Sick of Chrome vs Firefox? Check out these 3 NEW browsers Browsers have been making a comeback. There have been three brand new browsers released and even Firefox, which seems to be sliding further into irrelevancy every day, has released a new version aimed at developers and claims to be working on a WebKit-based version for iOS devices. It’s a refreshing moment. After an initial …
Still nothing like the good ol' days of the 90's browser wars. I wouldn't mind another go around. I remember installing Cello on Window's 3.1, though that was the last time I used Windows. Still, it's nice to see Microsoft moving on. Perhaps that will help liven things up a little.
Opera 11.64 (not 12) was the best ever poweruser-humanity could have. I have approx 2,000+ tabs opened every given time and opera.exe consumes as little as 1.4GB ... these tabs are unread articles...research on some software tech... each research field/area consisting of some 100tabs... how it is achieved... three small checkboxes added to my opera taskbar .. disableJavaScript, DisablePlugins, and DisableImages. opera can enable it on the fly instead of restarting. i also have disabled autoredirect to keep even expired pages as is. also have disabled themes. I have VBS script which copies opera session/.win file in yyyymmddhhmmss foramt every 30min. so even if opera.exe crashes i can resume the state back. At this level the tabs are so small the i cant see them except a shadow moving in near smooth tabs line (tabs borders even disappear even while scattered in 6 windows. So the move around tabs i have customized shortcuts to instead of using ctrl+tab i have defined "[" and "]" to move linearly among them. Instead of ctrl+w to close tab which has a mystery of crashing opera i defined only "m" to close tab.. this saves from crashing opera. People praising opera12 are fake power users. as 12 had removed many of 11.64 legacy. I have "j" defined to enable javascript only for that page instead of whole session and "k" to disable javascript for that page after load complete. have defiened "n" for new tab unstead of ctrl+t as it had similar opera crashing habits like ctrl+w. lastly the session restore on my samsung840pro ssd takes 15-20mins with all pages loaded with content. If this browser has taken the legacy of 11.64 then i wish them very best!!!
"Opera 11.64 (not 12) was the best ever poweruser-humanity could have. I have approx 2,000+ tabs opened every given time and opera.exe consumes as little as 1.4GB ... these tabs are unread articles...research on some software tech... each research field/area consisting of some 100tabs... how it is achieved... three small checkboxes added to my opera taskbar .. disableJavaScript, DisablePlugins, and DisableImages. opera can enable it on the fly instead of restarting. i also have disabled autoredirect to keep even expired pages as is. also have disabled themes. I have VBS script which copies opera session/.win file in yyyymmddhhmmss foramt every 30min. so even if opera.exe crashes i can resume the state back. At this level the tabs are so small the i cant see them except a shadow moving in near smooth tabs line (tabs borders even disappear even while scattered in 6 windows. So the move around tabs i have customized shortcuts to instead of using ctrl+tab i have defined "[" and "]" to move linearly among them. Instead of ctrl+w to close tab which has a mystery of crashing opera i defined only "m" to close tab.. this saves from crashing opera. People praising opera12 are fake power users. as 12 had removed many of 11.64 legacy etc etc etc. lastly the session restore on my samsung840pro ssd takes 15-20mins with all pages loaded with content. If this browser has taken the legacy of 11.64 then i wish them very best!!!"
Wow. I use these things called bookmarks.
You do realise you're mental don't you?
Is Firefox without the garbage. My add-ons work longer and there is the familiar classic interface. Highly recommended for multiple platforms. (I am not associated with, compensated, or employed by Pale Moon in any way.)
From their web site.
"Pale Moon is an Open Source, Firefox-based web browser available for Microsoft Windows, Android and Linux (with other operating systems in development), focusing on efficiency and ease of use. Make sure to get the most out of your browser!
"Pale Moon offers you a browsing experience in a browser completely built from its own source with carefully selected features and optimizations to maximize the browser's speed*, stability and user experience, while maintaining compatibility with thousands of Firefox extensions many have come to love and rely on."
http://www.palemoon.org/
I agree it s good.. its australis that forced me to look at it.. has it got t the FULL set of adblock addons working yet??? last time I tried 25, it did not have the right click menu taht FF28 has...
IF you STILL are moaning, and have not learnt, Adblock WILL ALLOW 'GOOD' ADS!!!!
https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
Rant #1
I was deeply disappointed when I "upgraded" Opera to the latest version, as it has been dumed down and thing I used to like having, such as the ability to turn off GIF animations and generally block content per-site, are gone. Maybe some plug-ins will help, but overall its almost pointless.
