Opera 9, Another Choice.
06.20.06 - 02:07pm
A little while back I wrote an article about Opera and how it could potentially be a Firefox replacement. Even though Opera had so many extra features compared to Firefox I still wasn’t impressed enough to make the switch from my beloved Firefox. Recent the Beta version of Flock was released to much acclaim and a great review was published by my friend Paul. With this new wave of browsers the average internet user has some great browsers to choose from with each offering different features that really benefit certain niches. No matter what though I can guarantee that you are better off using any browser besides Internet Explorer with its track record in regards to hackers.
The Opera 9 browser has a lot of new features that I readily look forward to reviewing. Two of these new features that really caught my eye were BitTorrent support and Widget support. Other features that I enjoyed in my previous review were the IRC client, Opera Mail, and the tabbed browsing interface. One feature that some people may find useful is Opera’s new mobile phone browser, Opera Mini 2.0.
Memory and Resource Usage
With all applications that I run, this is one of the most important factors in deciding how I feel about the application. To test this I used Firefox and Opera simultaneously on separate screens and then began opening up tabs and loading pages. With CNN.com and Gomeler.com open in both browsers, Opera was using 36MB of memory while Firefox was using 28MB. Then with 5 tabs open Firefox jumped to 52MB while Opera rose to 41MB of memory used. Then I opened up 20 tabs in each browser and then let the memory resources settle into what I figured was their stable state. Firefox settled in around 140MB while Opera settled in around 78MB, almost half of Firefox. However the big story here was CPU usage. Using a 2.8GHz AMD single-core processor, Firefox was sapping nearly 35% of my CPU cycles while Opera hovered around 2%. To some people this could be very important so take this for whatever it means to you. For one last test, I closed every tab besides the first and then I let the memory usage settle again. This time Opera dropped to 61MB while Firefox dropped to 69MB. I suppose these results are due to Opera not clearing out its trash upon closing so keep this in mind, however both browsers are victims of this.
BitTorrent!
With the inclusion of BitTorrent support within this browser I won’t be surprised to see a little boost in BitTorrent traffic. While this is all and good, the performance of the downloads and browsing had better not take hit or this would interfere with the main purpose of Opera. To test out the BitTorrent capabilities of this browser I went to my favorite Linux torrent site, LinuxTracker.org. In looking around for heavily seeded Torrents, the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r2 came out on top and weighed in at 636MB. By simple clicking the torrent file I was presented with a window asking where I would like to download this file. I then dug into the BitTorrent preferences section and noticed the standard upload, download, and port options. Nothing special here, just make sure it is configured for your connection. Once I clicked yes, a new tab popped up with the a bar indicating torrent status along with a box at the bottom of the page indicating the vital stats for my torrents. I decided to use uTorrent to compare against Opera since uTorrent is my default BitTorrent client due to my recent investigations. In regards to memory usage Opera hovered around 52MB while uTorrent hovered around 8MB. But the important issue here is that Opera maintained decent web surfing capabilities while downloading torrents. I did notice a slight sluggish response but nothing that would bother me too much. Overall I would have to say the inclusion of BitTorrent in Opera helps to expand its potential market niche.
IRC
In order to use IRC you first need to enter some information into Opera. However once you follow the prompts to setup your account with Opera, it is very easy to then join into a conversation and starting chatting it up with your best friends. When I was running a BitTorrent download and IRC at the same time the conversations were very fluid and I could not tell I had BitTorrent cracking away in the background. In most cases using the IRC client felt natural however when I was really flipping through my tabs and trying to gather information it would be easier if the IRC and BitTorrent clients were in a separate window. I would really like to see the “pop-out” feature like with GMail’s GTalk but it is just as easy to toss these two tabs into a separate window, which leads me to my next topic.
Navigation
While this isn’t an Opera-only feature, I feel it deserves some mentioning. If you have multiple instances of Opera open, you can simply drag a tab from one window to the other. No more opening a new tab and typing in the address. This can be very helpful with boosting productivity when you are performing research. I use this feature a lot in Firefox when I need to organize my sources by various topics, quite similar to when you sort through hardcopies when performing research. With Opera’s very small memory footprint it is possible to devote a single window to various tab topics or however you wish to do it. Besides these tabs, Opera has something called Forward and Backward buttons. Opera tries to make an educated guess on how far Backward you really want to go in web browsing and similarly with the Forward button. I really abused this button while surfing around CNN.com and it did a damn good job of going back to the CNN homepage every time which was useful, especially when I clicked multiple links in succession. While this button could be frustrating for some, I find it very useful when digging through news websites, blogs, or Google searches.
The Wand
I don’t trust electronic security at all. I will never trust a machine with the passwords to my most vital of accounts however I decided to bend my rule slightly to test out this feature. The wand is essentially a super-password saver and auto-login feature. If you go to a website that has name and password features and you sign in, the Wand will ask if you wish to save this information. If you click yes, the Wand saves this data for this specific website and when you come back the fields will be highlighted in yellow. By just clicking these highlighted boxes again Opera will sign you in and you are good to go. I tried to get the Wand to work with the comment forms on blogs but it was a no go. For all those passwords for the various forums I visit, the Wand is definitely helpful in streamlining my browsing experience. Some people may wonder what this offers over cookies. When I clear out a browsers cache, I remove everything but with the Wand being separate, my passwords will still remain while the cookies and temporary files are deleted.
