Opera vs Firefox

[Tarun]

Use what works best for you. Who cares what others think. It's about what you are happy with.

Personally, I like Opera but to me it lacks the customization I prefer. Firefox has some extensions that I use frequently for numerous things and Opera unfortunately lacks this (or if it has it, there's not much ease-of-use at all).

With Firefox, I can place my bookmarks toolbar where I want and basically tweak it how I need it.

So, bottom line. Who cares what others think. Use what works best for you. Offer or suggest that someone tries something; but don't force it down their throats, it'll only push them away.

[Jeremy]

There we go. Debate settled. Topic can be closed now. Thank you, Tarun.

[LordFett]

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.

Everytime you want to block an item you have to go through all that? No thanks, I will stick with AdBlock.

[Aegis]

Actually it's just right-click, "Block Content", click on the ad, and you're done.

[salival]

I love Firefox, specially the new version 2 Beta. Best browser ever.

Opera is alright I guess, not really my cup of tea tho.

[LordFett]

Actually it's just right-click, "Block Content", click on the ad, and you're done.

That is nice. I like that with AdBlock that right off you see the address and can toss wild cards in right away. With Opera you have to go into the blocked content menu and edit (unless I am missing something else).

Turns out I was missing something else. You can edit the links as you block them, click on details before clicking done. I think this might beat adblock. I'll have to use it for a while.

Edited September 15, 2006 by LordFett

[rms]

Opera not free?

So what is that I have installed? Says 'Opera 9.01' and never asked for any payment.

Do you mean it is secretly emptying my accounts?

[albator]

Opera is now a freeware, but last year it was not

[Camarade_Tux]

And free may also means open-source.

[puntoMX]

Why is that? If I make something for free for you I don´t have to tell you how I made it .

[Jeremy]

Opera has been free for a long time so I don't know what the confusion is.

[OldBoy]

According to investigators from Symantec:

Over the first six months of 2006;

47 leaks where discovered in Firefox,

38 leaks in Internet Explorer,

12 in Safari,

7 in Opera.

A leak in their browser;

took Mozilla an average of 1 day to patch,

took Opera an average of 2 days to patch,

took Apple an average 5 days to patch,

took Microsoft an average 9 days to patch...

[edit]

I was first...

Edited September 25, 2006 by OldBoy

[Jeremy]

Thanks for the info.

[CoffeeFiend]

That's some prime FUD - just like what we'd expect from Symantec. Mind you, anything to mislead you so your computer has "problems" likely makes for higher sales for them - why trust anything they say? What's in your best interest is basically what would kill their business model - why would they help you stay secure?

IE 6 is old and crusty software that hasn't been updated in years besides patches (mature AND stagnant). Compared to all the other browsers which are in active development - getting new features and such, which always makes for a few new bugs. And some of those browsers are open source, so there's more peer review (and there's even been several automated bug checks done) - which finds more, and makes it seem more vulnerable. But give us the IE codebase to look at, and we'll see their bug/exploit count go thru the roof...

Thing is, most malware writers mainly target IE (article says "69 percent of all browser attacks targeted specifically at that browser alone" - and add all the others who also happen to work on other browsers; that's got to be close to 100%). And the type of people that don't update regularly are often IE users as well (computer newbies also happen to be IE users for the most part).

And not only you're the target as a IE user, but patching delays are quite long. Just look at how long it took 'em to fix the WMF exploit (a few weeks), and again how long it's taking them right now to have a fix for the VML exploit. Pretty much all other browsers have shorter average delays to get patches (1 day for firefox article says, 2 for opera).

So again, you're the main target, and also using the software that takes longest to be fixed (longer exposure window). As if that wasn't enough, IE is also the browser to have the most critical exploits - since Jan 1st:

IE: 2 extremely critical. FF/Opera? None.

IE: 19 vulnerabilities out of 106 unpatched (18% - both the largest number AND percentage). FF: 3/36 (8%), O8: 0/15 (0%)

So they're also the company ignoring/not patching the most vulnerabilities too.

I mean, just look at the big picture. Nothing quite like the WMF or VML vulnerabilities have been found in any other browser than IE, MS takes FOREVER to fix even those very serious ones, ignores/doesn't patch the most, etc. And those Ie vulnerabilities are also those being exploited in the wild - there were code generators to exploit the WMF vulnerability, and this time, they are using a cPanel exploit to distribute malware using the current unpatched and extremely critical VML vulnerability. Oh, and there's another unpatched extremely critical vulnerability for IE (daxctle.ocx keyframe method) - and there's some exploit code available for it too (although this one is ActiveX based and can be disabled).

And like someone said, Symantec uses their own numbers for those "studies" - they're the numbers of vulnerabilities reported to Symantec AND which the vendor has acknowledged to Symantec, so they claim 47 for FF and 38 for IE, whereas it should be 50 for FF and 57 for IE. And if they did a weighted sum (the more critical ones counting for more), then IE would be at a even higher disadvantage. Or even better - count how many days each was open multiplied by how bad it is... That would widen the gap much further. But again, recommending IE makes for higher sales of "security products" (I use that term loosely here) for some people...

Just like they're objecting to the new security in Vista. I mean, if it's a secure OS, who's gonna keep buying their junk? Of course that makes them unhappy...

And we're still disregarding worst standard support and lack of basic features that IE has - and countless things that make developing for the web a nightmare (like not even supporting the right xhtml mime type!) And most of these issues are not addressed in IE7 either (it has tabs, and that's about it). I can't think of a single reason to use IE at all... Worst piece of s*** ever made by MS (far worse than WinME IMO), and perhaps also the worst web browser ever.