Oh god of browsers, I pray to thee...

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Bodhitree, Jan 12, 2013.

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  1. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    For what it is worth, why can't someone make the perfect browser? Bits and pieces of what is great from each, discarding what doesn't work from others, an amalgam of perfection ready for us to consume..

    Opera, with a speed dial so finely crafted it defies rational explanation. Themes blend perfectly into it, you place what you want on it, and it doesn't force links into it, which can be embarrassing at times. Oh god of Opera, release your speed dial unto the other browsers;

    http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/01/13/Dev7C.jpg

    Oh Firefox God, how slow, bloated, and dated art thou. But the beauty of your extension selection, the fine bookmark system, and compatibility is great. Grace us with this, and dispense with your slow ugliness;

    http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/01/13/ydUT.jpg

    Chrome, my friend, my demi-god.. So fast, so slick, so.. Oh that's all you really have... Can we steal your speed and let you die with your miserable ugly self...

    Excuse the sad attempt at humor.. But seriously - what will it take to get a browser with the speed of Chrome, the gizmos of Firefox, and the beauty of Opera? It seems illogical that nobody has stepped up to make these things happen.
     
  2. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Browsers are never going to be perfect because they're too personal of a choice. For every guy and gal that wants customizing out the wazoo, 100 more won't want to touch anything and they like to think that the browser is still crap even though they aren't forced to customize. For every security nut, there are 100 people who just want the damn thing to work on all their sites and don't give a rip about how secure it is. And on and on. You already see that with the speed obsessive. "This browser seems to work better on my favorite site" "But Chrome is so much faster!" "....." I could give examples all night.

    I've sometimes preached a browser is a browser as long as it performs well and is secure. But, even preaching that I find myself picking and choosing one over another at times. The truth is that they all have good and bad to them. Opera would be my perfect browser if the extensions were more capable, sites didn't bug out when they saw Opera coming and they were a wee bit quicker to fix the non-security related bugs that seem to hang on for a long time.

    I want so bad for either a brand new browser to pop up or one of the "lessers" in existence to come up and just blow the "Big Three" to kingdom come. I'm sooo sick of the "browser wars" bs. It's always the same crap, speed rules, everything else who cares..and it's always between 3 damn browsers. I said something earlier in the Firefox 64 thread that this one is making me re-think. I talked about how silly it was to put faith in some guy who was just tweaking a custom FF build. But you know what, my trust issues aside, that may be exactly what we need. Heck, put Chromium on the operating table and see what we come up (besides Iron, which is basically just an answer to a non-existent privacy threat in Chrome proper). We need something that can pass the "niche" and "community project" stages.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2013
  3. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    Agreed. About the only thing great about Opera is how great it looks, and the speed dial is delicious.. It is unfathomable that Chrome ditched their pinnable speed dial and went the Firefox route with the 'randomly' pegged thumbnails, it's pretty stupid. Chrome 15.75 and prior versions had a great speed dial, you could pin anything you wanted. Nobody knows why they ditched it. Sad panda here.

    But you are right, a lot of sites choke on Opera, Opera does crash at times, and it stalls more then I care to admit. So I end up shelving it and just loading the speed dial to admire it like a fine art piece.

    I wish a company would hire me to 'fix' stuff by evaluating them. It's what I do. For example watching Tivo the other day I clicked record on a show.. Then realized I should have selected season pass for it. So I hit record again, only option there is to stop recording. Logically there should have been another option to add that to season pass. It's silly things like this I find constantly, literally with every single thing I do in life. I'm one of those "Bob" guys like in The Office. I have to be valuable to someone with that skillset, right? When I worked for a pretty good size(and well known) software developer all I did was look at stuff, and figure out ways to improve it, but they downsized and 32 of us (25% of their workforce) got nailed including their 'Bob'... <sigh>

    Anyway, some stuff seems like it should be common sense in browsers, but isn't.
     
  4. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    The Chrome/FF way of handling the frequent pages thing pisses me off. I don't really use it, I just spend time clicking the x buttons to get rid of them (especially when Chrome doesn't clean them with the other browser data...and can someone please freaking inform Chrome that being able to delete their data on exit instead of manually is something everybody but them does now?). It's more like a recents tab than a "most visited" dial. Opera *sigh* I don't know if they'll ever get their best days back. It looks like a management issue more than a development issue. They do nothing to get their name out there, which lessens the pressure to do better when the press has forgotten you.
     
  5. berryracer

    berryracer Suspended Member

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    For once, I agree with you 100%

    I have always wished for this.

