Every browser has its annoyances

Story: 4 Secure Web Browsers for Linux and Everyone ElseTotal Replies: 14
Author Content
tracyanne

Nov 01, 2010
5:56 PM EDT
Quoting:In Firefox 4, for example, new tabs open to a blank page, rather than your homepage or list of suggested sites like other browsers. It would also be better if searching was integrated into the address bar rather than having to click in a separate search box


No, those are features. One of the most annoying things about other browsers is their insistence on opening some page I never asked for, when I open a new tab. I want a blank tab, unless I've elected to open a link in a new tab. I certainly don't want an annoying list of suggested sites, I don't want nor need some other persons idea of what I want to browse to, or in this case some dumb algorithm's calculation. So what if I just visited a site on some subject, that doesn't mean I want more sites on that subject.

Keeping the search box separate means I know when I'm searching, and when I want search results, and when I cn expect an error message because I got the url wrong. I don't want a list of search results just because I mistyped.
klhrevolution

Nov 01, 2010
6:25 PM EDT
I think midori is an under rated web browser. I ended up switching to midori on the netbook v. 2.2 & ubuntu 10.10 and it is a lot better than chromium so far.
tmx

Nov 01, 2010
8:59 PM EDT
I already trolled the other thread and I'm going to troll here.

Opera 11 has extensions now.
hkwint

Nov 01, 2010
11:28 PM EDT
The major annoyance for lots of Linux user when it comes to Opera, probably is: It isn't open source, nor an open project.
caitlyn

Nov 02, 2010
12:04 AM EDT
I agree with Hans about Opera.

I am liking Midori more and more as I use it. Two other up and coming lightweight browsers are Kazehakase and Arora.
vainrveenr

Nov 02, 2010
12:06 AM EDT
Quoting:The major annoyance for lots of Linux user when it comes to Opera, probably is: It isn't open source, nor an open project.
And also, is Chrome fully open-sourced by Google ?!

caitlyn

Nov 02, 2010
12:07 AM EDT
No, but Chromium is.
hkwint

Nov 02, 2010
1:00 AM EDT
The major annoyance - the biggest one - of Chrome is lack of features, in my opinion. Hence it doesn't matter if it's open source or not, because I was not going to use it anyway. Only if it has the same amount of functionality as Firefox, such a thing would matter IMHO.

Probably that's just me, lots of Linux users like Chrome.

Opera though is almost as functional as Firefox, and hence open source or not becomes an issue.
Scott_Ruecker

Nov 02, 2010
2:45 AM EDT
Not to disagree with my own editor..in public or anything..;-) But I love Chrome, it is doing everything I want and more.

I am starting to get more out of my RSS subscriptions and news search than I ever have because of how I am learning to integrate them and my information intake overall into my day. Is it possible for a browser to make you start reading again, like for real even? Chrome is. I am able to take in more information the more I..I am Scott of Borg..lol.

All I need now is a Kindle, hook it up to archive.org and the Gutenburg library and I am set for life!

I say all that but still have no response on the fact that Chrome is not Open Source, yes Chromium is but I'm using Chrome..hmm.

So I disagree (and I'm red-handed), but your right Hans. ;-)
Sander_Marechal

Nov 02, 2010
3:15 AM EDT
I can't browse without Vimperator anymore. Unless it's ported to other browsers, I am sticking with Firefox.
Steven_Rosenber

Nov 02, 2010
11:34 AM EDT
In Fedora anyway, there is a nice Chromium port (that's not part of the Fedora repo), but getting multimedia to work with it takes some extra doing. A symbolic link to the Flash player wouldn't work; I had to copy the Flash binary into Chromium's favored directory. Gstreamer doesn't work as well or as often as it does in Firefox.
hkwint

Nov 02, 2010
2:37 PM EDT
Don't be ashamed Scott, I was not entirely honest. Chromium isn't that bad at all, but the user behind the desktop here is.

Here's what I think happened:

Over the years you invest time in a browser, or any app for that matter. But because you use it everyday (like billions of Windows users), you almost don't notice you spend time and effort learning the app. Half a minute a day on average isn't that much.

Then, suddenly, you switch to another app, and you want all the same functionality working in the same way. Right now! And not tomorrow, preferably yesterday!