Widgets
This feature rings of OS X goodness. Just like Widgets for OS X, Widgets for Opera must be approved by Opera and then when they are operating they give you extra features like a calculator, Pandora Radio, Tetris, and many other things. To pick up some new widgets simply go to Widgets -> Add Widgets and a new tab will open up w/ a bunch of widgets that are available to you. These widgets are a very cool feature but they come at a cost. With just the Pandora Widget open, memory use jumped by 35MB and CPU utilization jumped to around 2%. This concerns me when I have multiple windows open with multiple tabs and then I have the widget eating 35MB of ram. For comparison, iTunes is currently using 27MB while playing music so it kind of makes this widget more of a toy than something I would consider using all the time. Overall these widgets can help increase your efficiency if you add a few essential widgets and just open them with the sidebar when you need them.
Mouse Gestures
Woah. I am in love. I never have been a productivity nut, however these gestures are just way too cool and they help accelerate my web surfing by so much. I currently use the back, forward, and new tab mouse gestures like they are second nature. To use a mouse gesture you simply hold the right button and drag the mouse in a certain direction. To the left is back, to the right is forward, and down is new tab. I am also finding that I try to use mouse gestures in Firefox and I am greeted with the plain right-click menu. I really hope this is a feature that is integrated into every browser from now on, this can only do good for web surfing.
Miscellaneous stuff
There is a bunch of other cool features that don’t warrant an entire blurb so they will get a mini-blurb here. The X’s on the tabs is really cool and it is still a feature in Firefox that requires an extension. The sidebar on the left side of the screen with the pop-up menus is really cool for navigating everything you have configured within Opera such as Widgets, IRC, bookmarks and the download manager. The ability to load web pages without pictures or with cached pictures only can really increase load times for picture intensive pages like Flickr. If you are on dialup this could be a lifesaver. This feature can be accessed by click the spectacles button on the far right. The Top 10 feature in the URL bar is really cool but I wish they would enable you to open your top 10 in tabs. Another really cool feature is the ability to cascade all the tabs by right clicking on the tabs and hitting arrange -> cascade.
Conclusion
I’m pretty certain that I barely scratched the surface of Opera but I hope I managed to highlight the key features that Opera offers. Now that I have Firefox, Flock, and Opera to choose from for browsers, I am beginning to notice that I spend more time with Opera and Flock. I guess now Firefox just hasn’t got all the features I expect from a browser. For those that just need basic BitTorrent support, IRC, and great browsing then Opera is the way to go. If you are a blogger though I would suggest checking out Flock as I find Flock to be a really nice platform to blog from. It looks like Bon Echo/Firefox 2 is going to have to step up severely to keep up in this new browser market.
Great review! I will have to give it a go. Thanks.
I’d highly suggest giving it a chance, I’ve been very impressed with Opera. Between Opera and Flock though I think Flock takes the cake for the blog support. Check it out though, it is a bunch of fun playing with all the features.
Thanks for the great review. I am a big Firefox addict; but I am really trying to give Opera a chance this time around :)
RE: Memory usage, after closing tabs you should see a larger memory drop if you also empty the “Trash” icon - which keeps track of recently closed tabs || blocked popups. Accidentally closing a tab & reopening from the trash icon - is near instantaneous reload from cache/memory.
If you accidently close a tab you can reopen it with undo (ctrl-z). Saving sessions is another nice feature.
Nice article. I really enjoy Opera and its innovations, but FireFox is my primary browser. Im glad to see that mouse gestures is now a standard opera feature, however it is also available in FireFox via an extension. Also to note that the next build of FireFox does indeed include close buttons on each individual tab. I find the close buttons on individual tabs a nuisance as you can simply middle click on any tab to close it… no button neccasary.
Haven’t used Opera for a very long time, guess I’ll have to give it another try…
Nice Review!!!!…
I just want to point out that Firefox extensions already exist for all of the situations and features you mention and many people are glad they’re not standard in Firefox so as to keep bloat out. I’m a fan of Opera though and I hope it helps keep the Firefoxes and IEs of the world honest.
In reguards to the mouse gestures in FireFox, there is an extension called “Mouse Gestures” that gives you the same functionality. And I agree, it’s a huge time saver. It’s become so natural to me that when I’m forced to use IE (which I do for most of my work in the office), it’s annoying to just have the right-click button.
Anyway, thanks for the great review. I downloaded it yesterday and am looking forward to trying out some of the more unique features.
Ive been using opera for about 2 years now and im finally glad to see more than like 1% of the market looking at this browser.
It really is the best, if you also time rendering of pages, you will notice that opera is about 1.5x - 2x faster at rendering pages than firefox.
p.s. to close a tab its down-right like an: L
You can actually “pop-out” any of opera’s tabs into it’s own window. I haven’t tried this with the IRC tab but I know you can do it will all the other tabs, so the irc tab shouldn’t be any different.
To do this just grab the tab and drag it outside of the opera window (and NOT onto another opera window) and the tab is opened as it’s own window.