    I wish we can get a browser that combines the features and extensions (particularly Xmarks for Firefox is way better than Xmarks for Chrome as the Chrome one always breaks the favicons of the bookmarks) + the super fast speed of Chrome....that would be awesome and with the advancement that we have reached in browsers and technologies, I don't know what's stopping anyone from doing this but I wish they would
     
  6. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    And why don't we have a Chromium-based x64 on Windows? If Google won't do it before Hale-Bopp comes back, someone else should. Linux users already got theirs.
     
  7. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    Chromium x64 is quite a bit faster on Linux then the x32 version on windows. I know, I used to run Linux as a primary, and the switch over to windows was a harsh blow on the speed difference. I am at a loss as to why nobody has grabbed the Chromium source and tossed it into a compiler with max optimizations and x64 switches turned on? I might think about doing it. But that doesn't solve the hideous speed dial, and lack of history purging controls, and other things..

    So here I am with 4 browsers installed, and none of them is really what I want in most categories, and I think what I want is pretty common sense... I still cannot believe Google nerfed the Speed Dial.. Anyone remember the old one that actually was decent in the versions prior to v16o_O There was actually a small pin in the upper left you could set to lock down specific websites - like Opera.. Some rocket scientists at Google decided Chrome should decide what goes there, not the user. That level of ignorance makes me not want to run it.
     
  8. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Google has had a tendency to do what they please in regards to Chrome. They really aren't good listeners and the Chrome forum often reflects that. I would think an automatic data removal mechanism would be fairly easy to tack on..but I'm not a dev and I haven't seen the source code.
     
  9. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Antiquated second person denotative singular pronouns aside; I still don't find Firefox slow on any computer I run. Even on my slightly underpowered notebook. You are talking about Fx 18 right? I even have a stack of extensions installed. I admit it can be claimed that Fx is getting a bit long in the tooth these days, but that certainly doesn't invalidate it as a viable fast browser. Although it does need a bit of security modification 'out of the box' IMO.

    As to your original question; well, it's a bit like mobile phones, they all have their respective merits & bad points.
     
  10. Sordid

    Sordid Registered Member

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    You can get good speed dial extensions on just any browser. They typically look better than Opera's when finished properly, IMO. That leaves Opera with zero advantage other than it being "built in." Agreed that pinning is lame in Chrome, and they keep changing it which makes for more annoyance--would be a minor tweak.

    My Firefox has always been much faster than Chrome until v25/26. Very close now. The addons allow you to tweak deep down into the Fox adding granular control of ads, js, css, and things like paint delay. OS optimized builds help too. So even if Chrome has a stronger renderer and now can roast your vidcard, Fox renders less code and that can result in some damn snappy page loads.

    But getting that boot speed or simplicity of Chrome along with extensions that very seldom break in addition to those abilities of the Fox, that's like wanting the space of an SUV with the speed and nimbleness of a Porsche 4S. Ain't happening.

    For those addons to dig that deep, you get problems in Firefox. If addons don't delete/update properly etc. it becomes unstable as it has affected critical areas less accessible in Chrome. You don't have that in Chrome because non-vetted user code doesn't get to dig that deep. Less rich modules to load and less code left in the hands of a poorly trained JS jockey. I need to back up my Fox before major extension and theme changes. Have so many broken portable Firefox versions as relics. Meanwhile, all my Chromes are on the same build updated since say version 4.0. That's years and looking at bandwidth stats: 50+ TBs pushed through the same installs. Try that with a modded Firefox.

    So change that, and Chrome gets far worse without other severe precautions being made. Otherwise, you are also adding the instability and boot lag of one browser to the higher resourced security of another.

    Essentially, the super hero of browsers would be a slob. Fortunately, like cars, we don't need one design to rule them all.
     
  11. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    I have yet to see a single speed dial extension that wasn't crap, broke often, or lacked functionality. One of the big things is, Opera's integrates with the themes (see picture) which makes it gorgeous. All of the extension ones are not integrated, and look slapped on.. Like a huge bumper drilled onto a cadillac or something.

    Run some benchmarks, like browsermark. You will be surprised. FF, regardless of what you do to it will not keep up with Chrome out of the box. Chromium can score 7000-8000, FF u sually in the 3000-4000 range.
     
  12. tlu

    tlu Guest

    Well, you can't do that on exiting Chrome, AFAIK, but on startup with the Privacy Manager. Good enough for me ;)
     
  13. m00nbl00d

    m00nbl00d Registered Member

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    An alternative would be to make a script, and run it full time, monitoring when Chrome closes, and then delete the files in question.
     
  14. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Or, as an alternative, Google could join the rest of its competition and just do it for the user like a good little boy? :D In all seriousness, Google is s**t when it comes to users requesting small improvements like this. It goes in one ear and out the other.
     
