What do you want new innovations for browsers to be?

[Alkatran]

I'm sure the majority of people here are aware of the major changes to browsers lately (tabbed browsing would have to be the main one). What do you want to see next? Keep in mind that everyone has to put up with your feature!

[Marquis de Carabas]

Death ray.

[Darat]

I'm sure the majority of people here are aware of the major changes to browsers lately (tabbed browsing would have to be the main one). What do you want to see next? Keep in mind that everyone has to put up with your feature!

"tabbed browsing" a change to browsers "lately"? You mean in IE? :)

First of all not many new features - for instance the latest version of Opera introduced "widgets" - a form of desktop gadgets as popularised by OS/2 and the Stardock people - what a waste of time for a browser (and it meant the Opera development team let browsers like FireFox catch-up on useful features).

"Out-of-the-box" spell checking that works in any input field, silly that you still have to install one as an add-on.
Better "auto completion"

[Wudang]

No buffer overflows etc.

[a_unique_person]

aimbot

[DavidJames]

I would like one that doesn't eat, digest but never excretes memory. Opera, Firefox and IE all must be restarted after a few days to reclaim the memory.

[jimlintott]

Passing this test (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html) would be nice.

[alfaniner]

Internet Explorer 7 totally ripped off Mozilla Firefox.

[Darat]

Passing this test (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html) would be nice.


Seems fine in Opera 9.

[Darat]

Internet Explorer 7 totally ripped off Mozilla Firefox.


Which totally ripped off Opera which totally ripped off....

[jimlintott]

Seems fine in Opera 9.

It sure does. Apparently Opera 9 was the second browser to pass the test. Safari which is a fork of Konquerer was the first.
Interesting article about browsers passing the test here (http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/acid/).

[Angus McPresley]

Internet Explorer 7 totally ripped off Mozilla Firefox.


You say that like it's a bad thing.

I hope that everyone keeps ripping off the best ideas from each other.

[Mongrel]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I hope that everyone keeps ripping off the best ideas from each other.

Having seen it on a friends PC it's not so much that they ripped it off it's just that they did it badly.

[The Whether Man]

I'd like to see a decent way of organising and accessing frequently visited pages, favourites, bookmarks, call it what you will. I find both IE and Opera awkward and fiddly. Maxthon was good, the folders used to expand on mouse-over. I would like to see a feature similar to the XP start button, where the most commonly accessed pages float to the top.

Mouse gestures are a nice touch. I chose Opera over Firefox because of that.

[geni]

searching in text entry boxes as standard.

[Dave1001]

Edit

[JamesM]

I still want Powerpoint (or rather, Keynote) transitions when I go to a new web page.

[WildCat]

Picture-in-picture so I can watch 2 porn movies at once.

[Terry]

sharable annotations. Wasn't that supposed to be part of the web from the beginning?

[Oroborus]

I would like my browser to pay rent. Lots and lots of rent. Probably via paypal. No change accepted.

[TobiasTheViking]

mouse gestures..

Already standard in opera(which is where i started to love it). Can be added to firefox with a module. And works in konqueror with the kde "Input Actions".

[GodMark2]

I'm sure the majority of people here are aware of the major changes to browsers lately (tabbed browsing would have to be the main one). What do you want to see next? Keep in mind that everyone has to put up with your feature!

A simple way to remove all references to tabbed browsing. I don't care what the default is, I just want to be able to turn off any feature that I don't use that can be messy when it is unintentionally used. (open up two browser windows, each with a few tabs. Now, which window had the tab I needed? only way to know is to actually look at each window separately.)

I especially want to be able to turn off features that didn't exist in previous versions (the versions I learned to use and like)

[infornography]

I love Opera but the bookmarking system is ... in need of attention and the java support is laughable.

A spellchecker for any available text box would also be nice.

[roger]

Red. More red. Lots more red.

[Mashuna]

mouse gestures..

Already standard in opera(which is where i started to love it). Can be added to firefox with a module. And works in konqueror with the kde "Input Actions".

Good call - I've recently installed mouse gestures in firefox, and it's enabled me to be even more sedentry, slumped in front of my computer.

[Darat]

I love Opera but the bookmarking system is ... in need of attention and the java support is laughable.

A spellchecker for any available text box would also be nice.

Yep - I think Opera lost the initiative with version 9 - whoever decided that the "widget" route was where they should put most of their development resources should be shot.

[Mongrel]

I especially want to be able to turn off features that didn't exist in previous versions (the versions I learned to use and like)


I sort of agree and sort of disagree with this statement...

Yes, sometimes change can be bad. Normally when it appears to have been done just for the sake of change.