To get a tab back into an opera window, use the windows side bar. Select the window and drag it back into an opera window
Opera rocks!
get the mouse gestures or all in one gestures extension for firefox
they’re easier to customize than opera’s gestures too, imo
the widgets for opera– not that great
i’d rather use konfabulator/y! toolbar or AveDesk with Firefox
both those programs have small footprints, and as an added bonus i can keep the widgets when i close my browser!
they have much larger, well-developed communities supporting them making nice widgets too.
another feature that is great that you left out is the ability to hover over tabs and get a small thumbnail of what is on that tab makes it very nice to find what you are looking for with multiple tabs open but you do have to enable it in the config file
i would like to add the functionality of integrated personalized searches using keyletters in the address bar.
for example typing “g test” will search out test in google. you can add your own search letters now by using a search url and adding “%s” as the variable. for example, you can make a keyletter shortcut y for yahoo and add http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=FP-pull-web-t&ei=UTF-8&p=%s as the code. it will search whatever you add as the search term. i love this about opera since i like to search a lot, i have codes for yahoo, wikipedia, and searches to a lot of other forums. just some more info to add.
I’m a big Opera fan & user for ages now and you have clearly missed the coolest new feature!!!
Use your “right-click” on a page and choose “block content” - there you have the most coolest adverts blocking feature I have seen so far…. easy to manage and completely integrated into the browser… You define per website, what you want to block - that helps to customize stuff especially for sites you visit alot… !!!
Also:
- the ease of personalising the opera interface with buttons, where you want them.
- using + / - to zoom in and out a page
- the in page - search tool (you get these when u click on the “glasses”icon
- the “fit ot width” feature
- you can also let the personal bar and tab bar wrap to multiple lines if you have lots of stuff there, which hugely increases readibility.
…there is so much more, if you do not try Opera - you have no idea what you miss.
hope this was a bit of help,
Sven.
I’m a long-time Firefox user.
I think Opera’s main miss is the lack of extensions Firefox has.
It is true that it is so a featureful browser.
I almost switched to Opera 9 from Firefox, but I soon realized Opera has difficulties with gmail.com. So I remained at the good old Firefox.
However I left Opera on my machine and find myself using it often - it is quite a nice browser after all.
Nice article, but it would have helped if you can at least use some table to quickly summarize the comparison, which makes things really clear and easy to understand at a glance. Not everyone is interested to read long paragraph to find out all the technical details, just my 2 cents though.
Thank you for pointing out Firefox CPU usage. It’s horrendous, easily the worst of the 3 browsers. Unusable on slower machines. This is the area where Opera has a true lead over Firefox and will continue to because the Firefox core team just doesn’t care about CPU usage.
mdjake: In gmail, right click and click “Edit site preferences…”, then go to the Network tab and under “Browser identification:”, choose “Mask as Mozilla”. Everything works perfectly, Google just blocks Opera.
Great review, but as you expected, you just brushed the surface. You didn’t even go near the site specific preferences or the content blocker, two of the big new features of Opera 9. Oh well, it was better than other reviews, that’s for sure.
If you test the memory usage on firefox and you have Tab Mix Plus extension you should see more memory usage. If Tab Mix Plus creates a new class for its tab features, that class caches the data in the tab, it also stores the history of each tab, so depending on how man tabs you save in your history this can make a big difference on memory.
It should be noted Opera was the first to do mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, etc. They include it all built-in with no need for “extensions” and still manage to be an incredibly small download in comparison and take up far less memory and speed. So those saying Firefox keeps them separate to reduce bloat should realize Opera doesn’t NEED to.
Of all the browsers that I have reviewed, seems to be the most ill-equipped to do anything beyond the standard click and surf routine. While Firefox does have a huge community with lots of support for extensions, that is no excuse when compared to something that natively supports these features while using less resources. Now the reason why I harp on the resources isn’t when I have just a single window up but when I have a single window with 5+ tabs. Then I feel like the memory is being wasted on Firefox when it should be doing other things. I would almost say Firefox is the new IE but with user created extensions, the competition is running away adding features and Bon Echo is still a ways away.
Thanks for all the comments in regards to Opera and what I missed, I had full intention of pushing this out the door and hoping it would be the first review of its kind but it didn’t take flight till early this morning. My purpose wasn’t to review every little bit of Opera otherwise you’d be stuck with a 15 page review, I simply outlined the browser. Check it out if you are even the littlest bit intrigued by it, you won’t regret it.
Firefox still does not have an feature nor an extension for “text to speech”.Speak which appears on the context menu in Opera is a real good feature.
Great review.
I like the customizability of Opera’s user interface (even if the method for customizing it is awkward). For instance, it’s the only tabbed browser I know of that allows for moving the tab bar on a side such that the tabs are vertically arranged, rather than horizontally, which scales far better when it comes to reading a tab’s caption: Even on a low resulotion you can have 25 tabs open and still read their captions; if you tried that with horizontal tabs, you’d be lucky to see the sites’ icons!
Also I like that a bookmarks bar pops down from the address bar when you put focus into it, and gets out of the way when you navigate. Very sharp.
i have been using Opera since 7.66 and it has always been my preferred browser. Most of the reviews that I read are not well done and not neccessarily correct. Yours is, and I want to say great job. Opera 9 is a great browser.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Opera.