Chromium gives me a webkit-based browser without Google's spying, so what is Opera actually offering to justify their existence? OK the "turbo" feature is occasionally useful, but that is about it.
Rant #2
Will Firefox quite copying Chrome's "users are morons" approach and stop dicking around with the GUI? You know, hiding thing and/or removing them because a couple of developers don't use them.
Rand #3
Actually, its an anti-rant as I am pleased MS has finally bitten the bullet and decided to ditch all of the legacy crap in IE. Yes, I know a lot of organisations are IE-bound but for the love of $DIETY just fix those. MS needs to move on and if they stick to open standards, and ideally open their browser (even if under a restrictive license) all will benefit.
I'm only taking a pragmatic view here, though I suspect I know what the outcome will be...
I need a citation for the assertion that their user experience profiling only goes as deep as taking their developers own views. They probably go deeper than that (NB, I did say "probably").
Surely they have to pander to the majority in order to bring general user counts up enough to be able to sell whatever it is they sell to make FF and keep it free. My mum would never use half the stuff that "confuses her" about previous releases and she's glad their gone (after I forced it on her a few years ago by removing all the IE icons I could find). I suspect that this holds true for the user majority.
I would wager that El Reg users would in general agree with the above statements only because they're not in this majority. Indeed, I was also very confused when a recent update moved stuff around, but a quick add-on here, theme change there, customisation everywhere and I'm back on track for the most part.
Besides all that, what feedback have you given Mozilla on your experience as a result of the changes? If none, then they don't know you exist, let alone your views, and they will never be able to meet expectations of users whom they know nothing about. If the dullards demanding simple are more vocal than you, then you lose, I'm afraid.
"If the dullards demanding simple are more vocal than you, then you lose, I'm afraid."
The sort of idiots who get confused by a menubar are hardly the sort who'll be sending feedback reports to mozillas dev team. They have their work cut out for themselves just trying to double click the browser icon.
No, I'm afraid plenty of people have complained to mozilla but just like the arrogant dicks at Gnome , they think they know best and anyone who complains is a luddite. Well, they'll slowly find out from their dwindling market share that they don't and we arn't.
Nobody's demanding anything, what they do is take metrics and use them to justify their beautiful design changes.
Moving the standard menu around or hiding it or making some own special icon menu at the right is more confusing for the novice user I'd say.
Also hiding preferences because people only use them in limited cases (probably only where there's some problem) therefore the use count is low is annoying to power users. It's also a self-fulfilling prophesy the because obscure preferences and keyboard shortcuts are generally only used by power users, those same users that turn off the telemetry data (not that I don't trust Mozilla but even they won't make me keep that on after Snowden) but they didn't bother anyone else.
Ok, well firstly it wasn't I that started with the whole dullard thing - it was from the original post and I used the word, personally preferring it over "moron".
All we're talking about here is the user majority opinion driving change, I have two points:
- if you think that users who don't know how to voice their opinions are dumb, and if they're not dumb they'd agree with you on the UI, that's a pretty arrogant stance.
- when a company is dealing with dropping market share they have to do something. Looking at who is winning those migrating away (i.e. Chrome) and heading in a similar direction is a legitimate strategy. Although that's *not* guaranteed to work it's better than no product development at all.
You've successfully built an argument on vapourware. We're all guessing and applying our own opinions to the mix, but "I don't like it and a few others I've spoken too (who happen to have my background in IT) agree" isn't grounds for assumption on opinion of user majority.
Remove the damn search bar and prevent any more being installed. I get fed up with telling people to type an address into the address bar for them to just type it into whichever search bar they've accidentally installed.
Even worse if you're trying to give them a remote support address,
Second point: At one point Chrome seemed like it was everywhere. Anyone who sticks their browser in their search engine which has 90% of the market, antivirus software, and Flash and Reader is bound to get a whole load of people moving to Chrome, often because they don't know how to get back (especially with Firefox installs that I do for other people).
Not much they can do against the Borg by playing fair. Perhaps Mozilla should have invested time in making Firefox as uninstallable as the Ask Toolbar or do what Safari on Yosemite does, which use a plug-in to bother you if it's run from another browser.
"when a company is dealing with dropping market share they have to do something"
Trying to make "FireFox" and make it appeal to everyone is as futile as trying to make a universal "Ford" or "Volkswagen". Luckily the solution is patently obvious, as per that example: make a range of models and don't dick around with fundamental conventions.
