bangersandmash

Google Chrome is getting lot of press. I find it amusing that Chrome, like Firefox before it is getting a lot of pixels (formerly: ink) by touting features pioneered by Opera. Opera seems to be the gold standard for new features: tabbed browsing, speed dial, autocomplete, security user stylesheets, privacy features, etc. However, the complaint remains that Opera is relatively closed to community development (said the guy who blogs using Safari). I wonder what would happen if Opera merged their cutting edge user-experience with Firefoxe’s community of plug-in developers?

I used Opera for years but eventually switched back to Safari to take advantage of a couple of mission-critical bookmarklets. However, I continue to regard Opera as the gold-standard of browsers. IE has its hoard-of-lemmings and Firefox has its community of holier-than-thoughs, but Opera is the true innovator. I realise that this is holy-war-class-material for some people but if you exclude the plug-in architecture, closed-source Opera has innovated while others have followed. Now I invite Opera to open up to an established plug-in standard (Firefox/greasemonkey) and truly take over.