But in the past 3 months, they have managed to push me away…
I submitted (along with a dozen or so other people) a question concerning opera’s inability to open websites that it was able to open the day before. I was told to “pack your —- and get off the forum”.
I have been running the V9 betas, and all seemed to be well.
Yesterday, I installed the new release… it crashes reguarly, and complains of missing .dll files.
The voice features, which worked in the beta, no longer work.
I have tried to make it work, and I have tried to explain away all of the websites that don’t work with opera as “this website doesn’t work because it isn’t written well enough to work with a GOOD browser.”
Today, I posted a five paragraph explanation of my history, and growing disappointment, with Opera.
Their response was to delete my post 10 minutes after I submitted it, and closed my account.
I have been polite, reasonable, and forgiving with them. The only thing I posted that could be construed as offensive, was when I quoted their techie… and I even posted the “bad” word in l337!
So, I am moving on to FireFox.
Opera may be the “most standard” browser, but the rest of the world seems to live on a diet of “non-standard” web pages that only work on IE or FF!
They (Opera) have a good vision, but their elitist attitude on their support pages, as well as their growing incompatablilty with web sites (like google!), and their inability to release a new version that works WORSE than last week’s beta… it’s all enough for me to throw in the towel and move on to something that may not be as ‘good’, but that at least functions!!!
There was an extension for Firefox that did text to speech. However the developer has not updated since 1.0.3 of Firefox (some old version) and you can get it to work just from the hacks out there to get around the version check. Besides, the voice for Opera is better (less mechanical. I sure do like this feature. I’m kind of a closet Opera user. I still recommend Firefox and I still have my bookmarks in Firefox. Though these days I encourage clients to try both. Good overview.
Try seting up an RSS feed with Opera. It’s a very slick feature.
Pity it is not supported well by websites. The speed is good.
I would highly suggest even just trying out Opera. I’ve been using it since 8 and I’ve been beta testing 9 the whole time. It’s great stuff and I really enjoy it. I really think if more people tryed it more and more people would use it because it really is a great browser.
I especially like Opera 9 for its SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) implementation
Excellent review. I am a dedicated Opera user myself now and used to be a dedicated firefox user. I like Opera’s speed the most. I personally feel that as Opera’s user base and it’s community expands all of it’s weaknesses will dissappear. The biggest right now being widgets, web developer, and plugins support. Without the “Web developer” plugin for Opera I wouldn’t have been able to switch. Now that I found that plugin I have not looked back. I would like to offer my advice for diehard firefox and IE (bah) users, give it a week and I feel you will refuse to go back. I actually have learned of new features of Opera from reading the comments in this review so I would like to thank the contributers there as well.
You forgot :
1)Mail. Better than Outlook and lightening fast searches through everything in the mail account.
2) SVG- A life saver.
3)SPEED! Opera beats every other browser hands down,
4)Acid 2 Compatibility. While this wouldn’t affect the usage per se, but look at the super smooth rendering of the web sites. Specially CSS.
5)Memory leak was a problem with the betas and it hasn’t been conclusively fixed, imo. However, since I am using the Linux version, I don’t see an escalated CPU usage. With multiple tabs opened (often at times 50+), no hassle.
6)Right click, scroll the mouse wheel and walla- you can reach out to any tab.
7)Thumbnail previews- not a great feature (I dont find it useful) but still can be improved with the next release.
Yeah for another great article, Chris! I’m sorry that I’m in a time zone with an 11 hour difference; I don’t find out what you write until much later. I think it’s great though.
Lots of love from Thailand!
I love it when FireFox users comment on “bloat” :-) Opera is around 3.0 megs - which includes RSS/Mail Client/etc etc etc. Lord save us from the bloat puleeze.
You forgot the ease of searching.
In the address bar just type g item to search for
and press enter and it searches google for you. No need for that stupid search box. Its unattractive.
Opera simply rockz :D
Its super fast, super sexy, secure and functional
I did not like opera 8.5….had problems rendering alot of pages correctly but this seems to be way better in this 9.0 version and more stable without the cheap feel to it opera 8.5 had. I’m using alot…almost ready to dump firefix soon as I put it through more tests and see if it can fully replace firefox til firefox 2.0 comes out. What opera needs is people to make userscripts for the opera userscripts website (like greasemonkey) for firefox then I’d be fully happy with 9.0
i’ve been using Opera since version 3.0.
when people stuck on IE, i was using Opera.
Firefox was not even been thought by it makers back then.
all of the features are sooo great, but it just missing 2 main thing, that gonna makes Opera the loser of the browser wars if not fixed in the Opera 10.
1) the lacks of extensions (this is a pretty important one, since it makes its community grow)
2) PAGE VIEWING SUPPORT!!! it is not a secret that many important websites BLOCKS opera. this is SUX.
i just can’t figure out, a young browser like firefox can get full support on yahoo, gmail, and other websites, while opera (now in version 9; with IE in 7; and Firefox in a mere version 2) doesn’t get full support from websites.
this what makes potential low end user (which makes up 90% of the cake; these newbies are the ppl who use IE out of naivety, which are most of IE market share) doesn’t want to make the switch.
What about Gmail chat ? I couldnt activate the Gmail Chat with Opera 9. Should I do some settings changes ??
