Never Quite the Right Tool

I not only work in a cross-platform environment (though barely); I'm a cross-platform computer user. Not really by choice, mind you: if I ruled the world, we'd all be using Macs (in spite of the great respect I have for Linux). But I don't rule the world and we don't all use Macs and at work I have a PC and not a Mac.

The good thing about this, I suppose, is that it's driven me to discover new and (often) nicer ways of doing things. Well, not nicer, I suppose, 'cause the software I used on the Mac was really, really nice. But better for not only cross platform use, but also multi-computer use. Since my work machine is at work, when I want to work at home, I'd either have to VPN to work and get my files, or mail them ahead before leaving. Or use web-based services and just know that everything's accessible everywhere. Which is what I do.

But the web-based services require a web browser for access. And that means that most of my work is actually being done in my browser, rather than elsewhere. Which makes my browser about the most important tool I use, outside of the work-specific tools I have on my work machine. And that means that I want a really awesome browser.

Here's the problem: my favorite browser in the world, OmniWeb, only runs on a Mac. Moreover, while it's a truly amazing browser (for many reasons too subtle to talk about - you'd have to use it and experience the niceness), and while it passes the ACID2 test, it doesn't support all of the scripting features that Google uses for its services. Sure, the Google services all work in OmniWeb, but you lose the rich-text-like editing capability. Which means you have to type the HTML out by hand. Which is slow and irritating, though not show stopping.

So I use Firefox at work. And now at home, too, often, since it plays so much more nicely with the Google services. And Firefox is a great browser - it even has a better ad blocker than OmniWeb.

It would be really nice if the two could somehow be married. Probably, since Firefox is open source and has such a flexible API, it'd be easier to merge the subtle nice things from OmniWeb into Firefox. But in the meantime, I'm stuck with two tools for the same job, both of which had nice points, and neither of which actually fits quite right.