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Browser wars
Things that Opera has that Firefox doesn't, and that keep me from switching to FF:
Good gesture support
Easily configurable toolbars
Tab configuration
The ability to use less than half a gig of memory to handle the dozens of tabs and multiple windows that I usually have open at once
Probably a couple other things that I can't think of off the top of my head
The ability to do all of these without hunting through thousands of extensions, fighting to install them, keeping them upgraded, and finding out that it's no longer supported or that a rival extension does what I want better
These are all subtle things, but major usability things for me. If any of you FF nuts can solve them for me, then it will go from my second-favorite browser to my favorite. Promise.
- Real paste-and-go at the cursor point in the address bar, not "go to whatever URL I have stored in my clipboard, regardless of the current contents of the address bar"
- A good session saver
- some modicum of a UI
- distinct session files that I can locate on my hard drive
- the ability to save and load multiple sessions, not just one at at a time
- some modicum of a UI
- Overloaded gesture commands (e.g. "down-right means 'close tab', unless there are no tabs open, in which case 'close window'")
- Gestures that don't cancel themselves if I wait too long before releasing the right mouse button
- Better movement recognition
- Tab focus that goes to the most recently used tab, rather than the next tab to the right, when I close the active tab
- A tab close box immediately below the primary close box, at the top right of my screen
These are all subtle things, but major usability things for me. If any of you FF nuts can solve them for me, then it will go from my second-favorite browser to my favorite. Promise.
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Tabbrowser Extensions - handles just about everything on your list except for sessions (it actually does handle that, but it does it poorly, so I disable that part).
Session Saver - Has distinct files for each session, autosaves even on crashes, can be set to either autoload the last session, or let you choose a session. Also lets you load / save a session to / from a file, or stores your last 5 saved sessions in a "recent documents" style menu.
Oh, except for the memory thing... firefox usually uses about 440 megs for me, but I usually have 30-50 tabs open. Does Opera use significantly less?
Also, there are some amazing other extensions that you may want to consider should you switch to firefox.
IE View - For the occasional site that doesn't look or work right under firefox, puts an option in the right click to open the page in IE (simple, but damn useful).
PDF Download - When you click to a PDF link, it offers you the option of saving it to disk rather than opening it inside of Firefox. I really hate viewing PDF's while browsing, since it necessitates the 30 second delay of opening PDF reader (by the way, why the hell does the PDF reader take so fucking long to open anyway?).
Greasemonkey - The grand-poobah of script enhanced browsing, once you try it, it's just too cool to live without. It lets you use Jscript to modify any website you view. For instance, when I view Dailykos with greasemonkey, I see the rightmost sidebar (the one with the menu options at the top) and the text of the articles stretched from all the way on the left all the way to the sidebar. It makes it oh so much more legible... Also, for netflix, it makes your edit queue screen drag and droppable. And it adds IMDB links to each and every movie. It's awesome.
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not in my experience. in fact if i have a complaint about opera it is its memory management (on windows). i bet it still leaks too.
PDF Download - When you click to a PDF link, it offers you the option of saving it to disk rather than opening it
ghod yes; i hate online pdf viewing -- i can set that as an option in opera. i can set that as an option for any filetype. and i can decide to view or edit any filetype in an external application.
greasemonkey sounds like fun, though i can modify how i view other websites within opera as well, and then switch with one click. it's not anywhere as flexible though as greasemonkey sounds.
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The Tab focus thing can be solved by LastTab.
I know there's a session saver extension and multiple mouse gestures extensions, but I don't use any of them so I don't know what they're like.
As for the paste-and-go thing, I have NO idea what he's describing, so I can't help there.
As for the problem with having to install many extensions, I happen to like having options. It's a nice change from having... no options. And what's so bad about rival extensions? It means competition, the theoretical cornerstone of this country.
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But if calling desh a terrorist will make him more likely to switch, I can do that too.
