[forthefuture]

This is something I don't really understand about the idea of a "power" browser. The entire reason browsers cut back on features was bloat that 99% of users never use. I guess targeting that 1% makes the bloat more reasonable, but for anyone who wants one feature and not another, it's easier to start at 0 with Chrome or Firefox and add the one thing you want.

[lmkg]

On the other hand, the reason that Firefox got a reputation for being slow, bloated, and leaky was because 90% of the features were written by third-party developers with varying levels of competency, no quality controls, and little incentive to bring their stuff up to date.

I used Opera pre-12, and the reason I did so was because all of the features that I wanted were baked-in to the browser, which meant that they went through the same quality controls and integration testing as the rest of the browser. There was no separate step of updating add-ons, or even worse having outdated add-ons with no compatible version. Everything Just Worked.

Granted, some of the features were not as feature-complete as comparable Firefox add-ons. E.g., tab-stacking is strictly inferior to tree-style tabs because there is only one level of collapse. But everything I wanted was already included, at an acceptable-enough level that for me, it outweighed the cost of having to comparison-shop for mouse gestures or custom CSS solutions or whatever.

FWIW, Opera never felt "bloated" to me. It had crop-tons of features, but for whatever reason that didn't translate to a feeling of bloat. The browser was fast and responsive, and the pile of features never really got in my way. Every once in a while, I would read about an interesting Firefox add-on, dig into the Options menu, and find out Opera had the feature all along, whereupon I would drag it onto the UI.

Personally I like having the email built-in to the browser because it means I don't have to context-switch to see the status of my inbox. But that's a personal quirk.