In our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they are.
The best way to describe the greatness of modern web browsers is to point out the features we have now that most people take for granted.
1. Tabbed Document Interface
Most people know this as simply tabs. This was one of the best improvements ever made in a web browser. And said honestly, I cannot browse without them. I first remember first using a tabbed interface with Maxthon (which used the IE engine). IE took a very long time to develop a tabbed version of their own, but finally brought one to the table with IE 7. Better late than never, I suppose.
2. Zoom
I first used a zoom feature in Opera way back at version 5 and it was great. Unfortunately Opera was a pay-browser back then so that was a no-go for me. IE always did have the ability to increase text size but not images (that wasn’t until much later). Firefox always had a zoom but it didn’t work properly until version 3. Fortunately, all browsers now have a proper zoom feature. They will even zoom Flash content now.
3. Better bookmarks
Bookmarks now not only hold information on the URL of the site you want to go to, but also the "favicon" (small image representing the site, should it have one) and can also contain keyword tags in browsers like Firefox.
4. In-browser search bar using search engine of choice
This is something a ton of people take for granted. Early browsers had absolutely no search bar whatsoever. You had the address bar and that was it. If you wanted to search Yahoo, you had to physically go to www.yahoo.com to do it.
Before the search bar there were add-on toolbars for both Netscape and IE. One of the more popular offerings was Google Toolbar (which is still available). However with any toolbar you were forced to the search engine provided and no other.. that is unless you wanted to install yet another toolbar. And of course people remember their Netscapes and IEs back then with 2 or more toolbars in it. Rather terrible. And crash-prone.
Search bars now allow any engine to be used with no additional memory munched up since it’s integrated into the browser.
5. Full screen mode.
This is yet another vastly underrated feature. It is (to the best of my knowledge) universally accessible on the Windows platform by pressing F11 in IE, Firefox or Opera. You press F11 again to go back to windowed mode.
Full screen mode is great because it dedicates your entire screen to whatever web page you’re viewing. In fact, you can make it "book like" by pressing F11, then increasing the zoom a few times (CTRL-plus or just plus in Opera) for maximum readability.
A small note for those looking to buy a netbook: Know your full-screen feature in your browser because I’ll guarantee that you will use it. A lot.
What features of modern browsers do you like?
Chime in with a comment or two.
I primarily use Opera for linux and windows. I love the bookmark toolbar, I use it with the favicons and have no text next to them, it really maximizes my space. I also love the trash can at the right end of the tab bar, it lets me get back any tab that I closed during the current session. As you mentioned, the ability to have any search engine I want integrated into the browser. But what’s really cool in Opera, don’t know if others do it as well, is that I can assign a letter to each search engine. To quickly search from that engine/site all I have to do is type in a search engine’s assigned letter and a space, and then my search info.
I like the fact that browsers can be skined. It may seem trivial, but I like to personalize everything on my computer. Also some of the skins actually make the browser more user friendly in terms of the size of the icons, images, etc. I use Opera because I started with it and I feel a bond to it somehow ever since.
Personas for Firefox (made by Mozilla themselves) is personally the best browser skinner I’ve seen as of late: http://www.getpersonas.com/
I only use firefox and opera cause im on linux but firefox has the webdeveloper toolbar which makes it easier to get it to w3c standers and i use thet dom inspector on both browsers
I use Mozilla Firefox and I must agree that tabbed document interface is the best improvement ever made! When I noticed that Firefox provided tabbed browsing I decided to change IE to Firefox as my default web browser.
All browsers should have the same standard. Not make it up as they go along…
The biggest pain in the neck for all webmasters. The difference is supposed to be the speed and functionality.
If your a webdeveloper you should go by the w3c standards all new browsers go by this they just add function and tags just to stand out of the crowd the only exception is dillo browser for linux and windows but i think their frozen anyway
Thanks for your reply. I think most webdeveloper try to work with w3c but it gets difficult when using software from a third party which they cannot correct or it is extremely difficult.
There has been many time when I have tried scripts on the website and it fails the w3c test. Generally I don’t think programmers work toward this standard, they are more concerned with the scripts working and forget all about the w3c standard as it works.
Unknown to most Internet users, it seems, is that Internet browsers can save files. Have any of you tried that?
Most browsers offer HTML-ONLY, and this HTML-ONLY plus a new Folder. Internet-Explorer-based ones (”Green Browser” is preferred to Crazy, Avant & Maxthon as my favorite) also offers saving in only ONE-INTEGRATED, COMPRESSED file. Mozilla, Google & Apple browsers do not offer this last MHT file format.
MHT is not propriety. On Internet-Explorer-based browsers, this file saving can take seconds or minutes to do. Only OPERA browser can do this file saving INSTANTLY! OPERA (Linux & Windows) seems to be freeware now.
I use Opera… and its great!