More on Firefox
I’ve been using Firefox more and more now. It’s good enough to make it my primary browser from now. It’s not quite there yet in terms of making it my only web browser. I’m comparing it to IE with my favorite plugin: Avant browser.
The good:
- Extensions in general. These are the key to Firefox’s success. Need an obscure feature that you loved in another browser? Someone’s sure to be already working on it.
- Adblock. Works extremely well. It even stopped flash advertisements.
- Gmail notifier. One step closer to making it as convenient as hotmail with msn messenger installed. Now if only gmail could make deleting mail a single click operation…
- Correct rendering. I was getting so used to IE bugs that I forgot they were there. Until of course I saw pages rendered as they were intended to be.
- Find text on the page. Highlighting as you type. So cool.
- Infinite text resizing. For the people like me who are blind but insist on running at resolutions of 1800×1400 and above
The improvements needed:
- Tabbed browsing. Avant had it right. I installed an extension for tabs, but it’s still missing features. I want middle clicked URLs to load in the background not foreground. When I close a tab I want to go to the tab that I was on previously, not the tab that’s next to it on the bar. Bookmarks should open in a new tab by default.
- Search shortcuts. If I type “w 1977″ I should be able to look up the search term 1977 in the search engine of my choice (w would make to wikipedia in this case). I know that the search bar allows switching search engines. But I don’t want to touch the mouse. I want to ALT-D to the address bar and type in a search query using a specific engine. Again, Avant had this done right.
- Search bar is too small and can’t be resized. And for some reason I can’t see my search history.
- Usability overall. Many options and tweaks are obscure and it’s not clear what they do without some trial and error. I can live with this but if the browser is to become mainstream, it needs a little work in this area.
Posted on October 13th, 2004 under Web • 
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