All cars need steering wheels. All desktop applications need menu bars. See TIFKAM and GNOME 3 for a case studies in sticking a joystick in front of the driver's seat. I someone thinks they have invented a radical and compelling new user interface paradigm then I have a bucket and some ice water here to demonstrate the true meaning of "immersive UI experience".
'Trying to make "FireFox" and make it appeal to everyone' IS easy enough, if ALL the features can be modified and enhanced by addons , themes, etc...
Now IF Moz produces a 'core' WITHOUT australis, then those that want it, just get the addon --- or of course moz can supply the browser with many addons *already* in, keeping the newbs happy, but also easily *removed* by those that dont want, in preference of a more complex style or usability...
The main beef, is the current version needs about 5 *exra* addons, JUST to bring it back to the state it was in, at V28, with NO addons!!!
I think mozilla , through its forums, KNOW how much hate there is for australis... Just like opera, they just delete it and say "problems? what problems???" they know that 'new young things' will not even KNOW that it could be much better.... :( :(
Its the same as win 8.. idiot new users love it, it looks so 'playstation' !!! and poor office workers and devs have to learn more ways to manage it...
If you bother reading, you would know that Google has been the main source of lucre for Mozilla for many years.
In return, Google is the default search engine for Firefox.
Generally easy to switch to another, though not in all versions (some seem to rely on a volatile setting, in history, cookies, or such, so when you wipe that, FF goes back to Google as the default).
Bad design there, but clearly not so bad for the 'Google is the only SE' and 'I find it convenient to leave all cookies and history, and to always click on "Remember Me on this Machine"' crowd, after all, clearly the majority.
Still like it in general.
Occasionally enter an erroneous site name directly, or do something else that unintentionally invokes Google. Irritating, but not a disaster.
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Article: Firefox, which seems to be sliding further into irrelevancy every day...
m0rt: "Will Firefox quite copying Chrome's "users are morons" approach and stop dicking around with the GUI?"
The first quote is a consequence of the second. It's a rude surprise when you update Firefox and find another useful feature is gone. The whole "we know better than our users" attitude from Firefox is truly annoying.
not that a lot of organizations are tied-up to IE, it is that those organizations are tied-up to a specific version of IE, like in IE 6 or at most 7 so moving to their new browser is impossible unlike the two can be run in parallel, no compatibility mode, please!
"And the curses involved in getting the engine out of a VW Dub need to be heard to be believed. Came up with a number of new ones myself. Worth the effort (I think) though."
Of course you could always buy a vehicle that came with a decent engine in the first place rather than trying to squeeze a few extra HP out of something that would be underpowered for a lawnmower.
I found working on the VW engine easy - especially when it fell out on the drive. With a lift the standard engine was so easy to work on - its all these fancy turbos and carburetors that dont fit the engine bay that makes things difficult. Friend has on where the turbo was welded in place in the 17 piece exhaust! My VW before last I had to buy a special tool to get the spark plugs out!
The chrome/ff approach appears to be a mid engined jobie where the body wont come off to get at it!
As a spotty teenager, I used a builders' plank and a skateboard to get mine out, having first reversed the car on to ramps. Worked a treat. Undoing the single central bolt holding the flywheel on was another matter, as was torquing it back up to (if memory serves) 147lbft. Shattered the first socket wrench.
Happy days.
-A.
"A half-timbered traveller, mayhap?"
But this time around one with a driver's door that doesn't sag when you open it, please :-)
Happy days. I could fix just about everything on those with a socket set, a few open ended spanners, plus screwdriver..
But not the rust which got it in the end.
Actually, Firefox *used* to be the customisable one.
With every version they're locking more and more of it down, stripping out customisability and are forcing people to rely upon an ever-increasing messy-list of extensions to add back functionality/customisability that used to come by default with the browser.
The Australis "overhaul" alone removed the status bar, removed tabs-on-bottom, locked the address bar to the left, and removed the ability to put stop/reload wherever you want.
Firefox is slipping into obscurity as Mozilla seem hell-bent on making it look and work like Chrome, whilst continually removing all the powerful bits that used to make Firefox stand out. Hence why after nearly 10 years as my primary browser, I finally ditched it last year.
