Browser Of The Month - What Should It Have?
August 21, 2007
Sooner or later we will have new web browser release. Probably Firefox 3, Safari 3 and Opera 9.5, those and Internet Explorer 7 will be reviewed so we could pick our “Browser of the Month”.
But before reviewing, let me ask: What should that “Browser of the Month” have?
I want to use as many factors as possible in the upcoming review. If you have any, please post them in comments. Till now I will post just some obvious ones.
Performance, security, low resources usage, not overloaded user interface, ease of use, inline spell check (I think that’s important) and easy updating.
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definitely
- usability. Ever found yourself make a mouse gesture in other apps?
- accessibility (i.e., can the browser be used by handicapped people and does it help them viewing webpages)
A decent discovery, subscription & handling of RSS Feeds is a must IMHO.
Pop-up blocker, AD/content blocker…
feed reader
Hmm, that really depends…
Gecko 1.8 has the best CSS 2 compliance (box model math adds up perfectly when I take a screenshot and manually count the pixels). It has the best customizability too.
Internet Explorer, eh, if you know how to patch it using IECCSS it’s ok but the decision to screw up the GUI doesn’t help any.
Opera, eh it’s ok and it’s standards are fair but there are still many box model bugs especially with form elements styling. Opera 9.5 will be …ok. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate their hard work but CSS 3 isn’t about selectors, it’s all about properties!
Webkit, ahead of Gecko (and staying there) it has the best CSS3 property support. Visit my site, go to site options, and enable CSS3.
So it depends, Webkit (500x builds/Safari 3+) are very future usable as they age as no other browser supports fundamental CSS3 properties at the moment except for Gecko though things like multiple-background support are needed last century. However for today Firefox has what we need now covered. Built in spell checker, a large array of community based addons, and the only truly customizable GUI (default though is unusably minimalistic).
No one truly wins for computer new comers, Gecko 1/8/Firefox wins for general stability/customizability but Gecko 1.9 needs to add some fundamental CSS3 properties to make Firefox 3 matter in a matter of a few years. Webkit is great (except for it’s font-rendering which creates box-model issues in my layout) for the future though browsers that use it’s engine sorely lack as far as customizability of the GUI, browser features (a new tab button would be nifty in Safari), and community addons…do they even exist?