[coldtea]

>Everything I like about FireFox (gestures, tabbed browsing, a reasonable bookmark manager), Opera did first.

So? Do you still use Mosaic because it did first most of the important things Opera does now? How about sticking with IE, because it brought as AJAX first?

[davesims]

If Mosaic had a current version with a rendering engine and enclosing feature set as competitive as the current Opera is vs. Chrome and FF, yeah I might. But, as I said, I don't even use Opera right now, only because FireFox's add-on ecosystem makes it the better choice. But otherwise Opera is still a competitive, high-performing browser, and completely reasonable choice for the discriminating nerd.

I never used IE. Because...IE.

Would you hypothetically not use a fast, super-compliant, feature-rich Mosaic out of an irrational bias?

[coldtea]

>Would you hypothetically not use a fast, super-compliant, feature-rich Mosaic out of an irrational bias?

No bias. I've tried to use Opera from time to time. Always stopped because:

1) Awkward UI. The QT theme engine it used (still has?) made it always look and feel off, in both Windows and OS X.

2) Some extra features (mail? download manager?) felt subpar compared to dedicated apps. Why would I need those in a browser anyway? That's why I stopped using Mozilla for Firefox 5-6 years ago.

3) The main operation of any browser, err, browsing web pages, was frequently hit with bugs, incompatibilities etc. I was always left out when browsing the more advanced HTML5 stuff, what with WebGL etc. And I never particularly liked the font rendering.

Some stuff I did like. But an incompatible engine and a bad look & feel didn't really entice me to keep using a browser. Mouse gestures etc, I could not care less, I find them gimmicky anyway.