Welcome another player on the open-source web browser arena. This is relatively new project but from what I've seen so far, it can be a promising project. Their browser includes file manager, FTP and web browser. The code is written for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. In short, this browser is almost everything that Firefox is.
In my humble opinion, I am not a fan of the project's icon. The colors are the same used in Firefox's browser. Two faces looking at each other do bring up the notion of double, but the browser's name is Dooble, and the figure in-between the two faces just makes everything even more confusing. The browser looks good, so why can't it do the same? But that's just my humble opinion.
Overall, if you have ever used Firefox, then this is how you will feel about this browser. At first, I thought it was some sort of a fork, but no, it is an independent project. The benefit of this project from Firefox is that it is supported by relatively small number of developers, which means no one has to jump through hoops and loops to introduce a feature to Dooble, even insignificant one but convenient, at least not as much as with popular browsers. The developers of Dooble can be advantageous and include things that were not demanded in other open-source browsers.
There are a lot of preferences you can adjust. All of them are pretty straight forward. Developers' choice was to use as many tabs as possible vs. tabs within tabs like in Firefox. So everything is visible right away and you won't be needing to think hard to figure out where you can adjust cookie settings, for example.
After the installation, before you begin to use the browser, I suggest you configure it to fit your needs. Typing into the address field does not work like it works in Chrome that is searching in Google by default. I can't use a browser where I have to either type a correct address right away or first open up the Google search page to find what I need. It's just way too much action for me. For most people this is not a problem, however.
The website claims that there are add-ons available for the browser but as of this date, the date of this review, the Add-ons folder is completely and absolutely empty. I am not that big on extending capabilities of web-browsers but to some people add-on support is an important selling point.
Kudos for supporting various search engines. It is kind of new, but having the favorites bar at the bottom of the page is somewhat refreshing. I am sure, most of you won't like it, but it is something new and it makes me want to believe that the developers will try to do something unusual and interesting with their project.
Overall, if you had used Firefox, then this is what you'd expect from this browser with some minor tweaks.
v1.2 [Oct 28, 2011]
1. Updated MacGPG2 software to version 2.0.17-9.
2. Allow the user to modify the default Dooble Search page (Settings window's Home tab).
3. Changed Dooble Search text (Settings window's Home tab) to Home.
4. Changed default Arial sizes from 12 to 10 for Windows platforms.
5. Removed redundant dview::load() calls during Dooble initialization.
6. Resolved ticket 3399328. (Was saving a session passphrase.)
7. Improved checking of settings (Dooble.ini) values.
8. Modified dhistory's timer interval from 1 second to 2.5 seconds.
9. Modified history purging so it only occurs during Dooble launch and termination. (Saving precious resources.)
10. Qt products have been upgraded to version 4.7.4 on OS X and Windows platforms.
11. Decreased tab widths.
12. Improved Settings window sizing.
13. Ability to hide the HTTP referrer.
14. Ability to block third-party HTML frame content.
15. The tab bar did not respect visibility setting after exiting the full-screen mode. Fixed.
16. The file and FTP managers incorrectly displayed internal objects that were intended to be hidden.
17. Clicking an FTP link from an HTML document failed to load the link. Fixed.
18. Added the Wikinews search engine.
19. Viewing of HTML frame source now provided.
20. Prevent Dooble from deleting the user's input into the URL widget after the urlChanged() signal has been captured.
21. Removed application modality from the Settings window.
22. Removed references of obsolete settings (Dooble.ini).
23. Added the XSS Auditing option under the Security tab of the Settings window.
24. Improved dooble::slotFlashHack(). This slot is issued if Web plugins are enabled and the window system is X11. Its purpose is to correct potentially-distorted windows.
25. Corrected version 1.24's item #44.
26. Modified the tab-adding mechanism so that new tabs are added after the current tab. Option to simply append the tab is also provided.
27. Clarified "switching to new tabs" option under the Settings window's Tabs panel.
28. Dooble will, if permitted, display the current site's IP address in the window title. This feature may be a first in the browser world.
29. Added missing QDialog::Accepted checks to various if-statements.
30. Validate potentially-invalid (NULL) objects before use.
31. Created a wonderful, yet troublesome, workaround for an event-loop issue. The signals emitted from dview::slotHandleUnsupportedContent() are captured by a slot that calls a function that launches a modal file dialog. At times, Qt decides to terminate because of this. Fixed.
32. Downloads suffered from potential memory exhaustion. Fixed.
33. Improved ddownloadwindowitem::isDownloading(). The previous version was weak.
34. Beautified multiple aspects of the user experience.
35. Added an install target to dooble.osx.pro. (sudo make install) At times, qmake does not properly create all required targets.
36. Added dooble.ultrasparc.pro for g++ on Sun Ultra machines.
37. Added support for providing credentials to proxies whenever they request such information.
38. Beautified passphrase dialog.
39. Wikinews and TheOpenGlobe RSS Ticker added to the default page (locale-based search.html).
40. dsettingshomelinewidget widgets were not capturing iconsChanged() signals. Fixed. These widgets are the textfield widgets under the Settings window's Home panel.
41. Changed QNetworkProxyQuery's query type from TcpSocket to UrlRequest. QNetworkProxyQuery is used for system-level proxies.
42. Prevent Dooble from opening the same URL in the current page as well as a new tab (window) after a link has been clicked. Links should either be displayed in the current page or a new frame, but not both.
43. Added toLower() to various QUrl::scheme() references.
44. Modified QWebView's context menu so that it differentiates between links and e-mail addresses.
45. Introduced the History sidebar. As a result of this new feature, the dhistorymodel class was implemented. The "one model, thousands of views" approach is quite powerful. Dragging items from the sidebar and dropping them onto a page will activate one or more load requests. Unlike other browsers, Dooble allows for multiple selections to be dragged and dropped.
46. Introduced "PRAGMA journal_mode = OFF". Dooble does not explicitly use database transactions. Please note that cookies are not subjected to this setting.
47. dmisc::setCipherPassphrase() must reset variables upon setKey() failure. The set of variables being reset was incomplete. Fixed.
48. Renamed Bookmarks Toolbar to Favorites Toolbar. Dooble does not yet support bookmarks.
49. The dfilemanager class now supports copying. Copying while dragging and dropping are directly supported by Qt via the Control key. OS X users may be required to use an alternative key.
50. Added source information to the Downloads window.
51. Fixed a monumental memory problem in dooble::initializeHistoryMenu().
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