The browser whores

[infoxicated]

I don't believe there's a vast difference between the two, which is kind of shocking considering Firefox is at version 1 and Opera is at version 8. It's Opera's quirky way of doing certain things which is the big turn off, I think - Firefox doesn't take a lot of getting used to, it's like using IE, but with better standards compliance and security.

The only reason I stopped using Firefox was that my profile data kept getting corrupt, and when that was happening with Thunderbird too, I decided that I could no longer live with what was obviously a weak link in the products. Granted I was helped along by some asshole replies on the Mozillazine forums by support gurus who refused to believe there was a propblem. Denial is not a river in Egypt, especially when every other post on that forum is "My e-mail is lost!!!" or "My bookmarks have disappeared!!!?!"

I'm three weeks into my current Opera experience, and I've come to like a few of the things it does, yet find other things just completely unfathomable. The HTML body padding issue still irks me every time I see it, and it's not standards compliant to just invent a value for margin or padding simply because the web designer doesn't specify one.

Using Opera reminds me of when I used to date a very pretty girl who was from quite an upper class family. It was good fun while it lasted, but deep down I always had the feeling that she thought I was beneath her. If history repeats itself I'll be be looking for a new browser in a couple of years! ;)

[Lance]

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i don't find anything shocking about FireFox being reasonably close to Opera; Firefox itself has been in development since before Opera 7 was in beta, back in 2002, about 2 and a half years ago, and FireFox is essentially just the XUL shell over the Gecko rendering engine, which has been in development for about 5 years. there's more, but i have to get ready to go to work. perhaps later i will address this further. ;)
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[Axel]

Thanks for the unbiased info on opera infox. I guess I'll stick with firefox since i haven't had that problem with profiles messing up on me since I converted 4 months ago. I just the keep up with the improvements as time goes along. And yes Lance, you are evil LOL. Lance the Opera whore :P

[Lance]

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i don't think i'm biased, i'm just a highly analytical and fairly thoroughgoing investigator who bases strong opinions on strong evidence gained by research.. however, other people may not be bothered by weaknesses that i hate, nor care about things i regard as functionally important.

in any case, i have a wicked streak. ;)

looks like Opera is Foxy's hot ride for the next couple of years while FF plays catch-up. :)
say, you don't suppose that favouring the nick 'infoxicated' and the diminutive version of that, ' Foxy', could in any way make him biased toward a browser named FireFOX, do you? [wicked grin]

edit: if i'm gonna pimp, i might as well do it big. here ya go, although this is more for humour than anything else. those Opera guys have a sense of humour about themselves. herewith an Opera press release on their leader's plan to swim the ocean if the big O gets a million dls in 4 days [i'll post a link in case Rob prefers to avoid having such a huge post on the page; feel free to delete the quote and just leave only the link]:

Opera press releases
The one million download challenge of Opera 8:
Opera's CEO will swim from Norway to the USA
Oslo, Norway - April 21, 2005

An overly excited Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, today proclaimed at an internal company meeting that if the download numbers of the new Opera 8 Web browser reach 1 million within the first four days of the launch, he will swim from Norway to the USA with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother's house in his home country, Iceland. Opera's communications department could obviously not resist to make such a bold and inarguably over-confident statement public.

Opera's new Web browser, Opera 8, was released Tuesday, and the massive response had Opera's download servers kneeling an hour after the launch. Still, the download numbers of Opera 8 reached 600 000 in the first 48 hours.

"A lot of people had great difficulties downloading Opera 8 on Tuesday because the traffic on the servers was simply too high," says Carsten Fischer, VP Desktop, Opera Software. "When download numbers reached 120 per second one hour after the release, our servers had serious problems dealing with all the requests. We had prepared for heavy traffic, but this exceeded our wildest dreams."

Opera has now installed additional servers with increased capacity, and it was the download counter showing 600 000 downloads in 48 hours that sparked Mr Tetzschner's enthusiasm and thus his courageous promise to boldly swim where no man has swum before.

