Back To The Fringe

It’s been over five years now that I ditched Opera as my browser.  In that time, I’ve been using Internet Explorer and everything has been going quite well.  Believe it or not, I’ve never gotten a virus or malware using IE.  And I’ve also gotten it to do everything that I needed with JavaScript and custom protocol handlers.

Despite this, the writing has been on the wall, in kind of an inverse fade where the message grows bolder as time goes on.  The final straw was when Flickr displayed this message:

image

So, I guess that’s it.  IE is starting to get the same treatment I was getting when I was using Opera:  You are not welcome here.  So I figured the natural replacement would be MS Edge.  I didn’t like Edge initially because it seemed to be a very stripped down browsing experience.  But then again, it’s been a few years, certainly they’ve made improvements since then?

I launched Edge and immediately got to work writing Extensions (which weren’t supported before) to add the functions I needed.  I was successful converting two of the three functions, so I was satisfied for the time being.  I started using Edge as my default browser.

Within a week, I became disenchanted with Edge.  The thing that kept brewing and finally boiled over was the bookmark management.  Can you believe there is no way to edit a bookmark in Edge?  After over two years, you still can’t edit a goddamn bookmark?  And more than that, the bookmarks aren’t anywhere outside the browser where you can edit them either!  The whole “modern” app design that Microsoft has adopted where everything is self-contained completely works against Edge.  So, I went on the hunt again.

My options were the same as before: Firefox or Chrome.  I’m not using Chrome out of the same distaste for Google that Chrome users have for Microsoft.  Firefox just never seems to have their shit together.  Firefox is a great backup, but I can’t see it as my daily driver.  So, given those two options, I went back to Opera.

No, of course not.  But I kind of did.  I downloaded Vivaldi, which is made by a company of the former Opera owner.  It’s the spiritual successor to Opera.  You want options, you got options.  Everything can be changed, and some in ridiculous ways.  But the things I really needed, Vivaldi gave me.  And it’s built on Chromium, so I get Chrome without being beholden to Google.

If there’s a testament to make here about going back to your home, here’s mine.  I downloaded Vivaldi and started setting it up like I used to when I used Opera.  Within two hours of using the browser, I started using mouse gestures like I was back on the classic Opera browser.  The gestures were already built in (no plug-in needed) and worked just as I remembered them.

My previous post’s argument about having tight integration with the mobile environment turned out to be the biggest letdown, since Microsoft abandoned Windows Phone.  Microsoft seems to be embracing Android, so I guess at some point in the near future, I’ll get some non-Google Android phone and put all the Microsoft apps on it.  but on the desktop environment, I guess I’m going to return to being independent and use Vivaldi.

1 Comments.

  1. I just want you to know I visited your website and left this comment using Chrome.