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Browster 2.0 makes MySpace (barely) bearable
Firefox extension and IE plugin Browster recently reached the big 2.0, and with it, brought some sexy new features that might just make the internet a friendlier place. Most notably, Browster 2.0 will strip out all of the badly written buggy CSS, annoying song previews, and all that other crap that helps make MySpace profiles the scourge of the internets. Yes, Browster does other things, such as pre-caching search result pages, inserting special contextual menus into certain pages, and allow users to view the profiles of MySpace commenters without leaving a given page; but at least to me, what Browser takes away is more important than what it adds. Perhaps Browster will enable me to actually start using MySpace again!
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsclayAug 14th 2006 6:42PM
f**k myspace. i am glad i never jumped on that bandwagon.
notnamedAug 14th 2006 9:18PM
Worst. Program. Ever. Took more than 5 minutes to install the .exe, not .xpi, file (it tried to download 2 .cab files over my dial-up connection, locked up, and crashed), you can't disable the pre-caching feature in Firefox, and it didn't even let me log in to MySpace. (Kept getting redirected to the "you have to be logged in to do this" page.)
pmbAug 14th 2006 10:11PM
Thanks for the tip, notnamed. I'm a little sketched out by a firefox 'extension' that comes as an .exe. There's surely a Greasemonkey script that will clean up myspace ...
RobertAug 14th 2006 11:55PM
Downloaded it. Tried it. Uninstalled it five minutes later. It took too long to load and crashed my firefox session. It also couldn't display a myspace page that I was trying to view to evaluate the product.
XrosAug 15th 2006 12:20AM
The EULA says nasty things like "Hi, have some adware."
"Browster, Inc. reserves the right to run advertisements and promotions on the Browster software. By accepting the terms of this License, you agree that we have the right to run such advertisements and promotions without compensation to you. The timing, type, frequency, placement and extent of advertising by us is subject to change and shall be determined by us at our sole discretion."
Minus ten points, for sure.
HansAug 15th 2006 7:44AM
Much like offline areas, myspace is only as bad as the company you keep. In real life there are certain people that if you get in their car you will be assaulted with loud music and maybe a gaudy air freshner hanging from the rear view mirror.
Myspace allows people to express themselves no matter how bad their tastes may be. While the interface itself is clunky at best you still shouldn't fault the site for its users' creations.
...and no, myspace isn't just for teens. I am in my thirties and frequent myspace and no, I am not an online predator. Many of my friends are on myspace and it has allowed me to track down friends from high school that I hadn't talked to in close to twenty years.
The power of myspace is the enormous number of users that it has. At one time or another almost everyone who has gotten online has gotten a myspace even those that aren't very technically savvy.
JayAug 15th 2006 1:53PM
I've seen my share of obnoxious MySpace pages. And most if not all of those pages belong to adults. I really wonder if these people actually ever look at their own homepage. Guess having 1000 friends on your list makes irrelevant whether anyone actually looks at your page
If MySpace really wants to be taken seriously (and News Corp. appears to be making MySpace their main online presence), then it needs to offer the features that this program purports to offer as options within a user's account. Let me decide for myself whether someone's song starts playing automatically. Give me the ability to turn off their unreadable style sheet and stop the 500 images on the page from loading. Don't make me have to download a nebulous product like this one in order to enjoy using MySpace.
Scott MilenerAug 16th 2006 12:48PM
Thanks for writing about Browster. Browster's goal is to make the web easier to navigate and, as of 2.0, to provide a custom way for users to view pages faster before ommitting to downlaod/view the whole thing. Browster also makes browsing safer by blocking malicious scripts, drive-by downloads, etc.
Thanks for the comments on the install issues, we'll check into it.
Give Browster a try for a few days and we think you'll find as many others do, that it is very hard to go back to the 'old' way of browsing - clicking on everything.
Scott
CEO
Browster