"I am not sure he realizes how cold the Norwegian Sea is in April," says Anne Stavnes, Human Resource Manager, Opera Software. "However, having seen Jon in his red beach attire before, I am not sure if swimming to the USA is scarier than exposing people to this sight."

Opera 8 is launched under the campaign heading "Speed, Security, Simplicity" to firmly position Opera as the fast, secure and easy-to-use browser. However, Opera's communications department clearly sees the potential for two parallel campaigns with their CEO's daring act of oceanic bravery:
Opera 8: Speed, Security, Simplicity
Opera's CEO: Speedos, Shrinkage, Spoke-to-soon-icity

Speculations are running high at Opera Software, and it is expected that making von Tetzchner's promise public will make it impossible for the couragous CEO to back out. The challenge will end on Saturday at 0900 a.m. CET, but as we are now moving into the weekend the download figures will be revealed on Monday at www.opera.com.
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[Axel]

LOL GAD DAMMIT Lance, your making it so hard not to try opera. But I might give it a shot when i have some free time. Yes and Info was kinda biased in a way, but least he didn't pimp it lol. What are the bad points of opera?

[Rapier Racer]

heh I've just installed Opera myself as I’m getting a bit pissed off with Firefox when it suddenly decides to stop working, then tell me I can’t use the default profile and thus it won’t work again unless I restart, so I’ll give Opera a try instead of running back to IE oh the temptation..

[FoxZero]

ok i have used opera since 6 and i have several problems with it. first of all, when theres a lot of animated gifs or blink tags or any kind of motion in general opera gets wacked out and works very slowly to change tabs or enter links. 3 or 4 shoot the lobster advertisements does it in good. i once thought this was a computer performance issue but it happens on my signifigant others 1.2 ghz with 640 mb ram. she installed all the software on that machine from scratch, not upgrades like this machine.

secondly, javascript support. it really needs to be completed. ive encountered several issues with dom compatability, the one i remember most vividly is with a server-side irc client called cgi irc in which scrolling text up the window would never work because of a dom issue in opera. there used to be poor support for the httprequest function in ajax scripts but this might (better) be fixed in 8.

also, opera on both our machines tends to crash randomly, but this only happens when a page has just been opened. it gets so bad its to the point with me that i cringe when i open anything, hoping the browser wont shut down. sure i can restore the session when i restart the program and everything will usually open then, but its still frustrating especially when forms are half filled out. this has happened with every opera version ive ever used.

theres also a lot of compatability issues when you use opera because some sites detect it and force you to change browsers, even if opera can display them. gmail used to do this and it pissed me off. normally i dont go to sites that dont let opera work though, ive found the behaviour tends to be indicative of poor administration and content.

anyway, i love operas cookie/wand manager and the mouse gestures and even the mail client. and the tabbed browsing is much better than firefox even with extentions. also i like to zoom with num keypad. generally ive just had bad experiences with firefox though, i downloaded the new version and then i couldnt get any extentions to install and it always runs slow on my 600. sometimes i think i see coding bugs i used to see back when netscape 4 was my primary browser. i also cant configure every single little part of the interface like i can in opera which bothers me to no end.

also in very belated answer to gkylls question you can import your wand logins with the .dat files in your opera directory and your profile folder, i think all you need is the dats though, especially global.dat and newer versions of opera seem to have wand.dat.

[Lance]

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i've not run into any of the problems you've had: this is partly because i'm on dial-up and simply don't allow animated gifs to display beyond the first frame. i've not seen the tab-switching slowdown you have.

the only javascript problem i've seen is on one site that has a substantial error in javascript code; on my earlier versions of Opera 7, it would not open a window for enlarged image pages [admittedly i have highly restrictive javascript controls in place, both on the browser itself and on Proxomitron], but on Opera 8 final, and on the previous test versions of it, that page works correctly anyway. btw, i always identify as Opera and do not use any user-agent spoofing.

