance. It was also available as an add-on, which could be uninstalled. Needless to say, I had uninstalled it .

The only new and useful feature of this browser was the Word Translator, which does a good job I think. Hover the mouse over any word, and it will translate it for you. Very useful.

Overall, I was pretty much unimpressed with the browser, as it offers nothing new, but tries to offer by imitating things, in non-innovative way. That does not impress me. I uninstalled it, and won't visit it again. There are other better choices, if you want a different browser. If I want a Firefox look-alike, then no thanks, I am happy with Firefox.

Ah, one more thing, I closed the browser and it was still active in memory. I had to terminate it from the Task Manager.

[MidnightCowboy]

Thanks for your feedback Anupam.

This is so far typical of the reviews I've seen for CometBird.


"CometBird is a good option for people who wants one or more of the following features from their Browser:

• Quick start up
• Clean, uncluttered interface
• Built-in links for Social Networking sites
• Ability to easily download media files (audio/ video) from sites such as YouTube

So far, we've had a whale of a time with CometBird - not a single crash and no memory leak issue as well, with the latest version. We have also not faced any security breaches using CometBird. The Plug-in Web of Trust (WOT) works closely and inside CometBird, providing an additional layer of security against threats."

Being based on the identical Firefox code, you're right in that it doesn't offer anything at all over Firefox, except a faster start-up which might interest some. It's also got no "alternative" direction such as Flock which aims to capture a specific market.

Be interested to hear some other views.

[deya]

I've had CometBird installed a couple of times in the past, then unistalled it. Don't know what it is about this browser but it intrigues me because it's an exact clone of Firefox, almost. It does seem to be quicker than FF, uses less resources at first but that slowly ramps up after a while and it does sometimes carry on running when closed, as Anupam pointed out. One or two things I've noticed.

First is the add ons that are pre loaded, the Browser UI Enhancement has an options button and if you click it, it brings up a window which has a Statistics tab. If you open it you'll see that it reports information about your search engine use, you can uncheck the box to stop this happening but I'm not so sure about this feature, who is it reporting the information to ?... and some of the pre installed add ons have the options button greyed out so you can't alter the settings at all, this is the part that I don't like, plus I don't like the fact that the add ons are there to begin with.

Second is that CCleaner doesn't recognise CometBird, at least it doesn't for me, and I find this odd seeing as how it's a FF clone. When I use SeamMonkey, Flock etc, CCleaner cleans up after them, clears the cache and cookies, which is how I prefer things to be. You can run CCleaner while CometBird is running and it doesn't ask you to close the browser like it does with FF and the others, it doesn't recognise it. I have to clean the cache manually, even using the Clear Recent History in Tools doesn't clean it and it soon builds up quite a hefty sized file in local settings.

The Software tab just seems like adware to me and I see no use for it but to advertise stuff I don't want. The Updated Softwares function in the drop down menu makes no sense to me at all.

It's a shame because it is quick and reasonably light, but no matter how I look at it the thing is, for some reason, I don't trust it. Maybe it's just me, maybe CometBird is just a way to get BitComet noticed more, it's on their main site as recommended software, but something makes me wary of it and I can't quite put my finger on the reason why. I've scanned every single CometBird file and folder with everything I've got on here and it comes up clean. I downloaded a browser recently and MSE grabbed it straight away because it had a piece of spyware atattched, but not this one.

I'd like to trust it because I like the browser but.... and because of this I wouldn't put it on anyone elses PC for them to use. At first I was impressed with it, until I started checking it out more and then I wasn't so impressed. So now I'll leave it alone.

[MidnightCowboy]

This is useful stuff, thanks for your input deya.

The statistical gathering seems little different to that harvested by many other programs, and I guess you can always uninstall any parts you don't want. I've not seen any adverse comments about this browser which is one of the reasons I opened the thread. Maybe it's a Sumo in disguise?

Hopefully if there is a hidden agenda someone will know about it and tell us

[deya]

Well I'd love to see some more input here about CometBird if anyone has any. I came across it on here in the first place, some time back, on the best free browser page of the main site, someone posted a link in the comments and I downloaded it then. And to honest there was a brief spell where I uninstalled FF and used CometBird instead, the few add ons I use all work fine with it and the browser ran really well... it is quicker than FF, for me anyway, and the resource use is, on the whole, better and I wanted to use it on one of my laptops that doesn't have much in the way of horse power. It would be ideal for that.

I'm hoping that someone can maybe explain why CCleaner doesn't recognise it, I mean, if it has the same source code and everything as FF then why is that ? When I use SeaMonkey the cache and stuff gets cleaned when I run CCleaner, the same when I used to use Flock, so why not CometBird ? I'd use it if I didn't have to faff about in local settings to clean the cache. I know that sounds a bit obsessive but I prefer all the gunk to be gone when I've finished using the browser, any browser. I appreciate the fact that you can get rid of the unwanted add ons and the info reporting, which I know that some other apps do and it's not uncommon. I'd also like to know who makes it, is it BitComet ?.. I'm not bothered if it is, I don't particularly mind them advertising their software, and the software button can be deleted if I remember correctly. I just can't seem to find out who's behind it.

Anyway, you've got me started with it again. I've been too busy this last couple of weeks to do much in the way of trying out software but Im going to give it another try over the weekend and see if I can find out more about it, because the thing is I would like to use, and trust CometBird. So I'll keep following this thread and see if anyone can put my (slightly paronoid) mind at rest.

Cheers.

[MidnightCowboy]

I don't have a direct contact myself with the CCleaner guys but I have sent an email to Piriform and I'll let you know their response if there is one