QOTD: How Would You Change Your Browser?

News
By Marcus Yam
published

or to put it another way, what things would you change in your web browser?

In the last week we've seen the Firefox design team propose a few changes to the layout of the browser. In Firefox 3.7 we may see a prettier, translucent look with cues taken from Google Chrome.

Today we saw mockups of what Firefox 4.0 could look like, which takes things further by playing with optimal tab placement.

Many of us have a favorite browser for a reason, be it speed, design, compatibility, availability of plug-ins, or maybe it just came with your OS. But no browser is perfect, which is why there are continual updates.

What we'd like to hear about from you today is: How would you change your favorite web browser?

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
91 Comments Comment from the forums
  • burnley14
    If you could make the top toolbars smaller/disappear, thus maximizing browser screen area, that would be ideal.
    Reply
  • KMBaron
    IE is my browser of choice, just cause i like the way it's all layed out. While the other browsers are nice, i have and do use them all to make sure i am not missing something. But microsoft does not update IE often. Sure they do on security updates. But the important big chances or tweaks only happen every few years with a new version number. They need to put more effort into this. Maybe if they appeared to care more they would retain and maybe gain markey share.
    Reply
  • kyeana
    fix all the bugs in opera 10 and bring it out of beta ;)
    Reply
  • 7amood
    Chrome + Add ons = Killer Browser

    Customizations (moving buttons and tool bars) and custom themes would be cool.
    Reply
  • Upendra09
    Make the browsers be like Chrome, fast quick, very stable, (never had it crash by itself, always Vista screwing up, and big screen real estate. It can also play lots of media, when i got it i thought it wouldn't be able to play games or movies online but it didin't need any plugins that weren't already out there. Firefox was my favorite with it's themes, but that was before Chrome, but i would still use Firefox over IE any day, it is also very reliable and very stable.
    Reply
  • Wayoffbase
    I don't like IE because it is slow.

    Chrome is a bit too stripped down- I use gmail and have all of my bookmarks in the google toolbar, which I can't use with chrome.

    I have the Opera 10 beta installed, and I've had some major compatibility issues with some websites that I have to use.

    Firefox is my primary browser, and has been for quite some time now. I really hate how much it crashes lately. I like the previews of the new layout, but I need stability.
    Reply
  • cbrownx88
    I wouldn't really change much at all. I

    I would add the ability so show 2 tabs in a split-screen manner
    -similar to a console's mutiplayer choices (top/bottom, left/right)

    That would be kickass
    Reply
  • kittle
    I would set things up so all the toolbars can be hidden to maximize screen real estate AND distractions.

    Next get rid of these misleading/useless error messages: "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage" no kidding! ... WHY?!?!? Was it a timeout? Did the website return an error code? I want to have all that on the screen without having to go through extra clicks. Simmilar to the early days of IE when this "friendly message" option did not exist.

    Another thing id like to see is finer grained text scaling. yes you can use the zoom option - but that zooms EVERYTHING. Id like to see a text size percentage just like we have for zoom.

    - support for multicore systems (multithreading)
    - better support for native 64bit versions (windows update gives you an error if you try to access the site with 64bit IE).
    - find ways to reduce the overhead. website graphical content is big enough w/o having to add extra bloats from the browser itself.

    Reply
  • curnel_D
    I'd want a browser with Chrome's Minimalistic design and security, opera's footprint, and internet explorers asthetics.

    Basically the best of everything combined.
    Reply
  • cadder
    I would like to have more flexibility with bookmarks. I regularly use 4 different computers and I would like an easier way to synchronize bookmarks between them. And I don't want to use a third party website to do it. I'd be happy with an ordinary text file.
    Reply