A frustrated user looking to break the browsing shackles (in the mac world). Most of the suggestions are applicable to windows as well.
As Light as Camino
Is this really too much to ask? I’m not talking about running twenty tabs. I am talking about 5-7 tabs and browser thats open through the day and doesn’t take a gig of memory. A browser thats snappy and NOT a memory hog!
Culprits: Safari, Firefox, Opera
Attribution: bdepardo
As elegant as Safari
Search is paramount! You are searching for something or the other. Safari with Inquisitor wins this one period. I luv the way safari highlights my key that is being searched. I luv the way Inquisitor shows me the results as I type and how most of the time I dont need to wait to open up the search page in google. I wish this functionality was available for any of the custom search engines that I can add in firefox.
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Opera
Attribution: mac_vegetarian
Attribution:Zephyr1982
Full screen without clutter
This one should be so obvious! Someone you wanna read your long blog posts (Marshall K posts are long) or watch twittervision without the other clutter on your desktop. Opera nails this one! Can the other browser please fall in line!
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Flock
Attribution: jsuplido
Most used sites as start page
Opera has this one nailed with speed dial. 9 most frequented websites. Gone are the days where people just visited one site. Depending on my mood I pick one of the 9 sites. Very nifty! I like flock’s streams but more on that coming up soon.
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Flock
Attribution: krilli
Favorites, Favorites, Favorites
Every browser fails this test! Flock comes close with integrating delicious & magnolia but is far from nailing this feature. Heres what I would like. I want my browser to import existing bookmarks into delicious and auto tag the sites that it can find on delicious (the delicious plugin on firefox offers default tags) and then from there on whenever I drag and drop a link I want it to pop a window to tag it. Please give me a bookmark toolbar with 2 options .. most recently used tags / most popular tags
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: e-strategy.com
News Feed / Friends stream
Flock does the best job of this but comes real short of being an usual feature. If there is one thing Facebook has sold then its the news feed. Pls dont make me sign in and out everytime! Pls let me use claimid(Check out Chris Messina’s claimid page) if possible if not save my user id/passwords locally and retrieve the feeds and consolidate my newsfeed! P
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: Chris
Feed reader Integration
Integration with Bloglines/Google Reader. Please its long over due! I want my browser to be able to sync back to Google reader. Google Gears integration is not what most reader find ideal. Ideally it should be a side bar. Digg spy like feature would be freaking awesome but I know Im getting greedy. Any kind of integration with Google reader would be great!
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: CaptQuirk
Media Browser
People create audio/video content all the time or link to them. Be it podcasts or videocasts(scoble’s the culpit, LOL) or seesmic (Loic keep up the good work) videos. I want a media browser that I can queue up links for it play on the sidebar as I browse. Right now I download it to my hard disk and then have to play it later Or I have to have have a browser window and an iTunes window open to watch the video and browse the web. Playlists are already being used in web players check out msnbc TV or cnn, how tough should it be? Also Songbird already handles media. And please make the media browser smart enough so that it can extract the flv/mov/avi/mp3 file from the playlist link rather than taking me to that page like the media browser in Flock does today! Credit goes to Flock for getting this started .. A step in the right direction but a long way to go.
Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: Geek glue
Portable
I luv foxmarks on firefox. I would like the option for a similar service where my browser data / state is encrypted and stored! or let me store the file in a usb drive / ipod / iphone. Please build the client that can upload/download/import data into browser so I can goto any machine and login and start off where I left. Peace and harmony!
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: Frank Hamm
Microformats Integration
Microformats went main stream when google maps started to support it. I constantly use it to download restaurant information to my address book, sync it up with my iphone and off I go! Please natively support it and make it extensible. Dont make it into a plugin for people to download and tweak! Your never going to get people to use it. Most browsers have plugins to support it and support can be spotty depending on the browser.
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera
Attribution: David Nemesis
Private Browsing
Sometimes you just need Private browsing.. My browsing is my business! I dont want to be messing around with cookies and removing history, especially when Im at a friends place and having to explain twitter.
Firefox, Camino, Flock, Opera
Attribution: apple.com
APML Integration (Nice to have)
Attention data is going mainstream in 2008. Browser will be foundation for such data. Please work with the APML group (or get Chris Saad to work pro bono LOL) to come up with a tool using which I can export my attention data. Allow me to filter out data that I dont want exported (be it sites or be it time of browsing). People will be more open to exporting attention data if they have a tool that will let them filter stuff out.
Culprits: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera, Flock
Attribution: weaverluke
Browsers need to evolve, none of these ideas are revolutionary. If I had all these features why would I ever leave my browser. I have not included features like tab browsing & form filling which most browsers do a good job implementing. What would you like on your browser that you don’t have today that is making your life painful? Let me know your thoughts. I will update this post or followup with another.
