That's technically true, but before it was firefox (before it was Firebird, even), It was intended very much as a stripped-down gecko frontend written in XUL, much closer to Lynx than the firefox we all use today.
Servo is very similar in useability to lynx right now, if grandparent is interested in trying it out.
Stripped-down compared to the Mozilla Suite, which came with an email client and HTML editor, but the browser itself was intended to match and extend the Mozilla featureset.
> Not only does Phoenix aim to match the featureset of Mozilla -- subtracting features deemed geeky and better offered as add-ons -- but it extends it. For example, it adds customizable toolbars and quicksearch in bookmarks and history. It will soon offer an add-on manager, a better wallet, and a new downloads sidebar pane.
Yeah, it was really nice when it didn't have the add-on manager yet. just a small, XUL-based browser. Made me switch from Galeon.
Still didn't ever complete the suite, though; Thunderbird tackled email, Sunbird handled contacts. Good thing, too; Seamonkey was a pig on my pentium 133 w/32MB RAM. Played quake fine, but just couldn't handle Seamonkey. Phoenix got me extra life out of my ancient hardware.
These days, Xombrero is getting me the same sort of extra life out of my ancient (or otherwise under-powered, e.g. Raspberry Pi) hardware. It's a very light frontend to GTKWebKit with a glorious vi-like UI.
Now I wonder if it would be worth making something similar in XUL...
Servo is very similar in useability to lynx right now, if grandparent is interested in trying it out.