Opera 9 is great except for the memory leaks. Leaving a torrent download on all night brings your system to a crawl by the morning. Shutting down Opera, and releasing the memory from that state took my system over a minute.
Apart from that the features are great. The mail client is very good, and the default fonts are shiny. Opera’s RSS/ATOM feed handling capabilities are also much better than FireFox’s.
Just for the record, FireFox does have an extension that gives it mouse-gestures.
I have been a fan of Opera for over a year now, and am loving Opera 9. For me the accessibility features make it really stand out. The zoom feature is superior to that which I have used elsewhere, and voice is really useful.
I really like the RSS features, which seem to have been improved further since Opera 8.
Some Opera features that I use frequently, but hasn’t been mentioned (or deserves re-mentioning):
â–¶ Opera Notes.
It’s great for quickly saving any text from a webpage along with its URL.
I also use notes to write quick drafts/web forms (like this reply), as they are saved by Opera automatically.
tip: notes can be emailed (right click ⇨ send by mail)
â–¶ Super-fast searching in all aspects of Opera. This ranges from incremental searching (i.e., find-in-page) to searching through ALL your email, to quick-finds in Notes, Bookmarks, History, Links,…even Keyboards/Mouse shortcut configurations.
â–¶ Easily access and diverse user control of the display. Sounds a bit cryptic, but Opera gives me many ways to quickly change how a page is displayed. This includes switching between User/Author style sheets, No/cached/Load images, disable/enable plugins, Fit-to-Width (no horizontal scrolling!), Small screen rendering, and Zooming in/out.
Opera rulez!
Whew what a bunch of great comments. I wasn’t aware that Opera was not supported by certain websites but if this is true you can simple change in the preferences what Opera will look like to a website. While this is a work-around and not true support, perhaps as the Opera community grows then support will expand. The Widgets are great and they are comparable to the extensions in firefox, just with a different name. Check it out if you haven’t and if you don’t like it simply delete it.
Nice review! For gmail and google calendar, using F12>Edit Site Preferences>Networks>Mask as Mozilla works. For Google calendar, you have to hit cancel to load it, but it still works well.
Oh, the greatest skin in the world is Tango CL!
The problem with “Opera was not supported by certain websites” is that the sites should be browser independent. Not only that, they should be media independent. But Google, Yahoo and others still use some outdated tachniques, mostly IE-like JavaScript. FF has strong marketshare and is being talked about. So every incompatibility with FF is treated as site error. Incompatibities with Opera are treated as browser bugs and inability to display pages correctly.
PS. Check out this mouse gesture (for going back): hold down right mouse button and click LMB. Reversing the combination gives you forward. THIS is the key feature of Opera :)
Expanding on what Ryan said, right click in any search field and choose “Create Search”. It makes creating those a lot simpler.
Opera is a great browser. I am using it right from it’s 6th version. IE was way behind in terms of features at that time. Eventhough IE7 has copied some features of Opera n firefox .. it is still very odd to us and lacks features such as mouse gestures etc.
Firefox is good competition to Opera .. but finally Opera rulez … With it’s 9 release .. it is just rocking with all new features.
Nice one Chris, though as others have noted it’s more of a “first glance” rather than a complete review (referring to the Digg’s article title).
I’m a dedicated Opera user for a few years now (since v6?). I switch to Firefox occasionally, but I come back to Opera because it consumes considerably less RAM and it’s got many neat features (Notes, nice implementation for Bookmarks, etc.)
I’ve actually read pretty much all of the comments in this thread and I wanted to note a couple of things:
1. You don’t need to click on the “glasses” icon to get to the “Find in Page” function. Click the “/” character in your keyboard and start typing; this is similar to Firefox’s “Typeahead” (if I remeber the name correctly).
2. Built-in Bittorrent support is nice, but if you want to use another client (read: uTorrent) you should do the following: go to “Tools” → “Preferences” → “Advanced” → “Downloads” and uncheck the “Hide file types opened with Opera” box. You should find the “application/x-bittorrent” MIME type (or just sort by file extensions and look for the “torrent” one); edit it accordingly.
Also, Chris — you may want to save screenshots in the PNG format (or… GIF): JPG is mostly meant for pictures (not graphics) that’s why the screenshots came up grainy.
“Firefox still does not have an feature nor an extension for “text to speechâ€.Speak which appears on the context menu in Opera is a real good feature.”
This is actually much more than just text to speech. Opera support VoiceXML (X+V) applications (some demos: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/pizza/pizza.jsp or http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/chinese/chinesefood.jsp).
Konstantinos, I noticed the jpeg issue also, my only concern was bandwith. I’m monitoring this to see if I can afford to use png’s so we will see for future articles. The review was no where close to being complete because I was time limited, and I really didn’t have too much experience with Opera before I played around with it .
I’ve given to Opera 9 a try, it’s a nice piece of SW but: no way! Firefox (IMHO) is much better.
I admire the Mozilla products and the ideas behind them, but Opera has been my preferred browser since version 5. It’s fast, reasonably sleek, packed with features out of the box yet relatively easy on system resources, with great cross-platform support. Nice review :)
I’ve been a Opera fan and promoter since v.4 ish.
One thing that is new and nice about v9 is they have added several logging facilities that are helpful to web developers - debugging javascript, and page parsing etc.