i haven't had crashing problems since the early versions of 6, but i think i had some other non-browser problem at the time. i haven't noticed it since i switched from Windows 98SE to Millennium, but i don't know for certain that this was the reason the problem with 6 ceased. i only use the last version anymore, 6.06 build 1145, almost entirely as a story-reader because it allows complete control over fonts [italics, etc.] while version 7 and later do not allow italics in usermode. no idea why.
but anyway, no crashing on version 8. this may be because i tend to run only a few applications at once, i rarely have more than four simultaneously, not counting Proxomitron and the personal firewall which are always running. generally no more than two versions of Opera [ or more rarely Opera and FireFox], plus Irfanview, and perhaps WinAmp and winMX. very often though, it will be only Opera and Irfanview.

i also run no anti-virus software at all, and most particularly i have not run live checking during normal operation. i think continuous operation of anti-virus programs leads to instability of the OS.

''normally i dont go to sites that dont let opera work though, ive found the behaviour tends to be indicative of poor administration and content.''
:) so true. i'm one hundred percent with you there. however, over the last two years i no longer even find sites that don't work with it. but then i never go to MSN ;) who deliberately serve Opera wrong code when it works perfectly with the code they serve to IE and FF. if one bothers to change the useragent ID to Mozilla or IE, MSN always works correctly.

about FireFox, i now have over twenty extensions installed on 1.0, and it is better than it was in day to day functioning, but still far too slow in forward and back navigation, zoom [obtained by an extension], and often rendering is too slow, especially on Mozilla's own FF related sites. ironically, Opera renders their Mozilla official sites faster than Mozilla products do. odd.

the FF extension system is bloody inconvenient and irritating, though less unreliable than it used to be. i hope it will be improved radically on version 1.1
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[FoxZero]

yeah i dont use antivirus software either, mainly because i think its a waste of money and because having a strict download and web traffic policy works much better. it does also take a lot of memory and cycles to run.

also, i bet your browsers run real stable lance since you never use or enable any of their functions :wink:

[Axel]

LOL Zero, ok then i guess Opera is not that solid then. Guess i'll stick with firefox for the time being then.

[infoxicated]

If Firefox is solid for you, then there really is no single reason to switch. However, with both browsers, you get what you pay for, and for the power user Opera outshines Firefox simply by the maturity of features that Firefox is struggling to emulate.

I'm doing a lot of dev work at the moment, and last night I accidentally closed a Tab in Opera that had a page of information I needed. CTRL + Z and it was right back with me, but with Firefox it would have been gone forever. It's the little things like that which justify the switch, for me.

Now, if I could just find a way to make CTRL + Enter behave the way it's meant to, I'd be thinking of evangelism... albeit on a small scale compared to Lance. ;)

[Axel]

I see where your coming from. So I guess is safe to say, for the average Joe (like myself) Firefox is the way to go.

[Lance]

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Rob,
what is it meant to do? [eager to create evangelist]
what does it do? i don't think i've ever used it for anything

[is power user]

Axel, the solidity of a browser varies depending on the OS and the other applications being used. what is solid for me or FoxZero or infoxicated may or may not be solid for you. the only way to find out what works for you is to try it, and to give it a real trial, not just find one thing that doesn't work the way you expect it to, or seems to be missing, or whatever, and then just give up on it to go back to what you're used to after a day or a week. it takes longer than that to find out what a complex piece of software can do. i've used many browsers and many versions of each of those, and i try to find out what they can do, and how to get them to do exactly what i want. i am still trying to get FireFox to do what i want, and have been doing so for 2 and a half years. the fact that it still doesn't do it now does not mean that it never will, so i keep trying every once in a while.

btw, having a program that supports power users tends to make one a power user, just because you learn what you can do when you have a great program. it lets you be a casual user and it lets you be a power user, whichever you need
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[Axel]

Ok, Lance, u've finally convinced me you Opera pimp. I'll download 2mor and see wot this new prog has installed for me. Are there pluggins and such like they have for firefox?

