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Question of the Day: Have you ever ordered a product online and received a fake knock-off?
Google Chrome is starting to suck
- Thread starter DrJohnZoidberg
- Start date
Proper bookmarks. A cookie and password manager. Configurable content blocker. Fully configurable search engines. Settings for practically every aspect of the browser. Opening Opera Next's settings they look almost non-existent.
Opera Next is the new browser from 15 onwards. They might have added a couple of things since I last checked when people complained it didn't have the features. You couldn't set the default search to anything you wanted and had to pick from 5 preconfigured ones. You could add additional ones.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
What of this is available? Built in torrent client, built in POP mail client, built in IRC client, built in RSS reader, cascaded tabs i.e. multiple tabs open next to each other in one window, mouse gestures, speech playback i.e. websites can be read to you if you're multitasking, the recycle bin icon for quickly restoring any tab or window closed during a session, PROPER session support without the need for add-ons eg saving and restoring sessions, tab stacking, tab preview i.e. if you resize the tab bar so it's taller you can see the webpage in place of the favicon, hotclicking i.e. double clicking any word will highlight it and open a context menu without having to right click as well, ability to block any content/adverts of a webpage simply by right clicking and selecting block... Can I stop now?
I'm still using Opera 11.84 a lot.
What of this is available? Built in torrent client, built in POP mail client, built in IRC client, built in RSS reader, cascaded tabs i.e. multiple tabs open next to each other in one window, mouse gestures, speech playback i.e. websites can be read to you if you're multitasking, the recycle bin icon for quickly restoring any tab or window closed during a session, PROPER session support without the need for add-ons eg saving and restoring sessions, tab stacking, tab preview i.e. if you resize the tab bar so it's taller you can see the webpage in place of the favicon, hotclicking i.e. double clicking any word will highlight it and open a context menu without having to right click as well, ability to block any content/adverts of a webpage simply by right clicking and selecting block... Can I stop now?
I'm still using Opera 11.84 a lot.
None of those features have ever been relevant to me, so I wouldn't know. I guess Opera decided it wasn't worth all that effort when the community takes care of them, assuming they're not present. Opera has a lot of extensions - I'm sure you can find what you're looking for.
DA-LION-619
Honorary Master
What of this is available? Built in torrent client, built in POP mail client, built in IRC client, built in RSS reader, cascaded tabs i.e. multiple tabs open next to each other in one window, mouse gestures, speech playback i.e. websites can be read to you if you're multitasking, the recycle bin icon for quickly restoring any tab or window closed during a session, PROPER session support without the need for add-ons eg saving and restoring sessions, tab stacking, tab preview i.e. if you resize the tab bar so it's taller you can see the webpage in place of the favicon, hotclicking i.e. double clicking any word will highlight it and open a context menu without having to right click as well, ability to block any content/adverts of a webpage simply by right clicking and selecting block... Can I stop now?
I'm still using Opera 11.84 a lot.
I installed Opera Mini on my Windows Phone recently, & all my speed dials came up
and all this was saved from my Blackberry days!From the last time I checked those were relevant to half the user base still using O.11 and O.12. There has never been an instance in Opera's history where people deliberately stayed with the older versions for so long.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
Different strokes for different folks. I know of quite a few people who use old versions of Opera because of the missing features from the newer versions. Sure, you can get extensions for anything but Opera offered ALL of the above and more straight out of the box.
Oh, and tell me how the newer versions do with 400-700 tabs open, because the 11.84 did it while staying under 3 GB RAM usage. Right now I'm using Chrome with 13 tabs open and I'm not far from 1 GB RAM usage. I don't want to guess how bad it would be if I added a few hundred tabs to the mix
Anyway, of the features I mentioned the cascaded tabs and speech were two I couldn't live without when I was turning press releases into articles. The recycle bin icon was a big help when I realised I'd closed a tab that I needed quite a while ago and I could restore it without having to go through menus looking for recent tabs (a very limited list in Firefox) or open the history in yet another tab. Tab stacking was great for grouping forums. Content blocking was second to none, if one forum member's signature is NSFW I could block it without having to switch off signatures.