I don't see any of those as an option. IE & Safari don't exist on Linux, Chrome I won't use because Google, and Opera has too small of a user base leading to too many web page incompatibilities. I already went through that when I used Mozilla and later the early versions of Firefox until it became widespread enough that web developers were forced to no longer code for IE only. I figure I've paid my dues, I'll let someone else deal with using a browser with a tiny market share hoping it gains traction.
I may have missed a "don't do this" option, but I am concerned that once I installed Yandex, it had my history and passwords etc from my current Chrome session.
I did literally just install it and Vivaldi (I want it to play winter to me whilst I browse dammit!) at the same time in a sleepy haze though so I may have missed an option.
Right, I was stupid enough to actually believe the Vivaldi hype for a microsecond. I couldn't get it off my machine fast enough.
No features, no tweakables I use, no decent plugins, not compatible with anything, my XPI files won't work on it, and so on. Yuck, Yuck.
(And to think, years ago on ZDNet I wrote a spirited defense of Opera and von Tetzchner when the world was against Opera and didn't have one good word to say about it (IE was then flavour of the year).
I now feel ashamed.
It's time von Tetzchner was put out to pasture, for he's obviously lost the plot.
I can only assume that you're being in some way sarcastic with these comments in the knowledge that Vivaldi is still only an early preview release or technical preview, and is therefore a unfinished product.
If you were actually being in anyway at all serious with your post, expecially with the "No features, no tweakables I use, no decent plugins, not compatibe with anything, my XPI files won't work on it, and so on. Yuck, Yuck." bit, then quite frankly you're a muppet.
I hope the case is more the former than the latter.
"...being in some way sarcastic"
Absolutely, true, but then bitter experience has made me a sarcastic, irritable bastard.
The fact is I used Opera for many years—almost since its inception. The code was tight, excellent and essentially bug-free [at one time it'd easily fit onto a 1.44MB floppy], and it had many excellent features including the ability to properly paginate and print difficult Web pages (something that IE and Firefox still have problems with and have never fixed), as well as many other nifty features including an excellent, almost-bulletproof downloader and the ability to tweak it extensively.
As for your criticism that Vivaldi is just a beta doesn't cut much ice. That once in public beta, it's extremely rare for principal functionality of any program to change. On final release, I'll bet Vivaldi doesn't change as I'd wish it to; if it does, then I'd invite you ridicule me in public at the first opportunity.
Unfortunately, Opera upped and left its original techie roots and succumbed to the current fashion of dumbed-down minimal interface; in so doing it left nothing for past/experienced users to work with (it's what happens when one slavishly follows Goolgle—the current fad with Google now supplants the fashion of some years back when Microsoft was all the rage). (It never ceases to amaze me how, in recent years, once-logical IT has been so very smitten with fashion, it has let commonsense be thrown to the wind).
I'm sure that some will find Vivaldi useful but for Opera diehards like me it's a bitter (and sad) pill to take.
Sarcastic I am, that's certain. However, I'm rarely given to making sweeping statements without good and proper consideration.
BTW, this is the second time I've had Vivaldi on my machine, previously I've evaluated an earlier beta. Apologies for any impression that I only gave it a cursory glance, that's far from the case.
>Exactly, it's basically a skin for Chrome
Don't you mean Chrome is a skin for Konqueror?
Surely the features are the what makes a browser cool. The rendering engine is just one - and one which isn't really part of the UI.
I use FF & Chromium. FF for normal browsing, Chromium mostly for dropping back to a browser without security restrictions in place i.e. can't be bothered going through 6/12 different noscript settings for a page I'm happy with anyway.
I'd quite like an "open this page in another browser" menu option in FF.
I'm not a Microsoft hater. I'm actually glad about Spartan; the idea that IE as we knew it is being held in stasis for intranets and freeing the rest of the web to go forwards as standards compliant without incessant IE checks.
However, I just wish they'd release Spartan as stand-alone, so that it can be installed on XP/Win7. I know there's no support for these operating systems, but as long as they're still around we still have to code web pages to cater for them, or risk losing part of our audience. That's a tough sell, a risk with no real reward in the business plan.
Wishful thinking... but not a chance!
They've only open sourced a handful of their developer tools in an attempt to look cool.
In less than a year after the source for Spartan is released, we'll have a cross-platform version and there goes Microsoft's next opportunity to lock people into Windows.
I'd also expect a few forks, which Microsoft will also have to compete with.
Not a chance.
Commercial SW is all about the upgrade cycle. MS is too large to rely on new customers for "growth." That is a problem for most major corps these days. Spartan is just one more reason to upgrade OS, which probably drags an outlook upgrade along with it and maybe an office upgrade, and....
