4 posts tagged “browsers”
As anybody who knows me well, or indeed past readers of this blog, will be aware that I quite like my browsers uber slim interface. If you're not aware of just how slim, take a look on at Firefox on the left. And if I could make the menu's hide alla IE7 [hku.hk] I would.
Now, Firefox (as does many other current browsers) has an excellent feature in the form of the search bar. This allows you to search google, or a search engine of your choice, with live on-the-fly search term suggestions. It all works very slick, very nice. However, unfortunately, there's no place in my interface for another input box.
There is a whole myriad of little problems. With my current system, since I very rarely want to reuse the current page to search, unless it's on google anyway, I press Ctrl+T and, because it automatically focuses the URL bar, type "google search terms". However, with the search box I have to click the search box (if someone knows a shortcut to focus it, do tell), type "search terms", and then press Alt+Enter. Now I don't know who came up with this shortcut, but I certainly can't do it with one hand. This means not only have I had to move my hand to the mouse, but I now have to move it back again.
I'm sure I could retrain myself to instead of thinking "google this", to think "google in the search box this", eventually making "google in the search box" synonymous with "google", but tbh I don't see why I should have to.
In fact, I don't really see why I should have to think "google" at all.
A recent post on The Old New Thing [blogs.msdn.com] reignited the debate in my own head about the possibility of combining the url and the search box. I type in my search query, it works like the search bar. I start typing in what looks like a url, it adds the url to the top of the drop down box, with a separating line underneath it and a label making it clear clicking this (or pressing enter) will take you to the URL. Or the normal search functionality is provided underneath if you want to click on it.
I hatched a plan to only use the search bar for a week or so, to see if it had any unforeseen consequences such as needing to search for a URL (which I've never needed to do that I recall, but also has been accommodated for in my plans above).
The main problem I noticed was that with the google toolbar, because it is separate from the URL bar, and thus independent of the page you are on, it can keep the search terms. Wheras if the two were integrated, you would have to navigate to the tab to see what the search terms were. Now I personally can't see that being a problem for me, but it may be for some people. Just who I don't know. I know at least one person that should be reading this blog uses a search bar, so please do give your feedback.
Other than that, I can see no problems with my proposed solution. I will, however, keep you posted on my investigations. Once I can make a clear and coherent argument, with the pros and cons (with as few cons as possible) I will begin campaigning for Firefox to introduce my new system....yah right.
So, Firefox2 has been released which inevitably leads to an onslaught of amature reviews. And who am I to disappoint?
The install process looked promising, after all who can resist the charm of an application that uses the term "A little housekeeping" for pre-installation checks? And, as this is a Firefox, it's never so much a case of reinstall as an upgrade. All my customisations are in place, even after the jump to the big 2 point O.
However, my initial reaction was disappointment. Gone is the OS inherited look, say hello to a strange Opera looking blue gradient skin. And, unlike Opera, there is no OS inherited option by default, you have to go hunting for one. Luckily it's not hard to find (though lacks some visual subtleties which I'm sure will soon be fixed).
So, a closer inspection of the new features. They've done a careful job not to upset the old UI, choosing to save any radical changes for 3.0. However, they have made some minor changes, the most significantly being crowbarring the Extensions and Themes dialogs into one Add-ons dialog. It's a little unsightly, but functional at least.
Then there's the session saving and Recently Close Tabs. The recently closed tabs is a nice option, playing catchup with Opera, while the session saving is quite frankly underwealming. It seems to be limited to saving your session when the browser needs to restart or recovers from a crash, which is very useful, but there is no way of explicitly saving your sessions. Some would say that this is in the realms of a plug-in, but I would disagree and say it is a commonly enough used feature to be included, especially when the backbone is already implemented. At least they went for an intelligent default of not recovering from the session every time you restart, though there is that option.
Then there is the change in the tabs, with scrolling if they're are too many (yay) and the close button has been moved to each individual tab. Some people love it, others find it too risky (you may accidentally click it when trying to select the tab). While there is no way of changing the behaviour in the options, you can, thankfully, change it in the about:config screen (You can even get rid of the close buttons altogether, which is good for people like me who only ever use middle click to close a tab) Same with the "Go" button that they have now elbowed into the URL bar.
I was disappointed to see that the URL search has still not yet been made a full citizen, the functionality instead being reserved for the search bar. I am contemplating trying to make myself heard to get it implemented for the next release.
The spell checker is very nice, bog standard, but what more could you expect? It works nicely and as expected, just like everything else with Firefox. Though you do have to install the dictionary manualy for some reason (which is strange, especialy as the website to download is able to automatically detect the language)
It seems to me that they have made a very intelligent catch up move with Opera. They have implemented all the right features that should come with the browser, while leaving the rest of the functionality to plugins. Why are plugins so good? Well, they allow flexibility and choice, though they are often poorly implemented when compared to native components. Then there is Firefox's holy grail of customisation. It's possible to tweak it right the way back to a 1.5 interface, look and feel whilst still getting the benefit of less memory problems and all the other bug fixes. In fact, I've been able to take it even further than 1.5 in the search for my perfect, minimalist UI.
