How Would You Change Firefox?

I would merge navigation and google bar to one (with search suggestions). That’s the only thing I miss, actually :D

Looking at how things are going the right question should be: how would you change Opera?
:-)

Make it Opera then Firefox would be perfect

a) add some ‘neutral’ area that can be used to shift focus from other application WITHOUT doing any action (ff for windows is click = focus+action, not click = focus only type of app). with the ‘menubar less’ interface there is almost no area to do ‘click without action’
it sounds niche, but it affects my work at this moment enough to move back to ‘with menu bar’ UI.

b) make paralel installs a bit easier than now – opera can be installed separately, instances do not affect (well, almost) eachother, firefox can be tinkered, but it reminds me of manual ini editing of opera config files

c) more descriptive names for options in about:config – due to naming conventions used by coders, some names are VERY similar to eachother.

d) limit UI areas that extensions can affect – i hate dumbed down opera approach, but i also hate ‘lets put another stupid bar here and button here’ approach some addon makers use. it is Yet Another Bar With One Icon design paradigm (YABWIC). something between opera minimalistic approach and firefox total freedom would do

e) make ‘check for updates’ NOT start after ‘about firefox’ (or give an option in about:config)

f) built in ‘resize textarea’

g) add option to ‘re-download’ files in download manager – opera makes it easy, and it comes quite in handy when you have one profile on few machines, or use ram-discs for downloads to save on SSD wear and tear

h) option to ‘export saved passwords’ [i know it is a security hazard, so make it opt-in], password are written in clear text anyway

i) it is a political stuff – make stronger noise around html5/webm, it seems that google took the role of ‘we know it all’ and leaving it to them alone is a risky business (they own youtube anyway, do in media trasfer/consumer market, it is a conflict of interest at its finest). opera is too small and to geeky to matter, apple has its own agenda (and can pay all royalties for h264 for next million years anyway)

j) ‘reload’ button – option to place it in the ‘normal’ position – this concept from IE is the stupid one, i prefer big button to small button anyday

k) better privacy options built in – there are excelent extensions that manage cookies/lso etc, but at least some robust features should be present

l) ‘a bit shorter’ release cycles. i prefer delayed release of firefox, than ‘set date, because we have got press event sheduled’ of opera, but one can only wait for so long

m) some of us use more than one monitor, and firefox has some slight issues with triple+ setups, it is minor, but given that win specs are quite clear in this respect, it strange that these things happen

n) built in ‘sessions’ or other (non panorama – this kills my i7 rig with 100 tabs) grouping/tab management system. again, extensions provide here, but this stuff should be standard, opera does it well and for many years now. their solution needs polishing, but nonetheless is a mature solution.

o) do not copy opera new speeddial magic or any recent opera ‘improvements’, it is good that they improve, but their ‘auto thumb generation algorithm’ is dumb as a brick unfortunately.