Open Source would allow back-porting and MS don't want that.
Personally I think its a weak/tough sell for MS. If you want what Spartan offers, why not use Chrome/Chromium or FF? That's the thing about standards, the more you adhere to them, the fewer USP's you have. If Spartan is essentially IE with the Windows hooks taken out, why would you do that? Ok, I know why you'd do that, but why would you do that in a product from MS?
"Commercial SW is all about the upgrade cycle. MS is too large to rely on new customers for "growth." That is a problem for most major corps these days."
It's the reason why so many users look for alternatives when software doesn't consider users' [established] needs. For the likes of Opera, Firefox, etc. alternatives generally exist. Trouble is, for many, that alternatives to Microsoft simply do not exist or are too hard to implement. Unfortunately, Microsoft's monopoly relies on this fact.
"I am considering migrating to Firefox fork Pale Moon, though."
Yes, do and get rid of all that "Australis" shit that Firefox is riddled with. Rounded tabs, who needs them?
The only thing I changed when I moved was to install Adblock Latitude, everything else worked straight away.
Go for it!
I loathe those websites that automatically refresh their web page every two minutes or so. Specifically the Daily Telegraph with its front page and section header pages. I am reading the teaser line below the headline and it refreshes, slowly. I am about to click on a headline to go to the full story and it refreshes, slowly. I have complained but have been ignored.
Sure, I want an up to date page when I click on it. But when I've got it, I actually want to READ it, an idea that seems alien to the Telegraph's web department. No, I do not want to spend all day looking at glitzy moving adverts, changed every two minutes.
Lets hope El Reg remains a site that is good to read.
"I am considering migrating to Firefox fork Pale Moon, though."
I've done that but I eventually dumped Pale Moon on compatibility issues, but don't let me suggest that you shouldn't try it, as it's a good browser.
As I see it, the more important problem is that Firefox is forever changing its core user functionality (as well as forever breaking add-ons with monotonous regularity). This is made considerably worse by the fact that automatic updates is on by default—which means that user functionality can and does change without users being aware of it (as well as add-ons breaking unexpectedly—a damned PIA that's plagued Firefox since its inception).
Moreover, Mozilla never clearly explains the functional changes from one version to the next (except in gibberish in the depths of Mozilla's site that only developers read), and these changes occur also with monotonous regularity. That user functionality can change in such a haphazard way without the user's knowledge is, not only an operational hazard but also, frankly, it's a damned disgrace. It's software engineering of the worst kind, it's negligence in the extreme.
One way around these incessant upgrades is to continue using an older version of Firefox, my case Firefox 25, but this too is fraught with difficulties as some sites including YouTube arrogantly report that they're no longer supporting it. My immediate response was to use the User Agent Overrider add-on which immediately silenced the nagging.
For me, an even better solution is to hang on to the older Firefox 25 and to supplement it with a Firefox fork such as the latest Cyberfox (it's a pretty good fork but it doesn't retrofit the earlier features so annoying removed by Mozilla).
and everything just worked. All my FF history files, passwords, even cookies ported over from Firefox as simple file copies. Amazing.
Pale moon doesn't abuse you if you want to accept self-signed certificates, and it doesn't have Australis stuff, and it doesn't freeze every few accesses to Google sites. Also, their ATOM based version works really well on the old XP netbooks the family still uses...
The only important plugin which didn't work is FireFTP, so I keep an old copy (v29) of FireFox around, as the new FF don't work properly with that plugin, either...
Thanks to the developers who enable all this flexibility...
Reading through the posts on this thread has caused me to do a bit of thinking.
To my mind what is happening to Firefox and Palemoon is very reminiscent of all the fuss with Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Both set of developers of the original have started monkeying around with the UI in the name of "making things simpler and clearer" when what they are really doing is imposing their view on the way that people should interact with the programs. This shows an arrogant disregard for the choices people need to make to get the UX as they want. Sort of diktat by design.
The result of all these shenanigans is that people are voting with their mouse by:
1) forking the offending program and
2) moving over in increasing numbers
It looks to me that as most of these projects are run online they have taken on-board the "... perceive as damage and route around it." idea of the original internet. If so good for both the devs and the users.
Mess with peoples' choices at your peril, you may just slip into irrelevance as the article says.
Forking a development is the best way to give people choice. Arrogance is not to allow a choice at all.