[Lance]

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the only plug-in it comes with is swf dll for playing flash. but others can be added to the same folder. it uses netscape plug-ins as the general case
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[Lance]

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yep, that's right, John von Tetzchner, co-creator of Opera said he'd swim from Norway to the USA if Opera got a million downloads of the new version in four days. they did. he's in the water. photos here:
http://www.opera.com/swim/

there was speculation that Jon would sneak into the server center and stop the counters before they passed 999,999... but either he didn't or he was too late. only those crazy Opera guys would pull a stunt like this. somehow i doubt that Jon will make it to his mom's house in Iceland to get that hot cup of cocoa on the way to the USA.

planned stunt or spur-of-the-moment inspiration or deathwish, i don't know, but it's been the most entertaining thing i've seen from a software company [other than videogames, of course]. that and the new silly superhero frontpage on their site. :D
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i wonder how far they're going to carry this thing :)

[FoxZero]

haha, ok lance, but read the latest news. a punctured raft? a farmer with a 'remarkably powerful telescopic lens'? also notice how the 'remarkably powerful telescopic' photo quality and water look very similar to the other dockside photos. looks to me like opera got the 1 up on us.

also- http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D89K5DV00.htm?campaign_id=apn_tech_up

HERESY!

[Lance]

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:D yep. must be that remarkable new Nikon opti-angular telephoto lens. i was a little surprised that they didn't stretch the gag farther, but they kept it short and sweet.


ah, yes, the notorious article which gives much praise, then rather reverses itself at the end. and tacks the headline on to rile up the troops. that article was thoroughly discussed on the Opera forum.
''But when it comes to the basics, too many Web sites simply don't work as well with Opera when compared with rival browsers from Microsoft Corp. and the Mozilla Foundation''
i wonder how many is too many. i never seem to run across these sites that don't work in Opera, but there must be some that still require active-x for access. stupid policy, but there ya go. an acquaintance of mine who works for the local county government found that he could not access one of the county's employee sites with Internet Explorer unless it is set to allow unsecure active-x controls. the funny thing is that Microsoft's Service Pack 2 update turns those off to protect the computer user. which means that none of the major browsers can access that site. unless the computer user is savvy enough to know what to do, they're screwed, and only a small percentage of them do. i wonder what the county is going to do when a lot of their employees upgrade to SP2 and can't access the site anymore.
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[FoxZero]

yeah service pack 2 is terrible, i never updated and just patched the security holes individually. as far as opera compatablity, i do actually have to open firefox every now and then to make sure something works like the hotmail junk button or random sites i might come across during the day. but if the code was validated in the first place it would always work in any browser. anyway from a coding perspective this is ideal and gives me the ability to be elitist and judge any site i come across by opera standards :)

[Lance]

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Opera users who also use GoogleMail may want to download Opera 8.01preview1. the new version was released a few hours ago, and is intended to fix a memory handling problem when Googlemail is left on longterm. several users had indicated that an excess of virtual memory switching and disk activity was occurring in 8.0.
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[Lance]

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if you're curious about what FireFox 1.1 will be like, the first test release is now available. it's called Deer Park alpha release candidate 1. or something like that. yes, that's right, a release candidate for an alpha. i installed it about an hour ago, using the zipped version instead of the installer, and backing up the profile directory first. some of the extensions i have on version 1.0 actually still work! this is the first time in FireFox history that this has been true for me. one of the key extensions i need, an image control extension, is erratic, and never works at all on image links, but this is probably because the Gecko rendering engine has been altered
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[Lion]

Now, if I could just find a way to make CTRL + Enter behave the way it's meant to, I'd be thinking of evangelism... albeit on a small scale compared to Lance. ;)
you mean the address bar completion feature that all the windows browsers have?
ctrl enter -> .com
shift enter -> .net
ctrl+shift enter -> .org
THAT is how I think it should work... it's how it DOES work in firefox on windows, and at work it's how it works in maxthon with a few tweaks...
there is not a single browser on mac that supports that functionality (firefox included, only shift enter works) that I have found since I got my mac mini :(

[infoxicated]

Lance, is there a known Opera problem with favicons getting mixed up in the bookmarks menu?

Almost daily it seems another favicon get misplaced - at present I have the Eurogamer icon for three or four different sites, plus The Register icon associated with both the Register and BBC news entries in my bookmarks. :?