-JD
Opera has always been my favorite browser,the current Jul 06 version 9 has difficulty with Java Scripts
which no doubt will be addressed very soon Version 8.54 is solid as a rock. You can only wonder why
anyone would continue to use IE. Re Mozilla yes I also noted the sluggish performance. Opera is the best
browser full stop.
I just wanted to point out a few features of Opera you missed. The mail client is very and i mean very fast compared to outlook and even thunderbird for accessing IMAP accounts.
If you have a mouse with forward and back buttons and lets say you opened up the first page of a forum you can hit the forward button and Opera will activate the link the page labeled “next”. Also you can very easily add a spell checker to opera. And the right click menu presents you with many many more useful functions then firefox.
Also id like to point out that Opera is the smallest download of all the 3 major browsers yet it packs more features without the need for extensions. Its cache keeps pages in memory for when you use the back button. It also has content blocking, per site setting for java and cookies. Native zooming of all page elements. It is also the only browser for the pc that passes the Acid 2 test. It also has the best crash protection i have seen.
The only thing i don’t like is the java-script support as it seems to fumble with some Ajax related stuff. Although i suspect this has more to do with the developers being lazy.
Extensions are only there to try and make up for firefox being crap in the first place, if i want all the features of opera i would have to download about 12 extensions, a download manager, mouse guestures, add tab button, x button on the tab, sidebar and more. The opera core is much better and passes the standards tests, they even use the same core on phones, nintendos and inflight entertainment systems.
Opera is a much more secure browser than firefox, extentions are just a giant hole for security breaches, firefox downloads and executes them, even IE activex is better than that. Firefox is always adding features which opera has had before it, its faster and you don’t need to muck around finding the right extensions for a missing feature.
If you use opera you will be using the leading web browser.
Firefox fanboys should have a look at the http://www.firefoxmyths.com website. I don’t care what browser you use but if you want the best get opera.
after the mousegestures, I really got hooked on Right-click+wheel, which allows you to scroll through the open tabs lile ctrl+tab
I keep trying to do it in Excel, or just generally windows as a replacement for alt+tab…
My favourite is the “Paste And Go” feature when you paste a link in the Address bar.
Saves a lot of additional clicks.
im a user of firefox for 8 months. but when i tried opera, i never looked back.
the all-in-one mouse gesture of firefox is not as accurate as opera. opera is the best browser. opera has the best moust gesture.
Here I am another Opera fan user. Since version 5!!! my old pentium 133 only admited it, Netscape 6, mozilla or IE 6 were too much for poor it. And the rss/atom feed, that is superb!!
To fill in the comment boxes, just fill in the information you want in the preferences - wand - personal information.
But I ve never been able to use the gestures! :(
the reason that Opera keeps stays heavy on the memory after you’ve closed tabs is because you can return to a tab if you’ve closed it. so you can ctrl z (default) and get back that tab. one of my favorite features. yes, i love opera ;)
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I’d also like to let you know there is an Opera portable that can be used on a portable storage, as well as Firefox portable. You should look into those as well.
Opera has addons or extensions, they are just named Widgets… I’m amazed how people can’t see throuh words. They are more acuratly called widgets because they can float around the deskktop outside the borwser, and they are quite stable. This is something Firefox cannot claim.
I really see no reason why to use firefox after using opera. As a matter of fact, http://www.firefoxmyths.com
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There was this guy see.
He wasn’t very bright and he reached his adult life without ever having learned “the facts”.
Somehow, it gets to be his wedding day.
While he is walking down the isle, his father tugs his sleeve and says,
“Son, when you get to the hotel room…Call me”
Hours later he gets to the hotel room with his beautiful blushing bride and he calls his father,
“Dad, we are the hotel, what do I do?”
“O.K. Son, listen up, take off your clothes and get in the bed, then she should take off her clothes and get in the bed, if not help her. Then either way, ah, call me”
A few moments later…
“Dad we took off our clothes and we are in the bed, what do I do?”
O.K. Son, listen up. Move real close to her and she should move real close to you, and then… Ah, call me.”
A few moments later…
“DAD! WE TOOK OFF OUR CLOTHES, GOT IN THE BED AND MOVED REAL CLOSE, WHAT DO I DO???”
“O.K. Son, Listen up, this is the most important part. Stick the long part of your body into the place where she goes to the bathroom.”
A few moments later…
“Dad, I’ve got my foot in the toilet, what do I do?”
I really like operas wand feature. I also like the fact it is quicker with less ram usage compared to firefox. I stopped using it though recently on a regular basis because firefox has the noscript and other good plugins.
Hi
As a fresh gomeler.com user i just want to say hi to everyone else who uses this bbs B-)
I think that Opera rulez.
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??? ????????-????? ???????????? ???????? ?????????? ??????? ?? ?????? ? ??????? 1-2 ??????? ????.
What is bumburbia?
I think that Opera is much more user friendly than Firefox
Gposh I am using Opera and I cannot change to any other browser. I think Opera is so that good.