The software is free and there is little or no lock-in. Your software will simple be popular because people like it. Being arrogant in such an environment would take a lot of ability to carry it off.
"...Both set of developers of the original have started monkeying around with the UI"
Absolutely correct, but then they're influenced by that quintessential example—Microsoft. Every version of Windows has a significantly different interface without a proper fallback position (such as the previous UI). So arrogant these bastards have become that it's cost them billions in lost sales with the Win-8/Metro debacle. It's such an obvious stuff-up that it would have been obvious even to Blind Freddy. No doubt, exactly how this happened I reckon will the subject of investigation, Ph.D theses etc., long into the future.
Right, the only solution is either not upgrade or to simply walk elsewhere. That's the only way to make them see reason.
Those of us using i686 hardware are still being offered Opera 12.16 as the latest version; others can still get pre-Webkit versions from <http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?custom=yes>. If sufficient users insist on doing so, perhaps Opera Software might get the message and revert to maintaining the genuine Opera.
Before "Vivaldi" was announced, there was already an independent project to create something Opera-like for power users; it's called "Otter" and is certainly worth a look <http://otter-browser.org/> although still very much in 'alpha' phase. It's based on a Qt5 port of Webkit, which seems to work better than the GTK versions.
Keyboard users may prefer something a lot simpler; "dwb" and "qutebrowser" offer a Vi-like user interface <http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/> <http://www.qutebrowser.org/>; the former is more complete but seems to struggle with some websites.
My main gripe with most major browser names is their constant need for change. In fact; in some cases I think you might even call it an obsessive need; adding change because of the change. Now, that by itself isn't much of a problem unless they implement these changes so that you are forced to use them. And sometimes the bite is in the details...
I don't mind a new look (too much) but why can't I just continue to work with what I have?
So yah, I discovered SeaMonkey years ago and never looked back. It supports all the modern standards, it is pretty lightweight, can do more than just browsing (email & irc client as well) and finally: its interface doesn't change on the whim of a developer. As said: I've been using this browser for years now with the same, boring, standard "Netscape-like" interface. And it just works...
I tried SeaMonkey for a while, but there were a few user-unfriendly things that finally drove me back (reluctantly) to FF. I didn't see why they couldn't make tabbing an easier thing to do. But I am interested in Pale Moon: sounds like what I have been looking for. I can't wait to ditch FF. I dread being pestered for an update, then having to fight it to stop doing all the things I hate. I do NOT like my browser (or anything else) to 'anticipate' for me what I might want to look at. Stop it. Stop it now.
Another long term "SeaMonkey" user here. It does everything I want it to, it's as customisable as Firefox used to be, and the project leaders are adamant they won't adopt any Firefox "features" or UX, unless they absolutely have to.
It's essentially a community led continuation of the former Mozilla Suite (which in turn was codenamed "Seamonkey" in the early days when Mozilla.org was still just an offshoot of Netscape) that was effectively abandoned by Mozilla.org several years ago in favour of promoting Firefox as their official product.
With addons or without, none of the major browsers offers half the simple, practical functionality Opera ddid (real Opera, obviously, not the Chrome clone rubbish). Right click, edit site preferences, untick "enable Javascript". Easy as that, and built right in as standard. I've tried two or three of the no script addons (for various Gekko browsers) and though they offer all sorts of complicated bells and whistles, they don't come even close for simplicity and practicality.
Agreed (and the damn hide of Mozilla to do so).
You should try that wonderful Firefox add-on 'QuickJava', it works beautifully. I default it to 'JavaScript off' mode but when necessary it's only one click on a toolbar icon to allow JavaScript.
(Of course, it's pressure from the likes of Google and others to eliminate anything that makes it easier to kill ads, make tracking more difficult, etc., thus any such tweakables are either deeply hidden or eliminated. That Mozilla receives monies from Google clearly compromises Mozilla's independence. This has been obvious for quite some years now.
I have been trying to move away from Opera 12, no one else supports the porting of speed dials
Even Opera, Beta 28 worked some 95% dropped few entries, Beta 29 gave me 3 copies of the speed dials and dropped about 10% off,say about 4 rows missing, problems with the later Operas are only 6 speed dial icons across the screen, there is a 9 setting but it does no do a thing.
Opera 12 gives me 12 Icons.
I reported bug Beta 29 gave me 3 copies, but never got really back to me accept to confirm my Bug report, this also happed with Beta 28, but a new build seem to fix it.
Any suggestions.