[Lance]

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i've not seen anything like that mentioned in the forums
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[xEik]

Icon management is indeed buggy.
All my pages in localhost have the same icon in Opera even if I define a different one for every page. I suppose it wrongly interprets that they belong to the same domain.

I've seen this icon mixture once in my installation. You may want to nuke the images in the 'profile/images' folder, although that isn't but a workaround. As I said, the way icons are assigned is buggy in O8.

[Lance]

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i can't throw any light on this. sorry about that. i started switching off favicons after version 7.54 when i began using the preview releases that became 8.0
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[infoxicated]

No problem :)

I'm posting this in Opera on my new laptop, so it's a fresh install. This time I'm going to look out for it happening, to see if I can track down what's causing it. :)

[xEik]

In fact a quick search in the Opera forums showed that it is a common problem with version 8. It appeared seldom in 7.5 but now it is more frequent.

The way to solve it is editing a text file in your profile folder called opera6.adr

It contains all your bookmarks with their associated icon (icon images are located in the profile/images folder). In case you decide to modify it to fix the problem, remember to do it while Opera is closed.

I don't want to repeat myself but the behaviour is clearly a bug. Although Opera is my browser of choice I never said it was bugfree. ;) Editing text configuration files is not something normal users should need doing. Some people in the Opera community enjoy doing so but I find it's a bit of a kludge.

I believe you can even use this method to assign icons to bookmarks of sites that don't provide a favicon. Place the image in the profile/images folder, modify opera6.adr and the bookmark should display your home-made icon for your favourite site. :D

/goes to test if this actually works

[xEik]

I have just tested the method described above and it works. An easy way to assign arbitrary icons to any of your bookmarks, even if they don't provide one. :D
Just remember that 16x16 images get the best results. ;)

BTW I forgot to tell that since last week Safari is on the list of browsers I use. :twisted:
And I wonder, if I'm a browser whore and Lance made me do it, is he my pimp? :lol:

[zargz]

and even more important - does that make you Lances biatch!?? :mrgreen:

[infoxicated]

Just switched on the laptop tonight and Opera has lost all my bookmarks. Bad timing on its part was that it encouraged me to download the latest version when it started.

Now if free software screws me around, loses my data and has glaringly obvious bugs, well, I'll put up with it for a good while before I turn my back on it. But, other than the tabbed browsing improvements, I'm not currently enjoying a user experiencewith Opera that warrants being paid for. I can get lost bookmarks and messed up profiles with Firefox for free, and more sites will actually render in it! ;)

Any idea what the road map is for version 9.0, Lance? For an app that's so far down the line my confidence in it has been shaken to the point where I'm wondering why I'm bothering. :evil:

[Lance]

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now this is where it pays to be insane about browsers; i have several different versions of Opera and FireFox all installed at the same time. i synchronise the bookmarks between versions of Opera whenever i've added a few that i want shared amongst all the versions i use [usually about three or four at any one phase, generally 7.11, 7.23, the latest official release, and the latest test version {with the test version being the most used}] i just copy the bookmarks adr and adrbak files from the most used version and paste the copies in the profile folder of the other versions.

but to your more immediate problem: the bak [backup] file of the adr [primary bookmarks] file didn't kick in on restart?
have you checked the contents of the bak file to see if the newest bookmarks are there?

btw, according to the FireFox/Deer Park alpha 2 forums, the bug you experienced before has still not been fixed.
operating on the internet gets harder every year, doesn't it?

edit: the latest official release from Opera is 8.02, and 8.1preview2 was just released a couple of days ago, with a BitTorrent client built in. i suspect that 9.0 will be several months away at the least.
FF is currently in testing of a preview/alpha called Deer Park which will become FF 1.5 beta x for an unknown period. 1.1 will not be used as a version number as it was previously stated. DPa2 is looking pretty decent, better than all previous versions for my purposes, but i've not tested the same combination of functions that you would.

btw, the current price for Opera has dropped to 19.95 dollars U.S. for the summer. not that it helps since you have already paid for it and are invested, so to speak.
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[infoxicated]

It's not that I cant get the bookmarks back - this morning they're here and happy on the desktop, and I run a near identical configuration at work. The issue, for me, is that I shouldn't have to get my bookmarks back.

