Mustang Browser for Windows (chromium based)

[MilesAhead]

Looking through Softpedia Windows downloads I ran across Mustang Browser 1.42.90.0

It is based on Chromium.  But the flash player works out of the box.  Also it seems to have built in settings to limit the number of exe instances.  Starting up with a blank page it shows 4.  With 6 tabs open it shows 6.

So far i've installed Fastdial and Vanilla Cookie Manager.  It comes with AdOff already installed.

So far so good.  It has the dialog to import bookmarks and settings just like chrome.
My first impression is it is chrome with a sanity check on the number of running instances.  

Edit:  I posted the Softpedia download link because the file seems to be hosted with the download servers.  The home page listed for the program is a commercial consulting site with no link to any freeware I could see.

Edit2:  There seems to be no portable version.  Note that the installer is quite primitive.  You click install and it puts the stuff under Program Files (x86) on a x64 Windows and makes itself the default browser.  It also adds a button to the Taskbar.  Just so you know what to expect.


Edit3:  It is not as super snappy as regular chrome but it seems pretty stingy on memory.  See screen shot.



Edit2:  I found a lag when opening new tabs.  It seems to wait until you click the tab to load.  What it turned out to be was Fast Dial.  It was set to load a background image on the new tab page before loading dials.  There is still a bit of a delay when clicking on a new tab where the background is white.  But the delay is much less noticeable if the Fast Dial has this option set to off.  I noticed complaints about slow tab loading for chrome generally and the answer seemed to be to check an extension that manipulates the new tab page.

It seems very usable now.  Looks pretty nice with Vista Aero Theme.   

[MilesAhead]

I still like this browser.  But there is a quirk where it will not add itself to the default programs list.   If you change default to another browser, then change it back via the button the next time you run Mustang.exe it will not actually change default to itself.

The only way I found to do it is change the name of mustang.exe(e.g. mustangSAV.exe) then run the installer.  It will install and set mustang as the default.  All my settings and extensions were still intact.  If you run the installer without renaming the exe it just launches the exe.

[TaoPhoenix]

"My first impression is it is chrome with a sanity check on the number of running instances"

Does Chrome get bad for that stuff?

[MilesAhead]

"My first impression is it is chrome with a sanity check on the number of running instances"

Does Chrome get bad for that stuff?

-TaoPhoenix (June 22, 2015, 01:03 PM)

You can easily have a dozen or more chrome instances when running 7 or 8 tabs.  By default it opens an instance for each tab and one for each running extension.  The theory is if you have a bad extension it doesn't crash the whole browser.  Just that extension.  Also it makes for fast load and rendering.  But it can hog the system.

[Deozaan]

"My first impression is it is chrome with a sanity check on the number of running instances"

Does Chrome get bad for that stuff?

-TaoPhoenix (June 22, 2015, 01:03 PM)

Does this answer your question?



^^ That is not artificially inflated to make a point. It's with 17 tabs open (which is a relatively low number for me) during my normal browsing when I came to this thread.

[MilesAhead]

Does this answer your question?

-Deozaan

Have you tried any of the switches that cut down on the number of instances?  I am curious if it would hinder performance a great deal.  I notice in Mustang it almost seems like the setting not to load a tab until active is enabled.  There is no such setting in options but maybe there is something set under the covers by the programmer who put it together.  Even when I set New Tab Fast Dial to not use a background image there is a second hesitation before the page loads.  Mustang is not blazingly fast.  But it does get off the dime faster than Firefox or Cyberfox.

[Deozaan]

I am unaware of any such switches.

[MilesAhead]

I am unaware of any such switches.

-Deozaan (June 23, 2015, 05:43 PM)

It seems in google chrome it only gives you -process-per-site and -process-per-tab

chromium used to have a --renderer-process-limit=n switch.  Searching now I don't find it.  Version numbers climb fast these days.  

Although I tried it in chrome myself and it seemed to work.  Maybe it is still in there but no longer documented?

When I set n to 4 and had 8 to 10 tabs open I rarely got more than a dozen exe instances.  Starting to a blank page was typically 4 instances.

[Innuendo]

So, to reference the OP, what makes this Chromium variant different than the umpteen other Chromium variants out there?

[MilesAhead]

So, to reference the OP, what makes this Chromium variant different than the umpteen other Chromium variants out there?

-Innuendo (June 27, 2015, 08:22 AM)

The main feature is some kind of limitation on the number of exe instances spawned.  I don't know exactly how it is implemented.  One reason it makes a difference how the limitation is achieved is it can be problematic when launching a chromium via file association.  I can add the switch to the shortcut target line to limit the number of rendering instances.  But unless I have the browser open all the time to catch html file launches in a new tab, then one has to mess around adding the switch to the Registry entries.  I did it with chromium back when I was playing with the snapshots.  But I tried to do it with chrome portable from portableapps.com and I could not figure it out.

The other difference is the last time I tried chromium it did not show any flash video out of the box.  Mustang does.  It is a compromise.  Pretty fast loading off the disk. Not super snappy loading tabs.  Not for everyone.  I just kind of lie the feel of it.