Bulgarian web browser to challenge IE
A BULGARIAN company has released a new browser which sounds like a beer brand and is being marketed as a rival to Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Web Visions Black Label is really browsing for dummies with just two basic file options 'file' and 'help'
Creative Lines CEO Atanas Avkov said the browser was written using Volish Visual Basic Express and is supposed to go twice as fast as Internet Exploder and Firebadger and needs a third of their resources.
It works on Windows XP and Blista and Windows 7 too. "Soon will be aveluable the vertion for smartphones, pocket pc and linux platforms," the site says in INQUIRER-style English.
It is free and Creative Lines wants to make money off advertising banners on the browser's official site and through five other owned Web sites.
We had a look at it and it really is fast. The only problem is that it is so no frills that really you can't do anything other than browse. It has a design so Spartan that it was clearly drawn up by a developer who thinks that MS-DOS based programs were a little bit too creative. It does not look like a browser, more like a Window that has a bit of fluff on it.
While we don't think Steve Ballmer is panicking about the release of the Black Label, it would have its uses if you have a particularly dim grandmother, but with no bookmarks she is going to have to get the hang of Google search pretty fast.
When we looked 865 people had downloaded the browser.
Have a look here. µ
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I get the distinct impression the download counter on their page is a complete lie, as it's steadily rising by about two downloads every second.
That and the fact that I highly doubt that such an unheard of browser could get 6,700,000 downloads.
On second look at the page, clearly I have an inability to read, my bad.
Using the core IE engine and dropping it into another container doesn't require much programming at all, this isn't a new browser..its IE activeX browser control dropped onto a blank window.
Really, why is this a big deal?
They use the IE engine in a blank Visual Basic form? How can that be faster than IE? How can it run on Smartphones or Linux?
No problem installing/running on Wind-up 2000 either. Fast, but have to go into IE to change settings.
I guess all of us Bulgars are the same, eh? About 5 years ago, for fun, one summer I did the very same thing. I had used VB6 to build my own web browser. I used the IE core but, damn I had so many more options than this Black Label thing.
Hell, I should've released mine - it would've been even more competitive against IE. LOL!
Sadly there are a lot of new tiny programming firms popping up in Bulgaria and most are complete rubbish - a bunch of high school kids with big dreams. This must be one of them.
The home of scams and con artists. We have those 'geniuses' in Serbia too, its quite embarasing really. I bet genuine Bulgarian developers feel ashamed right now, my condolances to them.
Anybody verified it does not contain trojans?
It uses .Net 3.5 and Visual Studio .application extensions. You can extract the exe and find all the goodies. Its IE rebranded.
"Browser (User-Agent): Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
Give up, Go home, don't rebrand crap!
This isn't a browser- being writen in BASICshould have been a clue for the average IT hack - it's yet another custom IE shell.
The browser's just Internet Explorer.
It's like me registering a domain and then making a pretty frameset that puts The Inquirer in the main frame and then annoncing "my new website" - and getting media coverage for it!
Environment:
* Win7Ult x64
A couple issues:
* mouse back button doesn't work
* flash pages don't render (asks to install flash on some pages, but nothing installs)
* clicking the 'home' button causes an unhandled exception (crash)
its a virus
Yeah, it's nothing more than a example app from an IE-control embedding tutorial, with no UI to speak of (not even for for essential security features) and a nicked icon. Woohoo - would be impressive, as a first app for an 11-year-old.
Judging by the mess that is their web site, they can't even write an HTML page, let alone a browser.
download counter value is different in Bulgarian and English site versions
It's such an unique browser that it even imitates IE for maximum web compatibility, starting with the page called "Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Enabled" that says:
"Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration is enabled
Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration is currently enabled on your server. This configures a number of security settings that define how users browse Internet and intranet Web sites.
...."
/sarcasm off
Hello from Varna, Bulgaria! This is just to let you know i've just produced another brand new web browser. And it is even better, using the IE8 RC1 engine :))
Im not sure whats more funny; a webdesign company making "their own webbrowser" that can't even code a site that works on ff (but will soon deliver a linux version of IE lol!). Or the INQ actually reporting this.
Nic is still in Sofia and had, probably, a glass of fine grozdova rakya (local grapa worth to try) more before declaring Black Label as famous :-)
I argue the rakya is still a better choice! :-)
rakya all !!! Add to that shopska salad and it is ...mmmm !
Greatings to Bulgaria - can't wait to visit it again.