NoScript for Opera, pretty please
Sometimes, proprietary is good.
I have been using Firefox now as my primary browser since September of last year, and I was quite happy with it. It crashes more often than Opera and doesn’t come with everything I need (a few addons will rectify this) but overall it is a good tool for my work in video game localization. We localizers need to research a lot, be it in our target language (German here) or in English. We need a reliable, fast and very, very secure browser. Why so secure? As a translator of sometimes obscure expressions, acronyms and just plain weird stuff (I worked on Silent Hill, just to give you an example) we need to click on the links our parents warned us about. Well, they should have.
Those links might lead us to sites running malicious, evil, sneaky and really mean scripts which could make your computer go boom. Or steal your passwords. So every translator who needs more than Leo and is even a little bit concerned about his and his clients security uses Firefox with an addon called NoScript running. NoScript lets the user browse the web without having to fear those scripts. NoScript also allows the user to choose which of the scripts he wants to execute. For the uninitiated: Many popular web sites run a lot of scripts while you are browsing them. A couple of Google scripts, one from Facebook, one from Twitter… The Toronto Star web site runs scripts from eight different sources. It also runs a lot of faster if you use NoScript.
Now, you can disable Javascript in all of the big browsers. However, only with NoScript can you see and select those scripts. This was the reason why I switched to Firefox last September (Opera has nothing like NoScript). Which means, I switched from a proprietary application to a free one. Totally stuck it to the man, yeah!
So I installed all these addons to make Firefox look and work like Opera and never looked back. Well, I do check from time to time if Opera finally has something like NoScript in the newest release so I can dump this bloated and crashing piece of digital garbage called Firefox and return to the man, hug him, nibble gently on his corporate ear lobe and tell him that I will never, ever leave again.
Why all the ear nibbling all of a sudden? Because the addons are not being updated! I rely on one in particular: Hyperwords. Makes it very easy to search specific terms on various web sites, is configurable and in my right-click menu. Just like in Opera. Those lazy bastards who don’t get a penny to write and update Hyperwords haven’t updated it yet for the newest Firefox release. So my work flow is interrupted. I am inconvenienced and won’t stand for it!
Sometimes, proprietary is good.
