|
|
||
Opera the Browser© Copyright Darrell Anderson. (Winter 2005–2006) Opera the browser has been around for many years. The Opera developers were the first to introduce what is today called tabbed browsing and unlike other browsers offering such a feature, Opera uses a true Multiple Document Interface (MDI) to provide that environment. In a MDI environment, users can view several tabs concurrently whereas in a simple tabbed environment users can view only one tab at any one time. Opera also is lightweight and provides numerous features with a code base far smaller than competing browsers. Opera provides many standard features in that smaller code base that Firefox is unable to provide without a dozen or more extensions. Opera’s fit-to-width tool is incredible. In many ways, Opera (8.5) is superior to all other browsers, but there is one glaring component of Opera that is a complete show-stopper for me. This one glaring aspect prevents me from using Opera in any serious or continual manner. That problem is the inability of users to define the tab focus after closing a tab. Currently, when closing a tab in Opera the focus returns to the last opened tab. That sequence might seem logical to some people, if users open only two tabs at any one moment, or they always close the parent tab from which they launch additional tabs. But for those people who open several tabs from a single page, as is typical for users who open several tabs in the background, and the user decides that he or she is not yet finished with that original page, the typical desire thereafter is to view the new pages in succession and temporarily ignore the original page from which those new tabs were launched. Thus, such users do not want the tab focus returned to the original page from which all the new pages were opened, but instead to open the next adjacent tab. I have been using this option in Firefox for several years and this method of focusing the tabs seems natural and satisfying to me. To my knowledge, Opera provides no meaningful way to modify the tab closing focus behavior as I desire. Sadly, after browsing the Opera forums, the Opera developers do not seem interested in providing this option. Some third-party buttons exist to partially provide this type of closing focus behavior, but like Pavlov’s dog, users then must always use that button and cannot use the page context menu Close option. Unlike these third-party close buttons, the Close menu option always returns the focus to the original page. Similarly, using these third-party buttons precludes using the tab close buttons or even the keyboard (Ctrl-W). And I am not interested in mouse gestures. There are several additional minor “nits” about Opera that I could tolerate without too much emotion, but the lack of this one feature alone discourages me heavily from using Opera full time. * * * Other aspects of Opera that I do not like (nits):
Opera comes close to providing the type of browser I want. Fast and the user interface uses native widgets. I can live with these nits, but that one huge glaring shortcoming of not being able to configure the tab focus upon closing tabs is a killer. I continue to use Firefox, but only by default. I dislike the XUL interface for its slowness. I also detest Firefox-GTK. No browser yet satisfies me completely and I wonder if that day ever will arrive. Finis. |
||