What Makes Your 'Favorite' Browser Your Favorite?

[Tharic-Nar]

When Techgage first launched in early 2005, Microsoft's Internet Explorer totally dominated our usage charts, with Mozilla's Firefox in a somewhat distant second. A mere couple of years later, Firefox's usage sky-rocketed and first matched, then surpassed, Internet Explorer usage. Currently, there are almost twice as many Firefox users on our site than Internet Explorer users.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

speed, and looks. if it works quickly, efficiently and looks cool, I'm sold on it.

 

[Kougar]

Sidebar stacking tabs. Firefox has a plugin that emulates this functionality Opera offers by default, but the implementation is pretty bad. After all these years and especially after the widescreen migration, one would expect to see browsers offering more vertical real estate by placing tabs on either side of the window. At 1920x1200 resolution it works absolutely perfectly.

Firefox has pretty much fully copied Opera's database-style bookmark system, so if they ever offered this functionality natively I would migrate. IE9 has some tab options but doesn't appear to offer it either.

I am simply tired of the idiosyncracies due to residual bugs in Opera, as each major update adds a few more without fixing most of those that already existed. Such as typing a word into the bookmark search box, and nothing happening. Or clearing the box after searching, but the window still shows the previous search results (it's a realtime keyword/title/metadata search system for the bookmark database, updates are reflected instantly when searching). At least the "bookmark all open pages" option actually creates the bookmarks in the selected location now, instead of an utterly random location in the bookmark directory...

 

[Rob Williams]

Sidebar stacking tabs. Firefox has a plugin that emulates this functionality Opera offers by default, but the implementation is pretty bad. After all these years and especially after the widescreen migration, one would expect to see browsers offering more vertical real estate by placing tabs on either side of the window. At 1920x1200 resolution it works absolutely perfectly.

Although this is something I'd never use, I think it SHOULD exist. I personally can't stand side-mounted bars (even in MMOs, you'll never see me with a vertical spellbar), but given that we have SO much real-estate in our browsers, it's interesting that more companies aren't making more of an effort to use that space. Instead, they just keep reducing the element sizes at the top of the browser.

It's funny you mention the bookmark system in Opera/Firefox, because this is one major reason that Chrome drives me nuts... the bookmarks system is clunky. When I want to manage my bookmarks, I want it in a pop-up, and one that's easy to manipulate. It's amazing to me that Google can do SO much right, but so much wrong at the same time.

 

[Kougar]

I keep all of my toolbars horizontal. But tabs are better stacked... they take up less room, don't require scrolling or grouping, ~30 can be viewed or selected from at a glance. And the page titles are actually readable... almost any webpage will have unused room on the sides with larger resolution displays...

Yeah, I have the same feeling about Opera. They've done so much right, but what they do wrong seems so obvious or should be a natural progression of the browser they somehow manage to implement it poorly or don't expand on... currently they're focusing on gimmicky or niche specific features.

 

[Rob Williams]

I have no problem with the concept of vertical bars; they just don't serve a purpose for me. It's rare if I have more than eight tabs open, so horizontal tabs are fine. I don't understand the reason people need to keep so many tabs to be open, honestly. Either deal with the page that's open for close it!

 

[Kougar]

The reason I have lots of tabs open are several-fold. When browsing forums such as Techgage, if I don't open every new post within somewhere between 15-30 minutes, the forum will auto-mark them all as read from the date I first accessed the forum frontpage. So for most forums I simply queue them up as to not miss any new posts. Similar with websites that post quite a few articles daily.

Some tabs are in-depth articles I need to give my full attention to while reading or learning and will read later, others are sites or funny/important links I picked up or was sent and have them open so I can pass the links on to specific people next time I chat with them. I'll also simply leave a few open as reminders to do something the next day, etc...