Where would Microsoft be if Word lost all your data when you shut it down? Other than its achilies heel of being virally susceptible for the stupid, Outlook has never let me down and has never lost any data. Cant say the same about Thunderbird or whatever the pretentious sounding mail client built into Opera is.

And that's another thing - I don't trust some of this stuff as it is - like I need it to be bloated with more things, like email and bit torrent clients, when the core functions of the app are far from perfect themselves.

[Lance]

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um... you lose them when you shut it off, but they're there when you start it up? ;) heh, that happens to everybody on every mail client, so i assume you do lose them at some point when you're actually operating. in what circumstances does that occur?

[i think the client is just called Opera mail or m2. Thunderbird is the Mozilla mail client {which is bigger than their browser}.]

Opera's more or less official response in their forums is that development of any extra feature outside the browser core does not affect development of the core since they have separate developers to work on email and still others to work on voice control or BitTorrent. even though they have added many developers in the past year or so, my own thought is that since i don't give a damn about any function but the browser, i'd prefer that ALL the extra developers work on only the browser and constantly work to fix any bugs people find. how many developers does that take? i don't know.

in my own patterns of use, i pretty much never discover any bugs in the basic functions anymore even in alpha test versions, and rarely ever did. my dissatisfactions generally only occur when they change the GUI to meet the supposed needs of computer-fearing newbies. [how long is a new user of an application a newbie? don't they become fairly expert pretty soon and then have to live for a long time with a newbie-friendly GUI that doesn't fit them any more?] the majority of problems i've seen reported involve specific websites using browser sniffing routines that gives different code to different browsers, but which doesn't produce the same result. why don't they just write standard validated code and leave it at that?

anyway, i've got to eat breakfast and get ready to go work.

cheers :)
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[Roger]

Attention: Opera sotfware are celebrating their tenth anniversary (http://my.opera.com/community/party/). Free Opera registration codes for everybody!

[Lance]

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i've celebrated Opera for over five and a half years. yaaaaaaaaayy!!!
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[xEik]

Opera 8.5 is out and it is free (as in free beer). No ad banner or anything.

Now that it is free I cannot recommend it enough. ;)

[Lance]

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it had been rumoured for a release today, and the continuing statements from Opera about a new business model are apparently true. this is big news indeed. :D
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[Megatron42]

Firefox. Browsing will never be the same for me after the mouse button 3 click to open a link in a new tab. Perhaps that was in Mozilla before, I dunno. But Firefox has proven itself time and time again. On my machine I don't even notice the launch time.

[Lance]

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Opera also will use the scroll button click to open links in new tabs, or to perform any one of six functions, depending on how you choose to define its use, the other five being: in new windows, in background windows, in background tabs, just plain open, or lock out the buttonclick function. this has been the case for probably two years or more. clicking on an open tab with the scroll button will close the tab.

the functions of the mouse buttons can be redefined to something other than default if one chooses. there is a mouse function editor to access all of them, though the scroll click selector menu can be accessed by pressing shift + scrollbutton.

all of this is in Windows, i don't have Linux or free BSD or Solaris or OSX. or whatever other systems, if any, Opera is built for. it's supposed to be in all of them, but i don't know this from personal use.

-----------------------

it always amazes me how few people are actually aware of Opera and what its features are, possibly that will change now that it is not just free, but has no adverts [those could always be disappeared for free without keygen or serial], but i wouldn't bet on it. i don't know why more people don't thoroughly try out all browsers just to see what advantages can be gained for one's everyday use. i try every independent browser i can find, and even try various shells for IE, a couple of which are quite good.