Also it includes unique features which concern the way the browser renders the page like Show/Hide Images, Author mode - High Contrast Rendering, Show CSS tags, no formating - which are very usefull if you are a webdesigner. And also as a web designer and coder I can tell you that compared to IE and FF, Opera is the most acurate when it comes to reading your html/css code. Everything even the most basic things are rendered the way you’ve written them. And this is the time when you can meet your worst nightmare - Internet Explorer - which has problem with even basic things like table formating.. so many bugs I even wonder how Microsoft are not sent down to hell for inflicting such massive intelectual damage to the humanity!!!!
OPERA FOREVER!
Hello.
I’m new there
Nice forum!
The problem with “Opera was not supported by certain websites” is that the sites should be browser independent. Not only that, they should be media independent. But Google, Yahoo and others still use some outdated tachniques, mostly IE-like JavaScript. FF has strong marketshare and is being talked about. So every incompatibility with FF is treated as site error. Incompatibities with Opera are treated as browser bugs and inability to display pages correctly.
It is the matter if you got use to Opera, then it is hard to start using another browser.
Hey, just i just wanted to remind, tha global I4oTuFskPCc4 is near.
Love Opera, I think it is way better than firefox
I think addons in firefox makes it far better a browser than opera..though i will definitely try it now that ive read this great post about it..thanks for sharing.
Opera while it being my preferred browser; the plugins available for FF make it better for ‘work’ and the speed of Chrome is also going in its favour. All in all the choice is getting harder
excellent discussion. I’ve tried opera before but went back to firefox. Will try it again. thanks
I think Opera 9 is even faster than firefox.
I saw that Casey Fronczek is offering fishing trips now down in south Florida. Does anybody have any input on these trips or has anyone been on one of these trips before?
In my experience up to the present, there is no other browser which can be at par with Firefox especially with its numerous add-ons and plugins which make the browsing experience more enjoyable and secure…and it’s free.
Thank you for pointing out Firefox CPU usage. It’s horrendous, easily the worst of the 3 browsers. Unusable on slower machines. This is the area where Opera has a true lead over Firefox and will continue to because the Firefox core team just doesn’t care about CPU usage
I actually use Opera on my computers which have less resources. Opera takes around 60megs of ram while watching videos. It is a good browser to use for netbooks.
Wouldn’t mind trying Opera, but I still know no-one using it personally. Since my next computer will likely be a Mac, I might not venture into this altogether. However, I’m curious as to how it will perform when watching videos.
I love to use Opera very much, it is the fastest and the most beautiful website browser nowadays.
Thanks for your post.
Opera is best use for netbooks and older pc’s . I really wished it was open source and allowed plugins and toolbars.
Opera is the best nowadays, IE is too slow and have mane bugs, FF is use lots of RAM..
Opera is great for a number of reasons, not least the fact that consistently seems to simply be faster than IE and Firefox, no matter what they do. Add to that the fantastic range of widgets (equivalent to Firefox extensions but some how better) and things like Wand for saving form data and the like and you have a pretty neat browser.
Hi guys one of my laptops just got infected with a bunch of really bad viruses, I have run clamwin but that didnt do anything, same with spybot, I am now running avast..
anyone here that can recommend the best virus program there is?
bye
Ficken Seite 6256
I love Opera very much, very beautiful theme.
I love this software. Hate micrisoft explorer
I think it’s great.
Wonderful!
Well I am loving this theme, I think it rocks.
Cool review but still not into Opera…
Opera is fantastic. Thank you
I use Opera every day to surf the web, it very great, I like it the most.
Thanks for nice post.
Opera is a user friendly browser. I have used it many times in the past. But the most secure browser today is nothing more than Firefox. It is by far the best.
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I use to work with opera and i enjoy that new edition ! So easy to use, so great to navigate… When does it become as competitive as Firefox ?
I personally prefer to use Opera for the forums that I visit. I like the ability of having the tabs open and all of my forums loaded, then if I close Opera and open it again later all of my tabs are still there. I have never been able to carry out the same action in any other browser.
htat’s great knowledge! i hate microsoft software!
i agreee thast’s good:) is a good choice!
indeed! that’s a positive change!
opera’s great! instead of this sh.tty ie!
Opear is great software but Firefox is much better.
Does firefox need replacement?
I am going to be sticking with firefox for a while too
Alot that opera needs to catch up with respect to firefox and IE.
But there are always alternatives.
I believe there is some way to go still for opera.
Firefox is still the best in terms of interface and open source.
As others have said, I think Opera has some way to go to compete with the likes of Firefox, the browser scene has really moved on.
opera rox, but i like also the firefox plugins
It is the matter if you got use to Opera, then it is hard to start using another browser.
Opera needs to open up its platform for developers to build plug ins.
I have never used opera in my life before I will try :)
I still prefer firefox though.It will surpass IE very soon.
opera 9 even works great on my pda
I doubt FF will surpass IE as long as MSN has a 80 percent market share for OS.
I use Opera as my browser choice.
I can’t see me changing from Firefox anytime soon. It’s got so many great plugins that I see little point changing to Opera or IE.
I am a firefox user, but i won’t mind migrating to opera 9 should it be better..
I am a Google Chrome user. I think Opera is showing pages with errors too often.
i agree that’s good:) is a good choice!
