The very latest version of Opera has some rendering issues with a couple of sites that are important to me, so I decided to give Chrome another shot.
It’s gotten much better! (By which I mean to say I used it for more than a week and have not been bothered by it crashing every time the wind changes direction.)
However, there are a few things that make it intolerable for me, and as their share of the browser market is steadily increasing, I have to ask: Aren’t these shortcomings driving people up the wall?
- Mark my place, bitch!
If I follow a link, and then use the “back” button to go back to the previous page, I expect that page to display as it was when I clicked the link; I do not wish to re-read the entire page from the top, and I sure as hell don’t want to scroll around trying to find where I was. Maddening.
- Protect my forms, ya bastard!
If I am typing a bunch of text into a text input box (like this one, for instance) this is an investment of my time. This has value to me. If the “back” button is pressed, either due to conscious choice (as needed reference to something previously viewed) or accidentally (as is a frequent occurrence in a house with a button-obsessed toddler and a keyboard designed by some cretin who thinks that keyboards need a dedicated “back” button {in addition to the backspace} and further that the bottom-left, most toddler-accessible corner of the keyboard is the ideal spot for it,) this should not mean that anything typed into a text input box (or the rest of the FORM data, for that matter) should be irretrievably lost. That’s fricking ridiculous. I am well aware that what I have just typed includes an unforgivable run-on sentence and is in serious need of some editing, but I am terrified of using the backspace key, in case a misplaced mouse-click has converted its function from “erase one character” to “completely void the efforts of the past ten minutes.”
- If you’re going to copy Opera’s SPEED DIAL, just do it.
A 3X3 arrangement of frequently visited sites represented by thumbnails is exactly what I want when I start my browser. It is a bit presumptuous of you to pick them for me, though. Also, of no use whatsoever, since most of the sites I want there never actually find there way there, and the ones that do appear in various different places, so it’s actually quicker to just type the frigging URL in than scanning to see if it the page I want is already represented.
Anyway, I do like Chrome more and more - but these faults are intolerable. If they fixed these few things, I would probably be ready to switch from Opera. I would miss Mouse Gestures, but I would get over it. I would miss my custom windows, but I can live without them. I like the ease of applying User Styles, but losing them does not come close to being a deal-breaker.
Opera’s last couple of releases have been a little sub-par. But for the items enumerated above, I would probably not look back. As it is, I’m looking around for the install files for an older version of Opera. With these flaws, I’d just as soon hire someone to randomly poke me in the eye while I use the internet as try to get by with Chrome.