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Plugins make sense for things like ForecastFox (which I love, by the way). Not for paste-and-go or gestures.
Also, the Opera devs put out a generally higher quality product than the FF plugin devs do. That's why I've never been satisfied with the plugins that I consider replacements for things that should be in the base browser package.
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As for what should be in by default, that, of course, is a matter of opinion. I have never used gestures and don't consider it essential for ME, and of course anything that isn't essential for me should not be in the core. At least that's the way many people think. Everybody is going to want something, which means it's going to have to include everything to make everyone happy. But that's just not feasible, so the line must be drawn somewhere. And in all things geeky, the word of all words is "bloat."
And I think the term "FF plugin devs" is a bit misleading. Anyone can create an FF extension. That's why the quality can vary so dramatically. But at the same time, *anyone can create an FF extension.* Which means you can get FF to do ANYTHING you want it to, as long as you know how to code it or someone else interested in the same feature does. And if you find an extension that does almost everything you want but not quite, you can modify it to your liking. It's a blessing and a curse. As such, I choose to look at it from the positive end and be happy for my ability to choose. Others may choose to look at it from the other side. *points*
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Gestures? Fine. I guess there's an argument that that shouldn't be part of the default browser. (I happen to strenuously disagree, and think that gesture navigation should start becoming standard in lots of other programs. But intelligent people can disagree here. Fine.) But...good paste-and-go support? Session saving? Preferences that let you control the behavior of your tabs? Can you honestly say that adding these to the base browser would be bloat-like? That these things should really be relegated to additional features that must be searched for?
And yes, I know anyone can make a plugin. That's part of the problem. The primary Mozilla devs are better than the average quality put out by "anyone", even when you apply the bazaar model to this "anyone" and weed out the bad code. Sure, Greasemonkey wouldn't have come out of a corporate development environment, and the fact that it exists is a tribute to the power of community development and the skill of the Mozilla community. I don't doubt that. But such a dev community has never been able to patch basic fundamental holes in a user experience. That's why I can't recommend FF, or Linux, to an average computer user like my mom. (Well, with FF I make an exception, because of the security issues of IE. That's all.) They're still for power users, and I don't feel like I should have to act like a power user and hunt down the best extension site of the day just to rearrange my tabs.
My question is still out there, by the way. Do you know of the program that can do gestures the way I want? I don't. Do you know of a program that can do paste-and-go the way I want? I don't. And I've looked.
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The problem I have with giving people every single option under the sun is also business and confusion. I like not having to search through layers upon layers of menus to find the one option I want every single time I want to change it.
As for what you want, I didn't understand your description of what paste-and-go you wanted, but here are some possible extesnsions that might help.
Paste-and-go
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=65
Gestures
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=12
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=29
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=39
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=390
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And I never tried many extensions to fix my tab or session-saving complaints. But I did try them to fix my gesture and paste-and-go complaints. I spent months fighting with a gesture plugin, in fact. Are you sure the ones you're talking about can address my specific complaints? If so, please link me to the plugins...
I've tried Greasemonkey. I see why people like it, and I get the appeal in theory, but....eh. I just don't care about it much.
And my PDFs never open directly in Opera. The save-to-disk option always pops up.
Re: Browser wars
your last point is also a decisive one. i generally like the flexibility that comes with extensions/plugins, i think it rocks when it comes to graphics programs, for example. but for a web browser i don't need it. i don't want my web browser to become my operating system (i already have an editor aspiring to do that :).
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-switch between tabs by pressing 1 and 2, rather than ctrl+pgup/pgdn (just less keystrokes)
-going back/forward just reads from cache rather than from site, so you can fill out a form, get confused, access the FAQ from the same tab, and go back to filling out the form without losing any info
-close tabs by pressing shift and left clicking on offending tab, rather than lame-o ctrl-w (so lame!)
I still use ff for gmail and some certain secure things, like bill-pay etc, but mostly I think FF is way clunky and generally inferior
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