even though Opera remains my default daily browser, i find myself liking the recently released SeaMonkey 1.0 alpha [which is the independently developed latest version of Mozilla suite, which is now abandoned by Mozilla Foundation, except for security updates]. both SeaMonkey and FireFox 1.5 beta 1 have finally gotten their imitation of Opera's quick 'back' and 'forward' paging to work properly. i'm happy to see that. the slowness of their old method was always one of FF's and Moz's greatest weaknesses for me. now if they could just do something about picture and page zooming, and independent control of image loading, pic by pic, and conveniently with shortcuts, not hidden in all or nothing preferences. finally the Moz products are becoming almost useful to me; i hope to soon see the day when they can equal Opera's functionality.

btw, the next major version of Opera [ 9.0, named Merlin for inhouse development reference] has a new rendering engine, still called ''Presto'', but with major changes instead of just refinements to the current version of it
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[Lance]

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update, one month later, Opera 9.0 preview 1 is now available for download and test, at the time of this post only in the Windows version.
many many changes, including margin and padding handling, one of Rob's concerns.
long list of changes relative to 8.5 here:
http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/w90p1.html

the browser itself is here:
http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/o90p1_8031.exe

i've installed it, but not had it long enough to give first impressions other than that the rendering seems to be even faster than before. but that could be just that i have a much better connection than i usually have. dial-up quality varies a lot over the course of the day.
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[infoxicated]

I'm back to Firefox with version 1.5 and it's like meeting a good friend again after he's sorted out his emotional problems. ;)

I'd been waiting patiently for 1.5 for a while, due to them finally changing the profile handling (fingers crossed for no lost profiles now) and made a good few improvements to the browsing speed, too.

I did find a bug straight away whereby the menu highlight occasionally flickers in the bookmarks menu, but apparently it's been like that for a while and they didn't consider it a show stopper. When you compare it with Opera's neat trick of rearranging all your bookmark favicons I'd say it's less of an annoyance than that, so I'm willing to live with it on the odd occasion that it happens.

I'm loving the Tab Mix Plus extension - a really cracking effort and it gives brilliant control over what you can do with the tabs. With that in place there's not a great deal of difference between using FF and Opera, except the fact that it's a more commonly accepted browser. Oh, and I can add and remove search engines without having to download a third party app to do so - something I found bewildering about Opera.

For me, the Opera adventure is over for now, as the new version of Firefox has been well worth the wait. At least I know I can live with Opera should Firefox let me down again, but having tried twice to convert myself now I'm pretty sure it's not the default browser for me. :)

[Lance]

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you can edit Opera's search.ini directly with no program, but perhaps that is not so easy as you're finding FF's method to be.

we all like what we like. i tried the alphas [Deer Park] and betas of FF 1.5 and was more convinced than ever that it isn't for me. i actually like SeaMonkey 1.0 alpha better than FF 1.5 even though i don't use the chat or mail. :o
go figure.

since the alphas were sorted on FF, the forward and back works like Opera's now. about time, i'd say, and it improves the experience very much. they still should IMO give good and easy control of image display, and offer far more extensive customisation of the toolbars, and allow customisation of the menus. i'm still using Opera because of the customisation and display control options.

1.5 is certainly the best FF yet, and depending on your needs, should be a viable alternative.
.

[infoxicated]

I just prefer the way Firefox does certain things to the way that Opera does them. I much preferred Opera's way of saving sessions and handling tabs, but now that Firefox can have all that too I can also have my prefered use of CTRL+ENTER and text scaling rather than page zooming.

The latter feature is something I could never get used to - being able to scale text without distorting the page and images just seems a much more natural behaviour, certainly to me as a web designer.

[Lance]

.
i tried the latest version of the Image Zoom extension yesterday on 1.5 final, and i really like it. it allows independent zooming of individual images [which is what i want for examining photos in detail, much more than i need to change text size], and also allows coupling text and images to be zoomed together. [at least it did in the first couple of hours that i used it, but that seemed to fail later. it's version 0.2.1, so i guess it's still early in development.] but with that extension and 5 others, the experience felt very natural and smooth. it's by far the best experience i've ever had with FF in its 3 years of development. i still want menu customisation to cut back on the insane number of useless items in the context menus, and i want quick one-key individual control of turning images on, and likewise switching to my user CSS, but FF is developing nicely. it cannot yet replace Opera for me, and i have to work a lot more to get it to a reasonably usable state, but it's coming along very well. [though that's partly because they've emulated Opera features so much. ;)
sorry, i had to get in a dig there. :D ]
.

