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I seem to remember that Opera was the first stand-alone browser that brought the world tabbed browsing. People switched to Opera for that and its fast performan

I seem to remember that Opera was the first stand-alone browser that brought the world tabbed browsing. People switched to Opera for that and its fast performance. Other browsers including Mozilla copied the feature to catch up. Opera was the source of browser interface innovation and I wish we could replicate that process. They also invented popup blocking, speed dial (the default blank tab UI now on every browser), actual page zoom (before it was just font size increasing/decreasing), and a bunch of things that failed a like mouse gestures and built-in torrent/feedreader. One big thing Opera didn't invent was the use of the address bar for more than URLs, so you could search and autocomplete on it. I think some combination of Chrome+Firefox iterated on that concept.

spanhandler 6y ago
You're right. Phoneix/Firebird were basically a clone of the obviously-best-to-copy Opera features but without the ad bar, with a more native-feeling UI, and maybe (IIRC?) even lighter and faster to launch. Built-in popup blocking, very lightweight and snappy, tabs, free, no ad bar. Those were the selling points, and aside from the last two and slightly odd-feeling UI widgets, Opera had them already. We lost "lightweight and snappy" way back in FF 2.0, and every browser blocks pop-ups now. Today's equivalent would be making ad blocking built-in and on by default, which it isn't. The advertising and constant "we updated!" tabs opening up (yeah, great, I don't give a shit, stop telling me) are at least as annoying as Opera's adbar was, IMO. Hopefully we get a spin-off browser eventually that gets back to FF's roots, and then eventually eats it, like FF did Mozilla Browser.
- xxs 6y ago
  >"we updated!" Well "we updated" mobile firefox to 79, and broke almost all add-ons, forgot the bookmarks, most visited sites, effective homepage and made it crash every hour or so. I can't recall more broken version of Firefox since the times it used to be Mozilla Suite.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Modern FF makes Mozilla Suite look svelte and respectful. It's heavy and loud. I use it when I'm not on macOS or iOS and need a full-fat (and then some) browser, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone.
- discardable_dan 6y ago
  > The advertising and constant "we updated!" tabs opening up (yeah, great, I don't give a shit, stop telling me) are at least as annoying as Opera's adbar was, IMO. This was actually the last straw for me. I had 30 tabs open, and Firefox decided to take an update. Any time I opened a new tab, it demanded I restart my browser, closing everything, and refused to function. That level of interruption was so unacceptable I switched (back) to Chrome.
gsnedders 6y ago
> One big thing Opera didn't invent was the use of the address bar for more than URLs, so you could search and autocomplete on it. I think some combination of Chrome+Firefox iterated on that concept. Pretty sure it was one of the notable innovations in the original Chrome beta release.
xxs 6y ago
>Chrome+Firefox iterated on that concept. Chrome, of course. It integrated google straight in the URL. To this day, I still don't use URL as a search bar, and press ctrl+K (instead of ctrl+L)...
slightwinder 6y ago
> I seem to remember that Opera was the first stand-alone browser that brought the world tabbed browsing. Nope. There were other browser before that. And Opera did not have Tabs back then. They had MDI with a button-bar for document-access. Mozilla was the first one delivering a real tabbed interface, and was later copied by opera and others. At the end there was a bunch of features coming from several browsers (but mostly mozilla and opera), which improved each other in tight competition; so it's a bit complicated to say what originated from whom.

spanhandler 6y ago

You're right. Phoneix/Firebird were basically a clone of the obviously-best-to-copy Opera features but without the ad bar, with a more native-feeling UI, and maybe (IIRC?) even lighter and faster to launch. Built-in popup blocking, very lightweight and snappy, tabs, free, no ad bar. Those were the selling points, and aside from the last two and slightly odd-feeling UI widgets, Opera had them already. We lost "lightweight and snappy" way back in FF 2.0, and every browser blocks pop-ups now. Today's equivalent would be making ad blocking built-in and on by default, which it isn't. The advertising and constant "we updated!" tabs opening up (yeah, great, I don't give a shit, stop telling me) are at least as annoying as Opera's adbar was, IMO. Hopefully we get a spin-off browser eventually that gets back to FF's roots, and then eventually eats it, like FF did Mozilla Browser.

xxs 6y ago
>"we updated!" Well "we updated" mobile firefox to 79, and broke almost all add-ons, forgot the bookmarks, most visited sites, effective homepage and made it crash every hour or so. I can't recall more broken version of Firefox since the times it used to be Mozilla Suite.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Modern FF makes Mozilla Suite look svelte and respectful. It's heavy and loud. I use it when I'm not on macOS or iOS and need a full-fat (and then some) browser, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone.
discardable_dan 6y ago
> The advertising and constant "we updated!" tabs opening up (yeah, great, I don't give a shit, stop telling me) are at least as annoying as Opera's adbar was, IMO. This was actually the last straw for me. I had 30 tabs open, and Firefox decided to take an update. Any time I opened a new tab, it demanded I restart my browser, closing everything, and refused to function. That level of interruption was so unacceptable I switched (back) to Chrome.

gsnedders 6y ago

> One big thing Opera didn't invent was the use of the address bar for more than URLs, so you could search and autocomplete on it. I think some combination of Chrome+Firefox iterated on that concept. Pretty sure it was one of the notable innovations in the original Chrome beta release.

xxs 6y ago

>Chrome+Firefox iterated on that concept. Chrome, of course. It integrated google straight in the URL. To this day, I still don't use URL as a search bar, and press ctrl+K (instead of ctrl+L)...

slightwinder 6y ago

> I seem to remember that Opera was the first stand-alone browser that brought the world tabbed browsing. Nope. There were other browser before that. And Opera did not have Tabs back then. They had MDI with a button-bar for document-access. Mozilla was the first one delivering a real tabbed interface, and was later copied by opera and others. At the end there was a bunch of features coming from several browsers (but mostly mozilla and opera), which improved each other in tight competition; so it's a bit complicated to say what originated from whom.