Beonex Communicator

Beonex Communicator was an open source Internet application suite based on the Mozilla Application Suite (MAS). It was developed by Ben Bucksch a German Mozilla developer. -

Features

Beonex was developed with the intention of having a higher level of security and privacy than other commercial products. The suite contained a Web browser, an email client, a news client, an HTML editor (based on Mozilla Composer) and an IRC client (based on ChatZilla). Another objective was to implement Kerberos, OpenPGP and LDAP from Beonex,

The suite was offered free of charge, free and with the possibility of accessing the source code. The installation package provided documentation, quick and easy installation, and some third-party routines "plug-ins".

History

As Mozilla claimed that the Mozilla Application suite was for developer and testing purposes only and therefore not intended for end users, Beonex attempted to make it free and open to distribute to end users.

The first version of Beonex was included on January 5, 2001 in the Linux distribution kmLinux version S-0.4, from where it was removed in version S-0.5 released on March 23, 2001.

A later version of Beonex 0.8 was released in June 2002 to positive reviews about its capabilities and speed.

At the same time an additional product, the Beonex Launcher (BEOL), was tested but never left the alpha state; BEOL was a simplified version of the main Internet suite Beonex Communicator; it contained a web browser, an email client, and a chat client.

A bit later and also in the middle of 2002 version 0.9 (testing) was released which showed some new integrated features, but before this version gained a stable state, on March 2, 2004 the developer company announced that it didn't plan new releases until the Mozilla Foundation has decided its future policy.

In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation officially changed its policy and created the Mozilla Corporation to provide end-user support.

The latest stable version of Beonex Communicator had several known security issues and the latest test version 0.9 could not be made stable. As a result, Beonex never received much user engagement.

Comparison with Netscape and Mozilla Application Suite

The browser included by default had the ability to create fake senders for HTTP requests. The browser deleted all cookies when exiting the program It also disabled various JavaScript functions - which were deemed dangerous - that could serve as attack vectors.

The following comparison table does not include all versions of Netscape and the MAS. For a more complete table see Gecko (layout engine).

Differences from Netscape

Compared to Netscape, Beonex included almost the same features, except for proprietary parts like the integrated Net2Phone, and AOL Instant Messenger. The integrated ChatZilla chat tool, sidebar, and search engines were also preconfigured. Beonex required fewer system resources than Netscape. Beonex also included a migration tool from Netscape Communicator to include old profiles that might be stored in this suite.

Differences with Mozilla Application Suite

Beonex Communicator was not a fork of the Mozilla Application Suite, but a separate development. Although no significant changes were made, HTML email and JavaScript had been disabled by default in order to display email messages in plain text only (providing more security) although with the ability to add bold and italic characters to the text that later they were also added in the Mozilla Application Suite 1.1. Search engines were compatible with the Mycroft project and were located in the sidebar which provided more features.