Browser options paralysis

So I love Safari 5.1, with its scrummy forward/back swipe, elegant full screen mode and double-finger-double-tap to optimise text size and ditch all the rubbish in side frames.  Sweet.  But memory hogging hell!  And why in full screen does the address bad not disappear?  I’m not using it, I’m reading. And separate url and search bars?  Why?  And while I’m at it, when I’m typing in a url and Safari is predicting sites, why don’t they appear in the bar and save me scrolling down - it’s just a wasted click.  X Marks struggles a wee bit here for some reason, but the Clicktoplugin extension is the best flash blocker on the block. When I open a new tab, why doesn’t my curser go straight to the url box?  Why?  Closing tabs?  The tab re-sizes every time you close one, meaning you have to move your cursor along the line.  Oh, and the memory hogging… have I mentioned that - sometimes a gig that can’t be rescued without a re-boot.

Chrome? Hating on Google monitoring everything I do online - just a crass old advert-sales company who invented a search engine last decade.  But a lot of it works.  One address/search bar, with predictive url’s appearing in line and the most elegant of the full-screen modes.  No forward/back swiping or double-tap optimising though - and once you’ve got used to it, you really do miss it.  (Though I believe swiping is due soon.)  XMarks works great as does 1Password.  And again, don’t like them tracking my surfing.  I love the new tab behaviour… double click a word in the text, Ctrl-T, Ctrl V, Return & you’ve got a search.  Two extra clicks and a bit of mouse/trackpad action to achieve the same thing in Safari or Firefox.  Memory-tastic behaviour.  Closing tabs? Chrome keeps the tab-width constant for as long as you keep your cursor in the tab bar, meaning you can close several tabs really easily.  Neat.

Firefox 6, normally the best for range of extensions still doesn’t have a 1Password extension.  No swiping/tapping support and the rather nice & clean full-screen mode is really spoiled by the clunky way the menus drop down when you need them.  Unlike Safari and Chrome, instead of sliding down over the live window, it bumps the window you’re reading down by three lines.  Yeuch. Two separate boxes, I’m saying no.  But loving the whole open ethos - and much more real than the duplicitous Google definition.

Now uselessly swapping between all three depending on which imperfection annoys me at the time.  Sheesh.  #firstworldproblems