  15. Sordid

    Sordid Registered Member

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    Yeah, I was more worried about the lack of forced pinning and liked the options for icon and title swap. I haven't found them too hokey but to each his own. & yes the margins in Opera look improved but note that it is more of a deficiency in Windows margin paddings which don't exist to begin with in OSX and Linux. Otherwise, you could just use a standard chrome theme and skin the speed dial background with the fixed vertical pixels of the omni accounted for. I honestly think lack of window padding is what makes OSX look so much sleeker along with more gradients and smoothing and also why you find the Opera page better looking.

    And certainly agreed on OTB browser perfromance. Chrome is my unmodded browser of choice when visiting browser benchmark test pages o_O. & also my browser choice for just about anything. But joking and my personal choice aside: lots of browser performance pivots around things other than raw engine performance unless the sites you visit normally bounce around complex css elements across the browser frame for minutes at a time and don't serve ads. Adblock for example makes a huge difference in boot speed for Firefox (~doubles it), but allows it to load pages more quickly (~halves it). Meanwhile, Chromes version does not really impact startup, but isn't as fast and bogs down very quickly with every additional rule in my experience.

    Anyhow, to the point. You could fairly expect changes to browser start pages to make them look better, but to expect Fox's extension system on Chrome or Chrome's security policy on Fox for example is wishful and futile thinking unless Google/Mozilla surprises us with an entire overhaul. So to create a best of both worlds/ "the perfect browser" using the current platforms as a hybrid would be--errr...impossible and no praying ever helped browser breeding deficiencies. *puppy*
     
  16. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    What gets me is prior to Chrome 16 they had a speed dial nearly identical to Opera!! What the hell were they thinking? I mean, why would we want the browser to decide what goes there, wouldn't we like to pin what we want? Ludicrous decision. In installed Chrome 15.75 to test this, and really think they need to revert that aspect back 10 versions..

    But yes, even the margins are so much sweeter on Opera, which does make it look great.. Windows is overall pretty fugly.
     
  17. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    For deleting History, I just found under Google Chrome Security Settings Group Policy template: "Google >>> Google Chrome >>> Disable saving browser history"

    It works as adverstised :)
     
  18. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    See - the simple things..

    In Chrome when you close the last tab it dumps the browser. In Opera when you close the last tab it opens the speed dial. Brilliant, and logical. Why is Chrome so illogical at times? I think Google has decided they will tell us what we like, and what we will do, without regard for what we ACTUALLY want. Firefox won't close the last tab, better then Chrome, still worse than Opera.

    So many 'nags' in Chrome make me absolutely want to trash it for Opera if they can get the speed up on that thing. But Chrome is rock solid on family/friend computers, Opera would worry me on those because it just doesn't handle some pages correctly.
     
  19. JeffreyCole

    JeffreyCole Developer

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    Last edited: Jan 17, 2013
  20. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    I ran Opera all day yesterday, it was pleasant.

    Only issue was - the extensions STINK.. No Magic Actions for Youtube, and the youtube ones they have are buggy or don't even work. Once you use Magic Action it is very very tough to go without it, but at the least I would like a working, and proper youtube repeat extension. ExtendTube kept locking up (on clean snapshot too!)
     
  21. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Are you talking about Opera in general or the new snapshot they just released? You can't expect many extensions to work on what's basically an Alpha, and I doubt addon devs are that concerned about updating right at this point. Give it another snapshot or two. If you mean Opera in general, well, yeah a lot of them do. Opera has the same API issues Chrome had, if not worse. Opera is very limited. ABP is working on improving in Opera for instance, but they'll either have to hack it or wait for Opera to make changes to the code themselves. I wouldn't ever expect Firefox functionality out of it on Opera.
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2013
  22. Daveski17

    Daveski17 Registered Member

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    Yes, I tend to agree. However, ABP is working relatively well I think & some extensions can be very good. Some are a bit dodgy & one or two don't seem to work at all. WOT & cleanPages work very well.
     
  23. Wild Hunter

    Wild Hunter Former Poster

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    Last edited: Jan 18, 2013
  24. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    Opera 12.13 is very nice, I notice some speed improvements in it, and ExtendTube has been updated with fixes for it.

    I was browsing today, forgot I was in Opera, and assumed I was in Chromium. Which is VERY good because usually I think 'dang this browser seems slow' then notice I am in Opera and switch back to Chromium. Not so with 12.13 so maybe they took peoples speed complaints seriously and made a few fixes. Back to Opera for now, let's hope they keep tweaking it up in speed. I prefer Opera because it is slick, smart, well constructed, and attractive.

    SIMPLE things done right. For example if I have tabs open, then go to speed dial and click I can add one of the open tabs from a selection menu. Very nice. Also the speed dial doesn't suck major like FF and Chrome, and themes carry over into Speed Dial. It's all well constructed.
     
  25. JeffreyCole

    JeffreyCole Developer

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    Glad the new version is working well for you. :)

    Opera + Ad Muncher is a sweet combo...
     
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