Just a few minutes ago, I received an email from Christian, the lead developer of Midori, letting me know that version 0.2.5 was just released. My instant reaction? “HOORAY!”
In case you hadn’t seen, I personally am a fan, and have set out discussing some of the good and the bad of Midori, and comparing it with Chrome. While my conclusion has been that Midori is not quite a replacement primary browser, this is one step closer to a brilliant and modern full GTK browser (Yeah, Epiphany just doesn’t cut it. For me, at least). Lets look at some of the areas I’ve pointed out as weaknesses in the past.
Interface
While not much has changed in the interface, there are a few touch-ups that make me feel a bit more at home. SSL validation is now indicated in the location background color, as well as a fullscreen clock to keep users from loosing track of time. While there has not been much progression in the area of ease of customization of appearance, this is really a matter of implementation rather than feature, as there is already capability of customizing, just not in an easy drag and drop fashion. In addition, some small updates allow for better panel adaptation to system theme, and a new spinner widget! (Yes, I really am that excited about something so little. :D)
Browsing
Ease of browsing has been simplified in several ways. First of all, mouse gestures has been defaulted to right click, with possibility of changing back, and speed dial has been given the capability of responding to keyboard pushes.
Extras
First of all, as stated mouse gestures has been updated, as has colorful tabs, which now respond to the color of the icon in the tab. But bigger than little tiny changes, Vala support has been added for extensions. That is super awesome, and while there isn’t much built in available, experimental folk can get started on extending any which way they want.
You can read the full announcement here, as well as getting the download tar, and the full ChangeLog here.