Firefox ++1week

November 5, 2006 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

So another week of using Firefox has passed by and I’m still really frustrated by the unreliability of the Google Browser Sync plugin. The sad thing is that (if it worked) that extension is probably the only reason I’d choose Firefox over Opera. There must be tools out there which will let me (reliably) synchronise my bookmarks, and ideally what I want is a tool that will do this regardless of which type of browser I use … so my quest this morning is to find one. Fortunately Wikipedia comes to my rescue (yet again) with a list of bookmark sync tools.

Free browser sync tools which work with Opera: oSync and xbelSync – that’s it, just two choices. Oh, and xbelSync is Windows-only, so there’s really just oSync to try out – at least that should make for a quick test.

I should also take another look at the USerJS.org, the repository for Opera’s equivalent to Firefox’s (well, Mozilla’s) GreaseMonkey scripts. As for Why doesn’t Opera support extensions?

Opera does not support third party extensions as a quality assurance measure. Opera has rather incorporated the most useful and popular features in its browser and holds itself accountable for the functionality of these features. With integrated features rather than extensions, users are not subjected to the vulnerabilities of extensions created by third parties, which may or may not go through a verification or testing process. With the largest Web browser development lab in the world, Opera ensures that all of its features are smoothly integrated, tested and ready for the user.

However, further down that same FAQ: “Opera’s plug-in API is very similar to Netscape’s, meaning that most plug-ins that work with Netscape also work with Opera.“