Math shows, half a minute a day for five years equals 15 hours of work. A major effort.

The same happened when I switched from Opera to FF: I wanted mouse gestures! Else, I was not going to migrate to FF! Nowadays, I haven't used mouse gestures for some years as I use the keyboard now. Not Vimperator like Sander does, but there are many things you can do in FF with the keyboard, like "search while you type". A fancy way of saying "what you type ends up in the search bar without having to press Ctrl+F (or "/" ) first. Quite handy.

More things I miss in other browsers:

-Of course, if you use a browser for some years, you have tons of bookmarks, maybe tagged with keywords. In another browser you don't have them, so you have to migrate them. Doing so, most of the times, isn't a trivial task. But when test-driving another browser, it's not the first thing you do. Still, you miss them though.

-Same for passwords.

-On to "quick searches": I can type "wp [[topic]]" and it shows the wikipedia search. Or, more advanced, I type "rt [[address]]", and it shows the route from my home to [[address]] in Google Maps.

-Whenever I mistype something or don't type http, www or the right .com / .nl / .info / .biz etc, by default FF uses Google's "I feel lucky" search. Hence, you can type only "lxer" in the address bar and you're taken to this site. Not all browsers, like IE, include it.

-There are type associations (which program to use to open certain documents) which may not exist in the other browser. To be honest, I'm not sure how Linux desktops store these settings. But on this system, it's quite messy, and becomes even more messy when using another browser.

-Sometimes, behaviour is just different than what you're used to. Like in FF, if I middle-click on a link, it is opened in a new tab, but the new tab is in the background, ready to read later on. When I tried Midori however, the new tab was in the foreground, which I found very annoying. Easy to fix, but again it takes time.

-When in Chromium, of course I missed the AdBlocker. To a lesser degree, also FlashBlock. Nowadays, replacements are available. But for some reason, people like me remember them not being available (yet?) in the past, and even though they know replacements may be available, they rather be lazy; as it takes time.

-Of course there's the skin, after a certain amount of time, it becomes your "home". When using another browser, you may feel like a foreigner.

-Like Sander mentioned, addons, and becoming dependent on them.

If you're moving from living with your parents to a new (bigger) home, usually you rather gradually collect furniture and stuff, but you don't notice the big pile of things you have. It's only once you move, you find out how many stuff you actually collected. Then, when trying to 'arrange' the interior in your new home, it's a major effort, and it's not gradual at all anymore.

Something like that. For some reason, when I "visit" Opera, it's more like my own home than Chrome.

Long story cut short: The major annoyance of web browsers might well be moving / migrating from one to the other, and re-arranging your stuff to make it fell like your home again.
tmx

Nov 03, 2010
11:56 AM EDT
Migration can be a challenge, but I already made more than a few person who used IE in their whole life to use Chromium and they never nagged. Seems like the problem is more for immediate to advance users.

I don't know if one can sync all personal info/settings between browser, but what I do is basically customize a default profile for each web browser that I back up and update occasionally, but its unorthodox and you have to know what files you can delete and what to keep. It would be nice to have a GUI that generate and convert profiles, but that's not easy work.
jdixon

Nov 03, 2010
10:31 PM EDT
> It would be nice to have a GUI that generate and convert profiles, but that's not easy work.

What would be nice would be for it to have a single storage format for it's profiles and the ability to build an appropriate profile for whatever browser you specified from any stored profile. That would (in theory) give you one common profile across all your browsers (to the extent that's possible).
hkwint

Nov 04, 2010
4:45 AM EDT
Yeah jdixon, my 'problems' were already aimed at that conclusion.

That's the problem both with the cloud and social media, there's no "common format" which makes it easy to migrate.

What would be nice is one way of storing all people you know, what music you like, something about your profession, and then, Facebook, LinkedInn, Twitter, MySpace and whatever making use of it. Nowadays, you have to redo all the mess when entering another social networksite.

My knowledge about clouds is too limited to say anything useful about it, but from what I understand, it's not that easy to migrate either.

I think for the browser issue, a kind of Augeas system might solve this issues, it's some mathematical way of describing the way certain apps store certain configurations, so you can transform them back and forth. Too scientific though, probably.

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