A lot of people are going to be disappointed with Firefox2, but when they start to use it and mould it into something they are more comfortable with, they will forget they even upgraded.
Well, it's not quite the full week and a half I promised, but I'm going away from the weekend, plus I've found myself slowly meandering back to Firefox anyway.
So, how was Opera? The reality, not too bad. Vastly better than Firefox? Not really, from my experience. I didn't find, in my week of casual browsing, anything that I used that vanilla Firefox doesn't have. Add to that the fact Firefox has some nice plugins, and it the truth is Opera doesn't really seem to be much more featured, just...bloated.
I've never quite understood the concept of automatic session saving. If I close my browser, 98% of the time it's because I've finished looking at those websites. I then go do something else, come back and, with automatic session saving, find myself having to close all the tabs I had open before. Needing my session saved is an edge case, not the norm, but that's not really a valid complaint because you can set it up like that. And there are times when it's nice to be able to save a session, but then again Firefox can do that with a plugin, and Firefox2 does it automatically.
Then there are the previously mentioned scrolling problems that, whilst bareable, are slightly jarring.
The Feed feature is a lot better thought out than Firefox's live bookmarks, but then again a dedicated RSS reader is a lot better thought out than the Feed feature, so I think it's tollerable to use a combination of Firefox and a dedicated reader.
So, all in all, there is nothing really wrong with Opera. But then there's nothing much better about it than Firefox. I'm more comfortable with Firefox and, after my brief stint with Opera, more confident in my assertion that Firefox is just fine.
Saying that, Firefox2 has recently been released and I am about to try it out. Rest assured, I will tell you how that goes in due time. I just thought I should get this post out of the way before things inevitably go pear shaped.
I've recently become interested in the new Firefox 2 (which is currently in RC2 I *think*). Whilst I won't be using the beta, I have been keeping a keen eye on it's development.
You can't help but notice when you read any discussion on browsers the number of people advocating Opera as far better than Firefox (and by proxy IE). Some of you may remember my previous brief flirtation with Opera. However, I didn't find it an altogether pleasent experience. You may remember my shock at the discovery of a clock widget that changed skin when you clicked it. And you clicked it to drag it...
But maybe I judged it too harshly. After all, I did only use it for one evening. Maybe I really will use all those features I've never needed to use before. Maybe it will eventualy prove to be faster and use up less memory than people claim (currently I estimate it to load pages 1.5-2 times as slow, and take up twice as much memory as Firefox on an otherwise pretty idle machine).
Part of the problem is that compared to my streamlined Firefox interface and experience Opera seems positively schitzophrenic. The website claimed to have the largest browsing region of any popular browser (IE, Firefox and Konqueror most likely). However, as you can clearly see below my Firefox setup gives you almost the biggest region possible. No other browser will allow me to customise it like this.
The other thing that drives me up the wall is the terrible middle-click scrolling support. In most Windows apps, Firefox included, middle-click scrolling will take place under the cursor. However, Opera insists on moving the cursor to the center of the screen. This seriously jars and disrups your train of thought.
Add to this Firefox's far superior search and you can see how my Firefox experience is much smoother and streamline than Opera to date.
About the only feature that I really like in Opera is the Zoom. Rather than meerly increasing the text size (which is still possible in Opera, through a peversly long Prefrences process) you can pseudo-zoom in on the page. This has the benifit of making websites with annoylingly narrow article space a lot nicer when you want to make the text bigger so you can read whilst lounging in your chair. However, whilst it often means less scrolling, it can mean more scrolling in some circumstances thanks to the pseudo nature of it. I guess the next week will tell which was the balance swings.
I feel I should mention some of the other features though, such as possibly the best sessions saving currently in a public release (though Firefox 2 will add this), a spellcheckers for a lot of text entry fields (also added in Firefox 2), a much better RSS aggregator and download manager (including the abillity to download torrents) than Firefox and, if it floats your boat, some fancy widgets (including the aforementioned clock).
I love my Firefox experience. I tollerate IE6. I've not tried IE7 (longer than half an hour) and I'm irritated by Opera. However, I'm willing to let that change. I'm going to try using Opera almost exclusively as my only browser (ironicly I will be using Firefox for Vox as Opera has a terrible time with it. This is my second time writing this post) for a week and a half (until the end of next week).
I will report on how well it goes, of my ups and downs and everything in between. Who knows, maybe I'll make the switch (shock horror :O I'll be using Linux next!)