Other things Opera offered which I used constantly included a detailed loading bar across the bottom of the page which would tell you how much of the site had downloaded (eg I could see that 1.4MB/33.2MB had downloaded, the current speed is 163KB/s, 42/166 items had loaded and it is currently stuck on requesting content from xyz.abc.com) - if something stops loading you can at least see where it's stuck, if a page is large and you have limited bandwidth you will know in advance and can cancel before wasting several minutes on loading, etc.
Auto refresh was something else I used, I could set mybroadband.co.za/vb/search.php?do=getdaily&contenttype=vBForum_Post to auto refresh every ten minutes and never have to worry about clicking "Today's Posts" as it would never be more than ten minutes out of date without any input from me.
Searching your history was also BRILLIANT on Opera - as an example let's say for example I can just remember you saying "none of those features" (more realistic would be remembering some keywords from the page but not the page name or URL). I could type in "none of those features" and it would search the history for those words and suggest "mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/679577-Google-Chrome-is-starting-to-suck/page8" as a result.
Speed Dial was (is - I think they've kept it) pretty neat, it's something like Chrome's or Firefox's "new tab" page but instead of listing your most frequent sites you can choose which sites and how many sites are listed. There's also a search bar which can be set to use a search engine other than the browser's default (the one that gets used when you search using the address bar) should you so wish.
The address bar is another thing I need to mention, as searching using it is awesome. On any website I can right click on any search bar and add it to the search engine list with a keyword. For example, I can go to mybroadband.co.za/vb/search.php, right click on the "keywords" search bar and add MyBroadband as a search with the keyword "mbb". From then on, I can type in "mbb [search terms]" in the address bar and it will search MBB for the terms using the MBB's vBulletin search engine, so it's not quite like doing a Google search for "[search terms] site:mybroadband.co.za/vb". I find this invaluable for places such as eBay, Gumtree or BoB where Google's results often take you to expired adverts. Because it uses the site's search, I can then use whatever advanced search options are offered, such as selecting a category on eBay. If I go to an advert straight from Google and want to narrow down my search results I would have to do another search from scratch once on the site.
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Lastly I need to come back to sessions. If the power goes out and you restart Firefox you'll get a page asking if you want to restore your last session. Saying yes will indeed restore the session, but all tabs have to be completely redownloaded and they only begin loading once a tab has been made active. If I say restore session and five minutes later click on one of the tabs it will open a blank page and start downloading the content again.
In Chrome it MIGHT give me the option to restore the session (more often than not it doesn't, so I have resorted to using an extension called Session Buddy which works fairly well. Whether using Chrome's built in session restoration or Session Buddy, however, all tabs need to be redownloaded. Unlike Firefox, they will all begin downloading straight away without having to click on each tab to begin the process.
Moving on to the old versions of Opera, upon startup you would get a popup box asking you whether you want to resume your previous session, resume any other saved session, or start a new session with your home page or Speed Dial. Selecting your last session will load the vast majority of the content of the pages FROM CACHE as opposed to redownloading all content. If you have had another session open recently, chances are high it will still be in the cache and also load nearly instantly. When I was on a 384K line several years ago and there was a restart for whatever reason, redownloading a few dozen tabs totaling a few hundred MB would have taken hours (literally - on a 384k line you're looking at around 100MB/hour). Instead, everything would be loaded and operational in a matter of minutes and sometimes even quicker.
All in all, the old versions of Opera were extremely powerful compared to the watered down browsers we have today. Did I remember to mention that all of this was included in a browser that had a 15 MB offline installer file? That's a third the size of Chrome
Sl8er
Executive Member
Before Chrome is open:
After Chrome has been opened -with 26 tabs:
After Chrome has been opened -with 26 tabs:
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
As I was saying about RAM usage
No matter how many windows you have open, Opera uses one process for everything. Being a 32-bit app, usage can't exceed about 3.2 GB without the browser crashing. It is therefore safe to say that the hundreds of tabs I had open are using under 3.2 GB as the browser had not crashed. Note that there are THREE windows open, all with a huge selection of tabs. Chrome just doesn't understand what memory efficiency means - just because I have 48 GB RAM doesn't mean you need to try to use all of it
Also interesting to note (I forgot to mention it earlier) - you see the little circles above some of the tabs? That means that the pages are unread.