But (and having seen our customers try to do the same thing with the software our company produces)

Often times the reason something has changed is to make it better\faster\more functional. Turning a feature off before you've had a chance to get used to it is plain silly. Most of our customers conversations like this seem to end up as petulant whining;
Them - "I like the old way, I'm used to it!"
Us - "But this new version will allow you to do stuff faster and keep better records. We agree that it can be a pain learning the new way but it'll only take a day and you'll be working better than ever"
Them - "Don't care! Want the old way back!! Waaaaaa!!" <slightly dramatised>

Not implying that you're being a petulant anything Mark 2, but relearning a few habits will probably be more profitable than reminiscing about "The browsers we used to have" ;)For example - you can't find a tab amongst numerous open browser windows? Once you get used to opening all the tabs in the same browser that problem goes away, if you're using Firefox a flick throught the Tab Manager extensions may well be profitable as well

[Pipirr]

Opera does most of what I want.

But still, I'd like a searchable and sortable cache, and also a way of sending the right click options on a highlighted word into a new tab. The options there now are great (search, dictionary, encyclopedia, translate) but it would be super convenient if they didn't have to run in the same tab.

Oh and a spell check would be nice.

The bittorrent implementation in Opera 9 is also pretty good. I guess that could be made more advanced and user-controlled.

[Almo]

No more Internet Explorer. That's what I'd like to see. Or if IE would be STANDARDS COMPLIANT that would be fine too.

[Soapy Sam]

Most of our customers conversations like this seem to end up as petulant whining;
Them - "I like the old way, I'm used to it!"
Us - "But this new version will allow you to do stuff faster and keep better records. We agree that it can be a pain learning the new way but it'll only take a day and you'll be working better than ever"
Them - "Don't care! Want the old way back!! Waaaaaa!!" <slightly dramatised>

[/ RANT]
Speaking as a recidivist luddite, I still think the customer is the man with the money and you should be listening to him, not vice versa.
New features I don't need or want are an overhead you expect me to pay to make your sales simpler. Shove it.

Any aspect of a computer may be of interest for it's own sake, but I have a job to do, for which I am paid. If we get new software on a work computer, it will also be sold to my customers, who then expect me to know how to use it to make their job easier.

None of this actually helps me do my job, which has nothing to do with computers at all. Many people are in the same situation- the computer is not what they do, but a tool they must master to report what they do to their clients. Continually having to learn new software is a distraction from my job, not an aid.

I could manage just fine with DOS , but because my customers want their data in three different Wysiwyg formats, in three different computer systems, I must now input the same information three times over.

I don't see this as progress. I see it as a damn nuisance.

[/rant]
(Phew!)

Meanwhile, back at browsers, I'd really like an updated Lynx that automatically strips out all the graphics, all the pop ups, ads and all the RED and gives me fast access to the text.

[Mongrel]

If we were coding for one man only - you'd be right.

We're not though. And since the half the changes come about not from customer input but from changes in the way the data has to be managed for the Government to accept it and for our customers to stay within the law.
Any changes in software have to go with the majority.

Our old product ended up with something like 30 versions spread out over a couple of thousand customers trying to please everyone and quite frankly reduced customer satisfaction levels, the product could be tailored to the customer but if it went wrong it made it a hell of a lot harder to fix. People want customisation but never want to pay the extra price tag that goes with it

[GodMark2]

Us - "But this new version will allow you to do stuff faster and keep better records. We agree that it can be a pain learning the new way but it'll only take a day and you'll be working better than ever"
Them - "Don't care! Want the old way back!! Waaaaaa!!"[\QUOTE]

Compared to many of my customers, it's not that dramatized.

[QUOTE]Not implying that you're being a petulant anything Mark 2, but relearning a few habits will probably be more profitable than reminiscing about "The browsers we used to have" ;)For example - you can't find a tab amongst numerous open browser windows? Once you get used to opening all the tabs in the same browser that problem goes away, if you're using Firefox a flick throught the Tab Manager extensions may well be profitable as well

...half the changes come about not from customer input but from changes in the way the data has to be managed for the Government to accept it and for our customers to stay within the law.

My rule about new features is simple: What does it aloow me to do that I couldn't with the old softare? In your second example, it's easy to answer:
...the way the data has to be managed [...] for our customers to stay within the law.

For tabbed browsing, the answer is... well, now we can do what any decent window manager already did (Even the one Microsoft developed), only now it takes up additional screen real estate.

I guess my actual desire for new software is:

Actually have features that allow me to do something new, not just bundle something old in a new way.

[Upchurch]

The new innovation I want for browsers is to get rid of the browsers: Apollo (http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:developerfaq)

In development now, planned for release Spring of 2007.

[Soapy Sam]

When will Apollo be released?

We plan to release an pre-release version of Apollo on Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com/) in early 2007.
We are currently targeting the first half of 2007 for the release of Apollo 1.0.

Will there be a pre-release release or a post-pre-release release?
Can anyone at Adobe speak English?