It's interesting how few have anything good to say about Vivaldi given it's pre-alpha (and has been for ages) and has heritage. I'm scribbling this with Opera 11.x, normally use 12.x but have partially defected to IE or Chrome as I can't get 12.x to 'liaise' with our IT departments MS firewall/proxy/naughty-filter-total-lockdown-BOFH config ...
Opera innovated - loads of stuff you see now was Opera. How many here use tabbed browsing for instance? IE, FF and Chrome all used Opera features. For some reason Opera felt it was sensible to fork the product, strip out the stuff people liked (mostly its own innovations), and anything else that could be potentially useful, replace it with a software nonentity and effectively kill the v12.x fork.
I like the fact that Vivaldi are attempting to take us to Opera 12-2015. To a large extent I don't care what the underlying engine is, it's what I can feel that matters. When I poke it I want it to respond, instead of wriggling like a wet eel then saying "no, whatever you were trying to change, I know better, hard luck." Get it compatible with modern standards, let me have my tabs and configuration options back and I'll be happy.
Yes, true...BUT Opera never seemed bothered about protecting, or **even improving** its stuff!! their 'speeddial' looked like it was just 'tacked on' to the 'blank page' function... :(
many people complained about it, and guess what the response on the forum was??? you were banned for being 'disruptive' !
If I'm not mistaken, the 3 big browsers in the 90s [at least part of it] were IE, Firefox and Netscape.
Even with "Spartan" Microsoft said that IE will be kept alive [more for corporate sites]. A chance of a backport to Windows 7 is possible - I guess depends on how well it does and how much Windows 7 users are left.
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I hope Vivaldi can deliver, and do so safely, but I suspect that lurking within the mechanism that delivers the "infinitely customizable" bit will be many exploits.
I hope not. I'll switch to Vivaldi as soon as they have a road-ready release. I may not need 90% of the features but I've had it with the choices made on my behalf by the Big Three.
"imo, the only problem with PaleMoon is that there is no version of it on Linux. Maybe try SeaMonkey instead ?"
Well that's news to me. I've been running Palemoon in PClos since December.
Sorry, Vivaldi can't possibly be a web browser, it appears to support bookmarks in folders without requiring four clicks to get to them. This is not what modern users want and demand; usability statistics and my mate Nigel at the the graphic designers demonstrate this quite clearly and no debate will be entered into!
Fortunately I'm not a modern user, so more power to their arms!
I downloaded the Yandex concept browser when it was first announced [Nov last year, if I remember correctly]. Moderately impressed until I tried to print out a webpage and discovered that [on OSX anyway] the Print dialogue [and those for 'Open' and 'Save'] drops down from the BOTTOM[!] edge of the browser window and consequently [if your browser window is anything approaching full-screen] off the edge of your monitor —and, being modal, freezes the whole rest of the interface while doing so.
I reported the bug at the time, thinking that Yandex would be somewhat anxious to fix such an unbelievably idiotic usability faux pas. But, coincidentally enough, yesterday I fired up the Yandex browser for the first time in ages to find that, four months on, that half-arsed initial release version is still the latest one.
Yandex is often referred to as 'The Russian Google' as they offer a very similar portfolio of web services. Judging from this, it seems that, also like Google, they're not averse to letting projects they've previously announced with great fanfare wither away through lack of interest.
"don't forget that once upon a time IE was the great innovator of the web. For example, IE gave the world Ajax, the ability to refresh certain parts of the page without reloading the whole thing. Without that contribution, the web as we know it would simply not exist."
I just love this thinly veiled sarcasm :)
the problem with innovation, is you need to keep up the pace, or boldface lie, like some large companies saying their tech is 'latest', when we all know it is 5 years old... this company says we can do 5 meg! another smaller company say that same line will do 20 meg... :)
"...even Firefox, which seems to be sliding further into irrelevancy every day..."
Really? News to me. Firefox is the only browser available that does what I need, and now I can't use another without getting impatient and frustrated very quickly. Its performance has improved a great deal recently, so it now sits quietly in the background when you're not using it without chewing up memory and CPU (although if you've been using it for a long time you may have to disconnect sync, then go directly to your sync account and empty it for a fresh start, to make this happen).
There are many useful extensions, some of which I use on a regular basis, and others which I enable only for specific purposes (like CertPatrol, which has been useful in the wake of FREAK) - if they're not loaded, they don't affect performance of course.