No matter how many windows you have open, Opera uses one process for everything. Being a 32-bit app, usage can't exceed about 3.2 GB without the browser crashing. It is therefore safe to say that the hundreds of tabs I had open are using under 3.2 GB as the browser had not crashed. Note that there are THREE windows open, all with a huge selection of tabs. Chrome just doesn't understand what memory efficiency means - just because I have 48 GB RAM doesn't mean you need to try to use all of it
Also interesting to note (I forgot to mention it earlier) - you see the little circles above some of the tabs? That means that the pages are unread.
Dion Disco
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 18, 2011
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Thanx Ojo for reminding me how good that old OPERA was ;-)
Also had a Mobile view where I did my mobi banking in a side panel next to my open email client next to Web Tabs
Also had a Mobile view where I did my mobi banking in a side panel next to my open email client next to Web Tabs
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
DA-LION-619
Honorary Master
It's critical to me when I'm doing mobile dev, I can't have chrome open with a lot of tabs as I won't have enough RAM to run my emulators.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
Apps. Plural. More than one. I don't need ONE app eating as much as it can for no good reason. And yes, there is NO good reason for it when other browsers can do the same and more while using FAR less RAM.
I think that's a cache limitation. Firefox and Chrome reloads because it's no longer in the cache. Opera had a cache that could be quite large and a memory cache on top of that. It worked quite efficiently. Firefox btw can be set to reload all tabs on startup.Lastly I need to come back to sessions. If the power goes out and you restart Firefox you'll get a page asking if you want to restore your last session. Saying yes will indeed restore the session, but all tabs have to be completely redownloaded and they only begin loading once a tab has been made active. If I say restore session and five minutes later click on one of the tabs it will open a blank page and start downloading the content again.
In Chrome it MIGHT give me the option to restore the session (more often than not it doesn't, so I have resorted to using an extension called Session Buddy which works fairly well. Whether using Chrome's built in session restoration or Session Buddy, however, all tabs need to be redownloaded. Unlike Firefox, they will all begin downloading straight away without having to click on each tab to begin the process.
Moving on to the old versions of Opera, upon startup you would get a popup box asking you whether you want to resume your previous session, resume any other saved session, or start a new session with your home page or Speed Dial. Selecting your last session will load the vast majority of the content of the pages FROM CACHE as opposed to redownloading all content. If you have had another session open recently, chances are high it will still be in the cache and also load nearly instantly. When I was on a 384K line several years ago and there was a restart for whatever reason, redownloading a few dozen tabs totaling a few hundred MB would have taken hours (literally - on a 384k line you're looking at around 100MB/hour). Instead, everything would be loaded and operational in a matter of minutes and sometimes even quicker.
All in all, the old versions of Opera were extremely powerful compared to the watered down browsers we have today. Did I remember to mention that all of this was included in a browser that had a 15 MB offline installer file? That's a third the size of Chrome
The keyword being apps and not a single app. Chrome wants it all and then it's still not going to be enough.
Zewp
Banned
For the last two weeks or so Chrome has hit an all-time low. When I start it up it can take anything up to 30 seconds before it can be used. The Frequently Visited tabs, which used to show up almost immediately when you started Chrome now don't show for several seconds after starting up.
It really sucks. All I want is the fast Chrome that I started using in 2011 back. Is that too much to ask?
It really sucks. All I want is the fast Chrome that I started using in 2011 back. Is that too much to ask?
Sl8er
Executive Member
HAHAHA!
When I saw it, I thought of this thread...so I just had to post it.
When I saw it, I thought of this thread...so I just had to post it.
dualmeister
Honorary Master
Had enough of Chrome for now as well.
One browser window open = 8 Chrome threads in Task Manager :erm:
One browser window open = 8 Chrome threads in Task Manager :erm: