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Opera vs Firefox


matthewk

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You have an old system and you don't use Tabbed Browsing...

All of us now collectively run and hide. :lol:

i just dont feel the need for it. i only do one thing at a time on my machine, i really only browse one website at a time too, so im good. 1024x768 is more than enough room to browse the net.

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I use both Opera and FireFox. I use FF 100% on my linux machines. I would use Opera 100% if they had adblock. I know there are some extension they have to block images, but you have to restart for it to take effect. Adblock blocks images and flash as I see them no need to restart. I also love gMail manager and Forecastfox. I could live without the forecastfox but not my adblock.

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I like opera. It takes far less memory than firefox does. And it has a couple innovative features (xhtml + voice anyone?), but too bad they're not useful as no one uses the technology as browser support for it is practically non-existant (well, there's also a mediocre BT client too).

But Opera is also the ONLY browser I use that's given me problems rendering some pages. Some pages on MSDN won't even show, some of the DHTML widgets on some pages end up having scrollers and such when they shouldn't have and what not. Works well for most pages, but just not good enough to use as a primary browser. That, and the download screen that's totally obnoxious! (is there a way to make this thing just GO AWAY?)

But the real deal breaker? Firefox has extensions. TONS of great extensions. And until Opera gets those, Firefox will stay as my primary browser. And I'm not talking about just an adblock replacement here - the dev developper toolbar (yes, I know about W3-dev and I also use it but it's not quite the same), LiveHTTPHeader (yes, I also have a http debugging proxy, but it's unecessary to even bother when you have this), forecastfox, foxytunes, bugmenot, proxy switcher, great JS tools, tabmix plus/gestures and all that kind of stuff, PDF download, flashblock, greasemonkey, stumbleupon, and countless others... Can't wait for the day Opera adds a way for people to easily create extensions like that.

And that "myths" page? That's the most sensationalist, totally wrong, 100% biased piece of laughable blog junk I've read in AGES. Worse than tabloids! Total nonsense. It's so wrong it's actually funny to read.

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I use both Opera and FireFox. I use FF 100% on my linux machines. I would use Opera 100% if they had adblock. I know there are some extension they have to block images, but you have to restart for it to take effect. Adblock blocks images and flash as I see them no need to restart. I also love gMail manager and Forecastfox. I could live without the forecastfox but not my adblock.

Opera already has an adblocking feature built-in. go to "Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Content > Blocked Content to see all the blocked websites. you have to manually edit the think though. but if you don't feel like doing that, then just find urlfilter.ini(either in %appdata% or in the Program Files directory depending on instalation settings) and copy/paste.

But Opera is also the ONLY browser I use that's given me problems rendering some pages. Some pages on MSDN won't even show, some of the DHTML widgets on some pages end up having scrollers and such when they shouldn't have and what not. Works well for most pages, but just not good enough to use as a primary browser. That, and the download screen that's totally obnoxious! (is there a way to make this thing just GO AWAY?)
blame Microsoft for that. Opera always doesn't display MSDN pages because Microsoft can't realize that Opera supports the web standards. and AFAIK, Microsoft serves Opera an old and incompatable stylesheet for Opera to use. i can't say for sure that Microsoft does that because that's just my guess. however, i do know that something similar used to happen with Hotmail 2 years ago.

and as for Firefox extensions, that's a horrible idea IMO. sure extensions are really great, but the end result is that you get slower startup, slower browser(in some but not all cases), and more memory usage. Opera has a ton of functionality which doesn't use up a lot of memory and doesn't mess with my browsing experiance. btw, if anyone is interested, here's a list which shows 150 firefox extensions. it pretty much shows if Opera has similar or better functionality.

http://files.myopera.com/Rijk/blog/extensions.html

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blame Microsoft for that. Opera always doesn't display MSDN pages because Microsoft can't realize that Opera supports the web standards. and AFAIK, Microsoft serves Opera an old and incompatable stylesheet for Opera to use. i can't say for sure that Microsoft does that because that's just my guess. however, i do know that something similar used to happen with Hotmail 2 years ago.

and as for Firefox extensions, that's a horrible idea IMO. sure extensions are really great, but the end result is that you get slower startup, slower browser(in some but not all cases), and more memory usage.

Blame them for serving a different stylesheet? Sure (I haven't even bothered looking if they do that). But the text doesn't show up AT ALL, yet it works fine under Firefox (windows and linux), IE, Konqueror, etc. And that's just one site. Many others also have issues (like the scollers on the widgets used by yahoo's webmail - that don't show up on any other browser), or often not working with google's new apps... I'd say ~75% of pages I use work fine, but that's hardly good enough.

And if Opera doesn't get extensions, it will never be my primary browser (and I suspect that's the case for a LOT of other people). Besides, adding the possibility to create/add/use extensions isn't a bad idea. Don't want to cope with an extra one second startup time for awesome features? Just don't install any, no one's forcing you. Most Firefox users are quite happy about that tradeoff. Although, if they're willing to add all those features in the browser themselves, I'd be happy with that too (yeah, not gonna happen - exactly my point - so make writing extensions simple!)

And funnily, the page you link to shows that there are no equivalents for many of the extensions I use, or when it lists one, it's often a pale imitation (Block content vs AdBlock? Web Developper toolbar equivalent? ...)

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I use both Opera and FireFox. I use FF 100% on my linux machines. I would use Opera 100% if they had adblock. I know there are some extension they have to block images, but you have to restart for it to take effect. Adblock blocks images and flash as I see them no need to restart. I also love gMail manager and Forecastfox. I could live without the forecastfox but not my adblock.

I too would use Opera if it had better adblock methods. The widgets (same as extensions in Firefox) are nice and all, but so many are just useless.

Everything I need, Firefox has and is VERY flexible with customization.

More of my rants about Opera are here.

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And if Opera doesn't get extensions, it will never be my primary browser (and I suspect that's the case for a LOT of other people). Besides, adding the possibility to create/add/use extensions isn't a bad idea. Don't want to cope with an extra one second startup time for awesome features? Just don't install any, no one's forcing you. Most Firefox users are quite happy about that tradeoff. Although, if they're willing to add all those features in the browser themselves, I'd be happy with that too (yeah, not gonna happen - exactly my point - so make writing extensions simple!)

One of the major problems that users face when using extensions is incompatibilities. By making extensions available, it makes it more difficult to pinpoint the cause or bugs/crashes/bad stuff. Web development features - ok, I can understand that, but an extension to control your media player? Is that really necessary? There are really some silly extensions out there.

The problem with introducing Firefox to the masses is that most people don't want to have to search and download "yet another" extension to do "this". People don't care if the download is 8MB vs 4MB if the 8MB comes with more features and is less hassle to set up. You might not think that installing extensions is a hassle, but many people do.

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