Do browser tests on Peacekeeper (http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/) and Octane (https://developers.google.com/octane/) in order to get a grip on the realities here.
I occasionally use Chrome and IE, just to remind myself of how inadequate browsers used to be. I've tried Vivaldi, which I assume is an IT high school project. It ran HTML5 video on YouTube impressively, but otherwise makes me wonder, as I do for so many Linux distributions, why the developers are bothering. There must be something better they can do with their time and expertise.
Here are the benchmark results for Firefox, Chrome, and IE, done on my laptop PC with a lot of tabs open in Firefox:
Peacekeeper Results
Firefox: 2114
Chrome: 1657
IE: 1273
Octane Results
Firefox: 7662
Chrome: 8251
IE: 5142
Pretty conclusive, really.
so as long as it is fast, it is useful to you then??? ... I think most define 'useful' as 'does what you want' 'does not have massive security issues' 'will render very complex websites properly' 'includes many tools for dev debug, flash & script stopping'...
and even ' functionality not impaired by latest cosmetic update, that ruins usability of previous favourite functions!!!' >:(
now try this, and see how well that works! :)
http://www.acidtests.org/
on palemoon ( fork of Firefox) = 2194 - the comparative results are from mobiles, I cannot see any other setting????
http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/results?key=Abfa&resultId=5870511
Octane has instructions on https://developers.google.com/octane/howtorun BUT WHERE do you run it???
Try going to https://developers.google.com/octane/ and clicking the red box on the right, the big one that says: "Run Octane 2.0 now!".
Yes, the comparative results seem to be from mobiles, and I don't understand why either. That's not the point; the point is the comparison between Firefox, Chrome, and IE. The result from Palemoon is close to Firefox, which I guess you would expect for a forked development.
Well, high is better, and a score of 15461 is truly astonishing... This I must see, I thought, so off I went and got me a copy of Palemoon and installed same, and ran Octane first thing. Result: 7689.
Then I went back to Firefox, still heavily laden with open tabs, and ran Octane again. Result: 8893. Please tell me what you did to make Palemoon perform like that. Was it the 64-bit version? Or were you perhaps - forgive me an unworthy thought - not wearing your reading glasses at the time?
well here is the full set... could it have had 'skipped' some routines, so seems faster?? I ran the 'profile convert' to copy my ff V28 profile, makes it easier... I have Intel core 7 @ 3 Ghz, 6 G ram..
oh, and the addon, 'fasterfox' on turbocharged... :)
Octane Score: 15502
Richards 19165 Core language features
Deltablue
20087
Core language features
Crypto
19191
Bit & Math operations
Raytrace
24863
Core language features
EarleyBoyer
20726
Memory & GC
Regexp
1479
Strings & arrays
Splay
13283
Memory & GC
SplayLatency
8396
GC latency
NavierStokes
23058
Strings & arrays
pdf.js
11049
Strings & arrays
Mandreel
17500
Virtual machine
MandreelLatency
16673
Compiler latency
GB Emulator
33703
Virtual machine
CodeLoad
15020
Loading & Parsing
Box2DWeb
16887
Bit & Math operations
zlib
44932
asm.js
Typescript
9612
Virtual machine & GC
and here is FF V28.. could be fasterfox?? both copied and pasted in... :P :)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/9148
Octane Score: 11869
Richards 21425 Core language features
Deltablue
18407
Core language features
Crypto
19237
Bit & Math operations
Raytrace
19073
Core language features
EarleyBoyer
17995
Memory & GC
Regexp
1370
Strings & arrays
Splay
12605
Memory & GC
SplayLatency
6529
GC latency
NavierStokes
23299
Strings & arrays
pdf.js
8646
Strings & arrays
Mandreel
5281
Virtual machine
MandreelLatency
11153
Compiler latency
GB Emulator
22299
Virtual machine
CodeLoad
5329
Loading & Parsing
Box2DWeb
6360
Bit & Math operations
zlib
39847
asm.js
Typescript
17568
Virtual machine & GC
I have no issue with Opera's move to Webkit as the engine but the decisions (or lack of development time?) that led to gutting most of the features I do have an issue with. Although I enjoy the general experience that Opera is currently offering, every time I try and do something and find that it can't be done it brings me to a crushing realisation that I'm basically using Chrome in Opera's clothing.
I only moved from Opera 12 due to an increasing number of compatibility issues and the launch of bookmarks (although calling them that is generous) for Opera.
Perhaps not yet, but I will definitely be giving Vivaldi a look.
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