Beonex Communicator

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox software Beonex Communicator is a discontinued open-source Internet suite based on the Mozilla Application Suite (MAS) by Ben Bucksch, a German Mozilla developer.<ref name="heise">Template:Cite web</ref> It was intended to have a higher security and privacy level than other commercial products.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="kefk" /><ref name="pcm">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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).<ref name="kefk">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="pcm" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref name="blindschleiche">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The main goal was to implement Kerberos, OpenPGP, and LDAP in Beonex,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> but that was marked as failed in mid-2004.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was discontinued before reaching production release stage.

History

Template:Quote box Mozilla Organization stated that the Mozilla Application Suite was only for developers and testing purposes and was not meant for end users.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="holger">Template:Cite web; shorten English version available here Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Beonex 0.8 was released in June 2002 received positive reviews about its speed.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="linux community" />

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Beonex never received much market share.<ref name="holger" />

In October 2020, the distributor of Beonex joined the Coalition for App Fairness, which defends the rights of app developers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Comparison with Netscape and MAS

The browser does not transmit referrers by default and has the possibility to create a fake referrers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The browser deletes all cookies upon exiting and disables several JavaScript functions which could have served as attack vectors.<ref name="pcm" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Beonex also allows changing the user agent.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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<ref name="newsarchive">Template:Cite web</ref>	14 November 2000
0.9.2	6.1
0.9.4	6.2
0.9.4.1	6.2.2	0.7<ref name="newsarchive" />	8 November 2001
1.0		0.8<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	5 June 2002
1.0.1	7.0	0.8.1<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	19 September 2002
1.0.2	7.01 and 7.02	0.8.2<ref name="relnotes08">Template:Cite web</ref>	10 March 2003
1.1		0.9pre	27 August 2002<ref name="newsarchive" />

Differences from Netscape

In contrast with Netscape, Beonex has included nearly the same features except the proprietary parts like the integrated Net2Phone,<ref name="giga">Template:Cite web</ref> and the AOL Instant Messenger.<ref name="giga" /> For online chatting, ChatZilla was integrated<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and the sidebar and the search engines are also pre-configured.<ref name="heise" /><ref name="linux community">Template:Cite web</ref> Beonex is less resource-intensive than Netscape.<ref name="heise2">Template:Cite web</ref>

Beonex includes a migration tool to import old profiles from Netscape Communicator.<ref name="pcm" /><ref name="linux community" />

Differences from MAS

Beonex Communicator was not a fork of MAS; rather, it was a separate branch, so no significant changes were made.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> HTML email and JavaScript are turned off by default and thus, it displays email only in plain text with bold and cursive additions<ref name="pcm" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> which were added later in MAS 1.1.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The search engines is compatible with the Mycroft project and is located in the sidebar providing more features.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

External links

• Beonex
• Template:Freshmeat
• Beonex Communicator Screenshots, Flickr