Your favorite browser feature
By glazou on Saturday 6 March 2004, 15:25 - Mozilla - Permalink
During a great discussion with Colas in Mandelieu, I agreed with him on this point : our preferred feature in Mozilla (Semonkey or Firefox), the feature that no other browser has, the feature we are now so used to we cannot make without any longer, that remarkable feature is "Find as you type". It's a new way of finding information in a page (although crazy people like Colas and I have been using that for years and years in non-browsing tools), finding it fast, without bloated UI; it's intuitive and easy to use. "Find as you type" is THE feature I can't imagine a modern browser without.
What about you ?
Comments
Actually, Opera has "Find as you type", too.
For me the most important feature is tabbed browsing. After years of using Firewhatever and Mozilla, I am simply unable to use browsers without tabs (such as IE). The other one is pop-up blocking.
(I guess I am not very "original" with my favourite features ;))
And this one is great, too: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show... (if you have to visit some poorly sites that happen to block your context menu ;))
I love Find As You Type myself. Which is strange because before it was introduced I rarely used the Find in This Page option. But FAYT makes it so easy to perform a search with no hassle that I use it all the time. I never before realised that when scrolling through a page I am frequently actually looking for a specific snippet of text. I normally use FAYT to search the entire text of a page and have often thought it would be best if this option was the default. But equally, I can see why just locating links is useful for keyboard accessibility (FAYT is nominally an accessiblity feature) and it's what Mac IE 5 does.
Tabbed browsing is also great. When tabbed browsing was introduced, I didn't really see the point: how is it different to using multiple windows? But then I forced myself to use it for a while and became hooked.
Integrated searching is also great. Using the Mozilla Application Suite, I type search terms in the Location Bar, Up arrow, Return and I'm done. In Firefox I have to remember to go to the separate Search Bar but I like the way it remembers previous searches.
XUL - maybe not a feature, but a philosophy, is the reason, why I like Mozilla.
I use Mozilla on both Linux and Windows - but for most extensions I want to install, I don't need to care about the underlying operating system. There is only XUL. *g*
I like tabs.
FAYT is good, but was really annoying at first when I missed the address bar and skipping around the page.
Désolé pour le français sur un billet anglais,
mais pour moi *THE* feature de Moz/SM/FF c'est le respect des standards et en particulier du positionnement des éléments via CSS. Impossible de pondre quelque chose de potable sans tables imbriquées pour le prévisualisateur Html qu'est IE... et coder à la main des tables imbriquées dans tous les sens c'est pas facile facile
FYAT c'est bien pratique sauf que j'ai jamais trouvé comment faire <suivant>, des idées ?
ok let's do it the other way round: the most unneeded und unnecessary feature is caret browsing IMHO. Ok, some people might navigate with it, but i think only very few people use it so...
I really like this functionnality, too, especially in technical documentation. It avoid two clicks, and so... Well, great ! ^^
Tabs in background.
Greg: essaie Ctrl-G ou F3
I would agree that Find As You Type is a killer feature, the other few *killers* for me would have to be EXTENSIONS. I couldn't live without "single window mode" (TBP w/miniT or TBE), MouseGestures, QuickNote, FlashClick to view, EditCSS and WebDeveloper.
I just discovered the "Find As You Type" feature in Firefox (even if already known in other apps). I'm still staggered by its power and efficiency, especially to navigate. Type the beginning of a link, it is selected, hit Enter, and you get it. Awesome.
www.mozilla.org/projects/...
One more killer feature to make Firefox my default browser instead of Safari.
mcsmurf, caret browsing is an _accessibility_ feature. Just like the support Mozilla has for screen readers, alt text, etc. If you don't like it, don't turn it on. But for people who really need it, it's irreplaceable.
Boris: well but from where should i know this?! It's included in Mozilla as a normal feature as a normal menupoint with normal options, so...
i might have to agree with find as you type. in fact, i've gotten so used to it that i just start typing in text editors when trying to search. the majority of the time i use full text mode instead of links.
beyond that, i'd have to vote for the vast customizablity. everything from themes, extensions, customizable toolbars, mycroft plugins, about:config, userChrome.css... - allowing you to make it a perfect fit.
Hmm, am I the only geek here that don't use FAYT ?
I vote for userContent.css/userChrome.css + DOM Inspector.
miahz wrote:
> i've gotten so used to it that i just start typing in text editors when
> trying to search. the majority of the time i use full text mode instead
> of links.
Exactly. Happens to me all the time when I switch from a seamonkey window to my code editor window :-P
Yesssss! Find as you type and tabbed browsing
I love my Firesomething.
Typing search queries directly into the URL-bar (going there with CTRL-l) with keyword set to my fav search engine is great. FAYT as well, but I always type the emacs-C-s before. It would be great, if there was an _easy_ way to assign keyboard shortcuts.
1. Assign middle click to Open Tabs as default behavior. Opera folks had tabs long before, but they didn't get it until v. 7.5.
2. FAYT : I tend to use it in other apps, like Daniel or miahz.
3. Keywords for bookmarks and the Search box. You can't mix serviettes (location) & torchons (search).
4. -moz-border-radius : not a feature i know but it's so cool
** Downside **
the Sidebar : it becomes less useful because of tabs profusion.
When loaded, the History panel is awfully sloooooow. You can't work with it, each time you want to fold/unfold a branch. Am I the only one to complain ?
Consolation : in Firefox, you can use FAYT on history.
Speaking of FAYT, I never tested Mozilla/Firefox on Windows, but since Input methods sucks under X-Window, FAYT is useless with non western languages. Question is : does FAYT work on Windows version with, for instance, japanese text ?
Vincent> essaie Ctrl-G ou F3
:-) 
Another thing I love is the possibility to type search terms into the address bar, hit enter, and be directly taken to the top page of the google results. Useful for reaching webpages by "google addresses" rather than URI's.
FAYT is wonderful! I really like the fact it works in view-source as well.
As everyone, my "tiercé" would be Extensions (so that everyone can make his own browser as light or heavy he wants), Tabbed browsing (can't use IE anymore) and FAYT (Thanks for the F3/Ctrl-G trick, I asked myself how to do this for a long time).
The DOM Inspector would have to be my favorite feature, though FAYT comes in a close second.
Mozilla is wonderfull on almost everything, the only real problems for me is to redefine Keyboard shortcuts and the use of javascripts to develop extensions doen't grab me....