The Browsers of 2009

I think Opera has the best Cost - Benifit ratio, which is why I use it.

I love the Speed Dial feature, especially being able to hit control + a number to get to one of them quickly. Numbers move between tabs. The order you viewed tabs in is remembered. Thumbnail previews on mouseover of tabs is great if you routinely keep 20-30 tabs open. Adblock is a default feature. There's a built in IRC client. I hear the mail client is great, but I use gmail for everything. Fast forward and fast backward is awesome. Having it remember all of my tabs when I open / close the program is sweet. The trash can for deleted tabs is convenient. I absolutely love mouse gestures.

I'm sure much of this stuff can be done in Firefox with 20 different plugins, but it's all there by default in Opera and works flawlessly. I have two complaints with Opera, though. First, flash doesn't work well for me in linux with the 9.5 beta and, second, some web sites I have to use for school don't work correctly, so I resort to Firefox for those.

Edit: Whoops. That's cost - benefit for developing for a particular browser, not cost - benefit for use. Oh well, maybe someone will find this post useful and consider switching. :)

I know he didn't mean it, but it's starting to sound like an argument to develop more in Flash. ewww.

Dang, I thought the article was going to be about some cool new browser technology/GUIs or something.