Phoenix Advantages
This is an incomplete list of Phoenix advantages compiled with help from Phoenix users and developers at the MozillaZine Phoenix forums.
Features
Customizable toolbars
Phoenix's customizable toolbars allow you to add and remove items (buttons, search field, bookmarks, etc.) to the toolbars as well as create new toolbars. This allows users to move all of their toolbar items to a single toolbar or spread them out over several toolbars. In addition, Phoenix toolbars support large and small icons and icons+text, icons only and text only modes.
Extension management
Phoenix was designed to be lean and fast with a complete feature set for most users. That means that it doesn't include some niche and power features that Mozilla users have come to expect. In order to meet the needs of many categories of users, Phoenix has implemented a simple mechanism for management of extensions and encouraged the community to build additional functionality as extensions, add-ons, plugins outside of the core app. Phoenix currently supports the enabling and disabling of installed extensions as well as a clean extension preferences API so that extensions can have their own settings without polluting the Phoenix browser preferences. Phoenix has plans for extension uninstall to round out its extension story, but this hasn't happened yet.
Faster and more convenient sidebar
The Phoenix sidebar is a rewrite of the Mozilla sidebar which is much faster and more convenient. It supports three default panels: downloads, history and bookmarks. Each sidebar can be opened from the View menu, a keyboard shortcut or an optional toolbar button. Phoenix displays only one sidebar at a time, unlike Mozilla's sidebar (which can be so full with headers for other panels that there's hardly any room for the active panel's content).
More familiar keyboard shortcuts
The Phoenix keyboard shortcuts have been modified to be more familiar to users of other popular browsers such as IE.
In-line form auto-complete
The new auto-complete mechanism, used in both the URL bar and in HTML forms on web pages, is faster and easier to use than separate Mozilla's URL auto-complete and wallet mechanisms. In-line auto-complete for html forms in web pages (like IE has) makes filling in forms a snap.
Search on the toolbar
Phoenix has a Sherlock/Mycroft extensible search field on the toolbar making search even more accessible and convenient. The field can be moved to any toolbar or removed completely. It supports "Find in Page", Google and dmoz.org, and can be extended to hundreds of other search engines with the click of a link at mycroft.mozdev.org.
Easier Preferences management
The Phoenix Options window puts the most often used preferences into 7 convenient panels, each with a descriptive icon selector. Putting the most important preferences in front of the user rather than burying them in a mix of about 50 panels and many hundreds of options makes configuring Phoenix considerably more convenient than Mozilla. For the power user that must tweak every available preference, there is a mozdev extension called Preferential, and an editable about:config page.
Bookmarks undo/redo and improved favicon support.
Phoenix bookmarks are leaps and bounds ahead of Mozilla's with support for undo/redo as well as favicons for bookmarks in the personal toolbar and bookmarks menu.
Quicksearch for history and bookmarks
Phoenix adopted the idea of "quicksearch" or "filtering" from Mozilla Mail and added it to the Bookmark Manager and the History and Bookmarks sidebars.
More convenient menu structure
The Phoenix menu structure is much cleaner, more navigable, and in line with other popular applications. That there are no confusing Composer, Mail/News and Addressbook (and other) menus mixed in with the browser menus saves users time and makes migration from other apps easier.
Bookmark groups for the masses
Phoenix allows a user to launch any folder of bookmarks into tabs. This encourages users to keep bookmarks organized and greatly improves the discoverability of the feature while cutting down on the confusion between "groups" and "folders" that exists in Mozilla.
Personal toolbar overflow
Phoenix supports toolbar overflow so if you have more personal toolbar items than fit on the toolbar they will overflow into a menu.
Global History in Go menu
The Go menu contains a global history list for quick access to more than just the session history.
Dynamic Theme Switching
Themes in Phoenix switch without a restart of the browser. This was nearly impossible in Mozilla because of dataloss issues that don't plague a simple browser like Phoenix.
Discrete Profiles
Phoenix doesn't present users with a Profile Manager by default, leaving that up to the OS. In addition, Phoenix stores its profile data independently of Mozilla and Netscape so there are no negative interactions like there are between Netscape and Mozilla.
"Clear All" for Privacy Settings
With a single click (and a confirmation) users can clear all privacy data including form data, history, cache, cookies, etc.
Fresh and attractive UI look and feel
The Phoenix look is crisp, fresh and attractive and includes all of the expected toolbar icons as well as new icons for the Bookmarks Manager and Options panels.
More friendly pop-up blocking
Phoenix pop-up blocking and simple whitelist mechanism is easier to use than the complex mix of blacklisting and whitelisting used in Mozilla.
Better performance
In my testing, Phoenix has a 30-40% startup improvement over Mozilla/Netscape and a 40-50% new window improvement over Mozilla/Netscape.
Smaller download size, disk footprint and memory usage
Phoenix is nearly half the download size of Mozilla (6MB download compared to 11MB for windows) and it continues to shrink while Mozilla gets bigger.
Phoenix is about half the size on disk as Mozilla (about 12.4MB on disk compared to 24MB for Mozilla.) As Phoenix developers continue to remove unused or unwanted code this number will continue to improve.
Phoenix also takes up about 15% less RAM than Mozilla (18MB runtime for Phoenix compared to 21MB for Moz on windows.)
Themes and Extensions
More themes
Because Phoenix is just a browser, the theme developers have a much easier time building themes for Phoenix than for Mozilla. Today there are more than 50 themes already available for Phoenix and that number is growing fast. Click here for a good collection.
Great extensions
Phoenix developers aren't accepting every single feature that every user wants. This has led to the development of many useful add-ons, extensions or plugins. In addition, converting Mozilla extensions to Phoenix is fairly easy and well documented so many have been converted. There are over 40 popular extensions for Phoenix available here.
User Support Community
MozillaZine Phoenix Forums
The Phoenix Forums at MozillaZine are considerably more active than the Mozilla forums especially in the Theme and Extension development forums.
Phoenix Help
David Tenser and others have set up a wonderful Phoenix support site called Phoenix Help that includes an amazing array of resources for Phoenix users, including an up-to-date keyboard shortcut map designed to help users migrate from alternative browsers to Phoenix, a mouse shortcut listing, a Tips and Tricks section, and a menu reference. In addition the help site also includes an up-to-date user FAQ, Tips for customizing, a Themes section and an Extensions section.
Development
XUL pre-processor
The XUL pre-processor allows Phoenix to make simple platform differences and provides a simple mechanism for issues like building a testing UI which might include debug menus, etc. and building a release UI that doesn't.
Strong Module Ownership/Leadership
Phoenix ownership/leadership will ensure that the UI doesn't try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.
Working toward a real toolkit
Phoenix developers have as a goal (and have started work on this) to make a clear separation between the toolkit layer and the application layer. This kind of organization should make XUL app development in general and Phoenix development easier and more maintainable.