Notices

MICROB is much better than firefox though

I just like to see my webpages in desktop format and microB cannot be beaten in that!! I havent really tried any other browser and am not really interested.

that is because microb is setup to zoom to certain levels when a new site is opened but in the bargain cutting off parts of the webpage. OPERA on other hand shows the entire webpage but zoom levels maybe 50% but then we are talking of zooming and text reflow after zooming where micob takes the entire screen(more than 200%) opera can b setup to zoom 100 or 140% . PLUS it has other already mentioned features above

thats the reason i like microb than opera i dont want to fiddle on zoom settings everytime im on a different website and yes 140% is the most acceptable on opera...

microb isnt cutting the webpage blame it on the resolution 800x480, they got their own pros and cons but opera is better if your using the browser mostly on portrait, it cant beat mouse mode though.

I don't get that. Why people like the Opera vkb better.

They have approximately the same keys, except the FastSMSEvo one is bigger buttons. The only problem is FastSMSEvo has a couple of bugs and isn't as integrated into the browser. *Shrug* To be fair I neve got why people practically orgasmed over the Opera VKB since it came out. From an actual usability perspective it's about as useful as an iPhone VKB. I.E. not that useful. Admittedly most of my qualms with the Opera vkb are present in the FastSMS one, but at least I know the dev plans to work on at least one of them. With Opera you have to hope they take your feature request and use it.

The problem is that MicroB is not just FireFox - it's FireFox's web engine, the Mozilla engine I think they call it, after the group that produces it (hence "Mozilla FireFox" being the full browser name for FireFox, as Chrome's is "Google Chrome", etc) vs. their browser's name.

The engine, however, works just fine as is. It doesn't nead much tweaking. The thing that doesn't work fine (or at least that most people want modified/tweaked) is the user interface - and that - all the parts you actually interact with, in other words - isn't open. So the bits most people actually want to modify don't exactly work. As for plugins, there's a critical mass of power users vs. normal users that has to be present before power users feel like putting out easy-to-use stuff for things they can already do. On the N900, the power users are happy with greasemonkey scripts and the like. (Although, I suspect the UI being closed source does make making plugins that need UI input/display-space difficult.)

Never really liked single click to zoom, especially on Opera. It basically means that the page will load normal but before I want to click on anything it'll zoom in to whatever amount it's set to first. When I press something, I want it to use normal click behavior, not something completely different. At least double-click on a non-link makes sense to me, and doesn't collide with default normal actions.

That said I'm a strong believer in users having choices - you should be able to set what clicking does what.

As a general commentary on zoom though, I love MicroB's approach. I love swirl to zoom, as it works with one finger instead of two, and I love the MicroB double click to zoom because it inteligently (at least as much as it can) tries to fit the zoom to the shape of the element you're double-clicking. One of my great annoyances with Opera's zoom was just that - it makes this assumption that you'll always want to zoom in the same amount regardless of what webpage you're on. (This is my main problem with people liking Opera so much. Just like people liking the iPhone, it's people liking something that works nicely at the cost of much in-my-opinion-must-have flexibility and usability. And just like the iPhone, it makes me feel like people are fitting thselves to like the tool instead of expecting the tool to be good for them.)

Anyway, I used Opera a few times in portrait mode, though I honestly didn't love the experience that much. Since FastSMSEvo started working correctly with the browser, I found that I don't even think about using the Opera Browser for anything, and at this point, I'm not sure I'm ever going to use it (to the point where I've thought about deletingh it to free up rootfs space, which is very odd for me - I am very much a fan of running more than one browser at once, for logging in to the same site with different accounts, and just for having options when some page doesn't load).

But yeah. I get that there's a list of people who like the way Opera is set up, I just wish that the people who make these programs would think about broad categories of users instead of just one or two that they perceive as the majority. Yes it makes the code more complicated, but not by much I'd argue.

Just go to Wikipedia in both the browsers.
Search for anything, say Capital as in Economics.

Now turn the phone into potrait mode in both the browsers for the above page and Zoom in by double clicking in MicroB and single click in Opera.

Check for your self which of the browser shows the page, the main body, correctly, as in viewable.

anybody tried?

thats why we have different browsers because of different capabilities if your using it to read then go for it.

as for me i dont use the browser just for reading stuff on wikipedia and if somebody gave me a link i wanna see what it is whether its news, picture or clicking video link here on TMO. Im not gonna give up what microb can do just because it cant zoom the way i want to, im a heavy user i need flash to chat (like chatango).

Swirl zoom is great. I found it much easier to use than pinch zoom.

Copy/paste is fine; it's like a desktop edition, however I suppose highlighting text could be easier.

Tabbed browsing vs multiple windows: to me it's how you get from one page to another tab. I find with ShortcutD, single press on camera button gets me the task manager, and all my open pages are available to me.

Microb is wonderful if you have good connection and needs to open one or two windows

Opera is wonderful in slow connections and shines even more in good connections, but it doesn't save your tabs, neither has flash

Firefox saves your tabs and has flash, BUT loads slowly AND sometimes it messes the page and all gets like a game of chess without the chess pieces...