Huy's blag

For almost one decade, the web browser of my choice has been Opera. I haven't really used another browser for more than testing purposes during that time, and since Opera does its job pretty well for me, I haven't ever seriously considered jumping to another browser. I'd spend some time with Firefox every now and then, but having used "vanilla" Firefoxes only, the user experience is pretty lackluster, in my opinion. Especially when you're used to something like Opera.

Motivation: I might want to use another browser...?

I don't need my browser to be able to do much. In fact, most of the things I want it to do are pretty basic, so you'd expect modern browsers to be capable of such basic things. And they probably are, once set up properly, but I don't really have the time to delve into each of the options available these days. That's why I'm writing this: I am going to provide a list of "things" I want to be able to do with my browser, and maybe some Firefox/Chrome/whatever ninja will tell me how to do those things with their favorite browser.

Ideally, this ends up being a nice comparison between browsers on a less technical (I don't care much about which browser's faster than anything else by 0.5 seconds at startup and 0.07 seconds for certain sites, really!), but more on a "user experience" basis. And if it turns out some other setup is better than what I'm using (Opera) is, I'll give it a try. I'm more of a pragmatic guy, anyway. As long as it's getting its job done properly, it's worth considering.

Keyboard bindings (preferably customizable)

The browser should be useful without a mouse even, if necessary. At least opening new tabs, closing the current tab, restoring the most recently closed tab and jumping between tabs should be possible without using either a mouse, some context menu or the menu bar.

With the tab bar at the top section of my screen, navigating there with the mouse cursor takes up unnecessary time. Especially since I tend to have quite a number of tabs, so hitting the right one takes a bit more effort than usually. My Model M keyboard doesn't have a context menu key, so using that one doesn't work, either.

I do know of Vimperator and the likes. For me, those approaches are taking the keyboard focus too far. The idea of controlling the whole browser with vim-style commands just is not appealing to me. Even if it might save me yet another 0.3 seconds whenever I want to do something...

Custom search engines

Except for the default Google search that's shipped with every browser, I want to be able to set up custom "search" possibilities. Using Wikipedia, IMDb, the Debian package repositories, RubyGems, and whatnot as your search engine should be as easy as possible, without having to pick the right one from a dropdown menu with your tiny mouse cursor.

Of course, you only have to set them up once and for good, but setting up new ones shouldn't require a degree in [insert your browser here]. Ideally, you don't have to know about the URI structure (or put any thought into it, for that matter), either.

Session management

Here's a confession: I love closing my browser window with a huge bunch of tabs still open. And when I start my browser again, I expect them to be there, still. Let's not argue about whether this kind of "tab preservation" makes sense, at all. This is something where you can go like: "Dude, this isn't how you do it. You gotta do this and that instead!"

As long as I'm convinced that I can have all (or most) of the tabs on my screen upon restarting, it's fine. Even if I have to hit O(1) keys/buttons. Don't expect me to reopen those tabs manually, though...

Working ad blocker

This one probably is obvious. None of us wants to be the 100,000th visitor that just won a cool car, right?

Useful web development tools

Having to deal with some web development at work, I want a DOM inspector (capable of on-the-fly changes to the DOM model), some error console for both CSS and JavaScript errors, as well as a semi-useful way to debug JavaScript, at least.

The more useful tools, the better (potentially). It's kind of difficult to be more specific here, because I don't really have any "need" for things I don't know of at this time. But once I've found those tools, I might not be able to live without them. So here's your chance to make me drool over your suggestion!

Synchronization

I'm jumping between different computers pretty often. There's my desktop machine at home, my notebook, and my workstation at work. Then, there's my Android mobile. It might be a tad difficult to make this one work, but whenever I'm at a "full-fledged" computer using my browser, I would like to be in the same environment: The same bookmarks, the same custom search engines (see above), the same link history, the same plugins/extensions, and maybe even the same open tabs (see above, as well).

If it somehow works for a given Android application, as well, even better. I'd be very happy with a "computer solution" already!

Convince me!

That's it for now. If you want to tell me about how awesome your browser is and how I should use it, as well, because it can do all the things I listed above, hit me up! You can send me an email (mail@huydinh.eu), hit me up on Jabber (Skudo@jabber.org) or even try to chase me down on IRC (Skudo|wark on irc.ffochat.com, permalurking in #vanadiel).

I can't offer more than a few many words of thanks, and some fame for your help. (No chicks, no coke.) But I hope this is interesting enough for you to help me out, anyway. ;-D

Summary of what I want

• Keyboard bindings
• Custom search engines
• Sessions
• Working ad blocker
• Web development tools
• Synchronization

For copy&paste purposes.