S
Steve
Excerpts from
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/email/2005/03/30/EM2005033001399.html
My ideal browser would probably include at least one part from all of
the browsers I've reviewed lately. Here's a partial list:
Firefox's and Safari's toolbar layouts: Both browsers take no more
space than necessary to lay out their buttons and bars, leaving
maximum room for viewing the page itself.
Firefox's find-in-page command: When you want to look for a word or
phrase in a page, other browsers pop up the same "find" dialogue
you've seen in a million other programs. Firefox's developers went to
the trouble of rewriting this function. Their implementation starts
searching as you type, highlighting the first match. Simple buttons
let you jump to the next or previous match - or highlight every
occurrence of the search term.
Opera's page magnification: Any old browser can make text look bigger
if necessary, but Opera does the same for every part of a page, images
as well as text. And it offers far more degrees of zoom.
Firefox's anti-phishing defenses: Instead of putting a tiny key or
lock icon in a corner of the screen when you land on a secured site,
Firefox paints the address bar in gold and displays the domain name of
the current site in the status bar.
Safari's status bar: This oft-neglected component is hidden by
default, part of Apple's simplicity-no-matter-what agenda. But if you
elect to display it (see the View menu), you'll get some valuable tips
the next time you float the cursor over a link. The status bar will
not only show the address of the site the link points to, but also
indicate if the link is coded to open in a separate window or not.
Firefox's built-in Web searching: This browser's search bar allows you
to start a search at Google - or at any other site listed in its
drop-down menu. Adding additional search sites is simple, although
deleting them takes more work than necessary. Also, the address bar
doubles as a shortcut to an "I'm feeling lucky" Google search - type a
phrase, and you'll be taken to the site Google thinks is the best
match.
Safari's forms auto-fill: Not having to type in the same street
address every single time is a luxury some (but not enough) browsers
afford these days. For now, only Safari is smart enough to offer to
copy your contact info out of your own listing in the Address Book
program.
IE's and Safari's "save the whole page" options: If you want to keep a
page around for posterity, just saving its HTML won't do. You want the
pictures, too. These two browsers include an option to save the entire
contents of a page in a single file.
Safari's bookmarks management: I'm continuously flabbergasted at the
way every other program in this category makes you select a Properties
icon or menu item to rename a bookmark or change its address. In
Safari, you select the text you want to change and type right over it
- just like you would with any file on the desktop.
Opera's and Safari's password managers: Opera lets you enter a stored
password just by hitting the Ctrl and Enter keys, and Safari
integrates its password store in the system-wide Keychain used by all
Mac programs - meaning other Mac-savvy browsers can benefit from this
store of user IDs and passwords, too.
Safari's RSS newsreader: While Opera and Firefox have built-in RSS
software to subscribe to updates from sites that use this popular
standard, Safari beats them both by making previewing an RSS feed a
single-click option (with the other browsers, you have to subscribe to
a feed to see what it looks like). It also provides some handy
browsing and finding options; for example, you can use a simple slider
control to collapse RSS feed items to just headlines or group several
sites' RSS feeds on a single page.
IE for Mac's printing: This long-since-abandoned browser still stands
alone in its thoughtful integration of such sensible hard-copy options
as the ability to shrink a page slightly to keep one line of text from
spilling over to a second page.
Opera's efficient operation: This browser consistently uses less
memory than the others.
Firefox's and Mozilla's open-source development: The story of browsers
has too often been a story of abandonment, as corporate owners decide
there's only so much reward they can get out of developing a program
and giving it away for free. In their time, Netscape, Internet
Explorer and even, to a certain extent, Safari have been left to
collect dust by their owners. With Firefox and Mozilla, as long as a
programmer thinks there's room for improvement and has time to
contribute better code, these programs will continue to progress.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/email/2005/03/30/EM2005033001399.html
My ideal browser would probably include at least one part from all of
the browsers I've reviewed lately. Here's a partial list:
Firefox's and Safari's toolbar layouts: Both browsers take no more
space than necessary to lay out their buttons and bars, leaving
maximum room for viewing the page itself.
Firefox's find-in-page command: When you want to look for a word or
phrase in a page, other browsers pop up the same "find" dialogue
you've seen in a million other programs. Firefox's developers went to
the trouble of rewriting this function. Their implementation starts
searching as you type, highlighting the first match. Simple buttons
let you jump to the next or previous match - or highlight every
occurrence of the search term.
Opera's page magnification: Any old browser can make text look bigger
if necessary, but Opera does the same for every part of a page, images
as well as text. And it offers far more degrees of zoom.
Firefox's anti-phishing defenses: Instead of putting a tiny key or
lock icon in a corner of the screen when you land on a secured site,
Firefox paints the address bar in gold and displays the domain name of
the current site in the status bar.
Safari's status bar: This oft-neglected component is hidden by
default, part of Apple's simplicity-no-matter-what agenda. But if you
elect to display it (see the View menu), you'll get some valuable tips
the next time you float the cursor over a link. The status bar will
not only show the address of the site the link points to, but also
indicate if the link is coded to open in a separate window or not.
Firefox's built-in Web searching: This browser's search bar allows you
to start a search at Google - or at any other site listed in its
drop-down menu. Adding additional search sites is simple, although
deleting them takes more work than necessary. Also, the address bar
doubles as a shortcut to an "I'm feeling lucky" Google search - type a
phrase, and you'll be taken to the site Google thinks is the best
match.
Safari's forms auto-fill: Not having to type in the same street
address every single time is a luxury some (but not enough) browsers
afford these days. For now, only Safari is smart enough to offer to
copy your contact info out of your own listing in the Address Book
program.
IE's and Safari's "save the whole page" options: If you want to keep a
page around for posterity, just saving its HTML won't do. You want the
pictures, too. These two browsers include an option to save the entire
contents of a page in a single file.
Safari's bookmarks management: I'm continuously flabbergasted at the
way every other program in this category makes you select a Properties
icon or menu item to rename a bookmark or change its address. In
Safari, you select the text you want to change and type right over it
- just like you would with any file on the desktop.
Opera's and Safari's password managers: Opera lets you enter a stored
password just by hitting the Ctrl and Enter keys, and Safari
integrates its password store in the system-wide Keychain used by all
Mac programs - meaning other Mac-savvy browsers can benefit from this
store of user IDs and passwords, too.
Safari's RSS newsreader: While Opera and Firefox have built-in RSS
software to subscribe to updates from sites that use this popular
standard, Safari beats them both by making previewing an RSS feed a
single-click option (with the other browsers, you have to subscribe to
a feed to see what it looks like). It also provides some handy
browsing and finding options; for example, you can use a simple slider
control to collapse RSS feed items to just headlines or group several
sites' RSS feeds on a single page.
IE for Mac's printing: This long-since-abandoned browser still stands
alone in its thoughtful integration of such sensible hard-copy options
as the ability to shrink a page slightly to keep one line of text from
spilling over to a second page.
Opera's efficient operation: This browser consistently uses less
memory than the others.
Firefox's and Mozilla's open-source development: The story of browsers
has too often been a story of abandonment, as corporate owners decide
there's only so much reward they can get out of developing a program
and giving it away for free. In their time, Netscape, Internet
Explorer and even, to a certain extent, Safari have been left to
collect dust by their owners. With Firefox and Mozilla, as long as a
programmer thinks there's room for improvement and has time to
contribute better code, these programs will continue to progress.
Christopher Jahn