I’m on the fence about Midori. Deep down, there’s a part of me that wants to love this web browser. On the surface, however, Midori is a good try, but didn’t quite make the necessary jump.
One of the things that it does indeed get right is that it uses the screeching fast WebKit rendering engine- the one behind browsers like Safari and Chrome/ium. It loads pages quickly and reproduces the various elements in ways that truly bring out the best in websites. I like the way that it uses GTK+, and it looks like it’s built right into the OS (I do all testing on Ubuntu, as I’ve noted many times before. Your mileage will always vary).
That being said, this browser falls short in many areas. For one, I find performance to be terrible when loading multiple pages, especially if those pages are feature-rich. I find that some tasks I throw at Chrome, which performs them flawlessly, absolutely chokes Midori to the point I have to perform a force quit. I also despise the way that it handles tabs. The tabs remain hidden, until you open a new tab (which is frustratingly difficult if you don’t use a keyboard shortcut). If you play around you can eventually find an option to always display tabs, but it sticks out like a sore thumb. I’ve also found the performance to be severely lacking compared to the performance of Chrome, and often Opera. I do believe that it is much faster than Firefox, which still uses the sub-par Gecko engine.
If you’re the type of person that likes to use extensions, you’re out of luck. There are a few, but they’re all underwhelming, and confined to the extensions that Midori has pre-selected to be available. I should also mention that the trash icon on the top is butt-ugly, and the menus are clunky and nearly impossible to navigate. Things such as history and bookmarks open in a side-bar on the left.
Is Midori coming along nicely? Yes, it is. I actually think that it is a (generally) better experience than Firefox. The truth is, though, that it simply isn’t up to the same quality as Chrome/ium, Safari, or even Opera (which I am not a fan of by any stretch). While I look forward to seeing the progress of this browser, I honestly can’t imagine relying on it on a day-to-day basis. However, if Chrome’s not for you, you should definitely give this a try.
Downloads
