staying.cool

the net is abuzz with the latest google move: google chrome. people are trying to figure out why ? what ? how ?

i type this post from chrome, and i see: a combo of ie8 and firefox3. to go. with bits of safari and opera all thrown in. even this review is just thrown together from initial impressions.

disclaimer: i firmly believe that firefox 3 is the best browser around.

back to the show.

we have speed dial. we have the ‘omnibar’. we have privacy. we have cool animations when you move tabs out of windows, for urls on pages, previews, search etc. we have download managers. we have auto-bookmarking. we have combined features from 3 different browsers which attempt to integrate together. and they do, somewhat decently.

however, i don’t like the philosophy.

based on the release notes for the latest beta of firefox, all i can say is: wow. i’m blown away, and then some. how something like IE8 even hopes to compete, i don’t know. safari is always a boo-hoo, and opera, i’m sorry to say can’t really measure up in terms of compatibility.

the question will soon be: how did people browse the net before firefox ?

meanwhile, i skirt dangerously on the border of killing myself for the next deadline. however, i know that this is the reason i’m doing any of this in the first place. i’m loving every minute of it.

after reading a very interesting article about the myths surrounding firefox, i was curious enought to try out opera 9. supposedly having everything FF “claims to have” and much more… even if the site-author uses avant… and given that i’m unable to work on any other but my own firefox installation currently, its a real test to see if opera does it for me.

so far, i’m impressed by the sleekness of the package. some neat intuitive features, simple options… and i thought i might just replace FF. the wand feature has to be ultra-cool, as is tab preview.
but.
rendering issues. major. its happening right now on this web-page with the width of the text barely understanding its own text box. the page fonts look different to me too, which doesn’t seem right. FF couldn’t be completely changing the look of pages in wordpress ! opera has problems with google too.. and that shows on their homepage, gmail, and even reader.

the big thing i’m missing is the simpler adblock and the tab-mix-plus… i’m a little spoiled

it may just be a matter of me getting used to it, or discovering whether i’ve screwed up some setting to cause such variation to what i see in firefox… so i’m going to give it a coupla days. but i can see why opera never appealed to me - not when i saw it as supposedly “the fastest browser on the web” a few years ago.. or on prasanna’s laptop.

and these #$@%$%@# keyboard shortcuts, have caused me to retype this 4 times. @#@!#@#$$#@%$R@#$@#$…

update: can’t handle wordpress correctly, back to FF for now.. will try to use tomorrow, for general webbing. no support for yahoo mail beta. its like opera is being kept out of the market.
final take ? i can’t live without adblock now. ads I didn’t know existed are showing up.. me no like. plus the google factor. unfortunate, because opera has all the features and more that anyone could ask for. FF does not even come close in that sense. but extensions take it away. FF is the browser for the future. at least for now.

in other tid-bits, i’m in love with google notepad, and there are quite a few ways for indian bloggers to circumvent the ban.

we all probably know of the release of FF2 beta 1, if not; here’s a quick round-up of the features; with a lengthier review as well.

in short, a lot of the “features” touted in FF2 are currently possible in FF 1.5.[whatever] using extensions. namely the tab-mix-plus and google toolbar extensions. google suggest: check. spell-check: check. undo close-tab: check. feed-reader subscribe: check.
i can do all of these - and even more - if i use the above extensions.

so, then.. what exactly am i gaining by going to FF2 ? lets face it, when i switched to FF0.8 in 2004 from the original mozilla suite, i went to the best browser around. simply because of the innovation, the fresh new look, the speed. IE6 sucks even today, and IE7 only mariginally improves on it by taking the best of FF’s features and implementing them with some memory management. it’s still nothing compared to the extensibility of FF, and hence i’ve not switched back. FF1.5 was a good improvement, and today i cannot imagine life without all my extensions.

some of the memory leak problem that has dogged FF since its launch is now apparently handled a little better. i’m not complaining. integrating extensions into the basic browser will help that - i’m still not complaining.

but where is the innovation ? where is the FF that caused us geeks to stand up and take notice of the “fastest browser on the web” ? the one that made us realise the travesty that was IE6 ? face it, this is the browser that is the reason microsoft had to rewrite IE, cause opera to become free.. and so much more.

and its next major release involves integration of popular extensions into its existing framework. thats it.

i’m not happy. at all. i’ll upgrade when the time comes due to security, and the memory management and so on, but the FF that “rediscovered the web” seems to be dead.

have heard a lot about ‘reveal‘, and have finally installed it.. and its good. very very neat. and slick. looks useful, provided i remember to use it.:)

and of course, a solution to windows update. looks good to me, and very useful for the shady people out there

have also shifted back to google home page, though apparently netvibes is the “in thing” now. typical.

the latest firefox installed and all ready to go.. my view : this browser is proving to be a better choice every day. its been a long journey from phoenix to the latest version; free software just might have something going for it