I wasn’t all that impressed by Opera when I first tried, but from what you wrote about it it looks like I missed a lot of its features. I don’t really need all of the bells and whistles though and Firefox still does what I need - the only thing I don’t like about it is the inability to copy to clipboard due to its security settings. Pretty lame…
@tommy
im think that is the issue of the pages not the browsers
@finnX
do you mean in terms of quality or percentage of market share ?
I think they are there on quality already.
I just Installed Opera 9 and it is really very good and easy to use..
Also it has some new features that I liked the most..
Thanks and Regards
Harry Thomos
I am a Google Chrome user., then it is hard to start using another browser. I don’t really need all of the bells and whistles though and Firefox still does what I need - the only thing I don’t like about it is the inability to copy to clipboard due to its security settings.
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opera 9 more fast speed… but i need more plugins. where can u find id?
Will it be better compare to firefox or Chrome?
They just released opera 10 but so far I like 9 better because it seems smoother and faster to me.
i’m google chrome user. but i have used opera…i like it..
i agree that’s good:) is a good choice!
is a good choice!
i need more plugins. where can u find id?
Will it be better compare to firefox or Chrome?
where can u find id?
a Firefox replacement, it is so cool!
Sweet!
It will replace firefox, absolutely!
I suppose these results are due to Opera not clearing out its trash upon closing so keep this in mind, however both browsers are victims of this.
Opera is a pretty good browser though I’m still a Firefox man myself. I think the likes of Google Chrome could compete if they retain the speed advantage they seem to have currently.
Definitely gonna replace safari on my mac
Thanks! :)
The Opera 9 browser has a lot of new features that I readily look forward to reviewing.
I have been using Opera for about four years now, and am glad to see that they’re continuously coming out with better and better releases. V9 was great, and it’s only gotten better since then.
Opera is a great browser. I am using it right from it’s 6th version. IE was way behind in terms of features at that time.
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Does firefox need replacement?
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Opera is brilliant for mobile explorer. I love it. No other explorer can beat it on smartphone. Well mozilla is also not that bad.
It’s actually faster than Firefox!
Opera is one of the best browser around. I personally dont like IE its always crappy.
I love opera and innovation, but Firefox is my primary browser. Im glad to see that mouse gestures are now a feature of standard operation, but it is also available in Firefox via an extension. Noting also that the next version of Firefox is actually close buttons on each tab. I think the close buttons on each tab of genes that you can just middle click a tab to close it … necessary any buttons.
Thats the cool’s themes i have see in a long time.
Very nice
Well i browse alot once i saw a new tab popped up with the a bar indicating torrent status along with a box at the bottom of the page indicating the vital stats for my torrents. I decided to use uTorrent to compare against Opera since uTorrent is my default BitTorrent client due to my recent investigations.
I admire what you have done here. It is good to see you verbalise from the heart and your clarity on this important subject can be easily observed. Tremendous post and will look forward to your future update.
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ive always been a fan of ophera
Well i think that I guess now Firefox just hasn’t got all the features I expect from a browser. For those that just need basic BitTorrent support, IRC, and great browsing then Opera is the way to go.
Its always good to learn tips like you share for blog posting. As I just started posting comments for blog and facing problem of lots of rejections. I think your suggestion would be helpful for me. I will let you know if its work for me too.
You know… I can’t speak much about Opera since I’ve never used it but I did use Flock for quite a while and I’m sorry but it simply doesn’t compare to Firefox.
Firefox is so simple and easily customizable that it pretty does just about anything I could ever want it to do.
I don’t know why anyone uses any browser besides Firefox personally. And the price tag is perfect.
I’m gonna have to give Opera a shot.
I’ve been a Firefox guy for a while but have heard many people swear by Opera…
Opera is a good browser. I personally tested between many of them, I remember even those less known like for ex Smart Explorer, it was IE in tabbed mode when Firefox was not around. Opera is good and I used to use it in a period, now I use it on my Smartphone where it really rules.
I’m going to give opera a try after this
I’ve been persuaded.. after trying opera 9 i’m never going back to IE
Its not as god as FF 3 with all its plug ins but its fast and lightweight, ideal for simple, safe browsing.
i’ve always used opera, long live the dream
Opera is one of the greates browser, it is on one level with FF.
Never even thought at looking at Opera..though I am a big fan of Firfox and like to do use Chrome at home to Surf the web.
I have been a big user of IE but since the upgrade to IE8 I found a lot of sites just don’t display right. I’m going to give Opera a go as I can’t seem to be able to downgrade back to IE7.
Upon your suggestion, I have been using opera and has found the experience to be better than IE and Firefox. Thanks for the recommendation.
Opera has been one of my favorite mobile web browsers for a long time. I just wish someone found a way to load flash on a mobile device.
It’s a good thing that Opera is coming up with all these developments so that uses can have a lot of options. But it would still take a long time for them to achieve the status of Firefox as the wealth of available add ons in his open source browsing is amazing.
It ’s great review. I like to use Opera web browser.
I also really like the opera browser…..
It’s almost as good as firefox. ;)
Excellent post. I expect more posts in future about it.
I like to know more about these mini washer dryer and washing machines and dryer comparisons
Im not the world biggest opera fan
Firefox just made a wrong move by removing the link proprieties feature. There is no way now to find out if one link has do or nofollow. I just rolled back to the previous version. Opera seems pretty ok to me.
Respect!