[infoxicated]

At home I have no real need for text zooming, but at work I have a 21" monitor with a ridiculously high resolution, so it's good to be able to scale up the text without distorting the whole page like Opera does when you scale it. Firefox is developing slowly but surely - by the time version 2 comes out it'll be quite the rounded product, assuming IE7 hasn't stolen back most of the market by then.

[jospicy]

just discovered a lovely plugin for Firefox that allows you to open a page in a new tab as IE not Fox (useful for anyone wanting to use the IM links in the profiles as they only work under IE :mad: )
it can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Tabbed%20Browsing&numpg=10&id=1419

jo

[Lance]

.
i've discovered a bit of a bug in FF 1.5; often when clicking on a link, the browser opens the new page but it's completely blank while the status bar claims it's done. no further activity occurs no matter how long you wait. so i click back, then click the link again and it usually works properly the second time
.

[infoxicated]

I'm sure all the Mozilla Firefox developers who are also Wipeout fans will put that on their to do list while they're here.

[Lion]

on my mac the only browser I can stand to use is firefox 1.5 (until now, it's betas for the same reasons) as it is the only browser that supports address completion using keycombos
in windows most browsers support at least ctrl+enter to complete an address as a .com ("wipeoutzone"<ctrl+enter> -> "http://www.wipeoutzone.com")and some support more. on the mac ONLY firefox 1.5 supports that function.
drives you batty to lose that capability after getting used to it.

[Lance]

Rob, the bug happens on pretty much all pages i visit. it isn't a WipeoutZone exclusive. :)
presumably, the bug will be noticed no matter what the interest of the developers and no matter where they go. i'm expecting 1.51 fairly soon.

[infoxicated]

I meant that if they visited WipeoutZone then they'd pick up your bug report - I wasn't suggesting that the bug only happened on wipeoutzone.

[Lance]

ah. i see. i wonder if any of the FF devs aRe WO fans. that would be cool. they might be too busy with FF right now to indulge fandoms, but you never know. some people are so organised that they can do multiple things in the same hours that i can only do one. i tend to have a one track mind and follow that track for days before i switch to something else. [the curse of the passionately disorganised]

[infoxicated]

Just taking a look at the latest versin of Opera, and I was wondering if there's any way to zoom/increase the text size, but keep the images the same size. Or is it the same as it ever was?

[Lance]

It's still full page. I've used all the test and final versions through the current test for 9.2.

Firefox only has separate zoom by a somewhat clunky extension, but not by default.

The only browser I have that does it by default is little program called OffByOne, but it is not a serious browser; doesn't even support javascript.

I know nothing of IE 7, but you probably already know its features, so I'm assuming it doesn't have pic zoom.

I don't do page layout work, so I've never found the feature useful for browsing. Simultaneous zoom is fine for me. Opera and Firefox both have a feature that limits rendering to screenwidth no matter how big a pic is, but of course that reformats the page.

[stin]

I know nothing of IE 7, but you probably already know its features, so I'm assuming it doesn't have pic zoom.


Yes it does.:)

stevie:)

[Lance]

Wow! It only took them 12 years to do it. ;)

[infoxicated]

Necro-posting ahoy!

I thought I'd mention the pleasant surprise I had when using the PC version of Safari on Friday. I had wrongly alluded that it was a "buggy piece of crap" earlier in the day (due to past evidence), but the experience was far from that, considering it's still in beta.

I mean, I'm probably not going to ditch Firefox for it (unless version 3 of said browser continues with the bloat and ridiculous memory footprint), but the way it renders fonts is really pleasing in the eye and the page rendering is damn swift.

So there you go - in the interests of fairness I'm going on record as saying that Apple have finally produced a product that I like. :+

Shame about the pretentious name, though! ;)

[Lance]

I thought FF3 was supposed to radically cut back on the already ridiculously large memory footprind of FF2? Not to mention the memory leaks during operation.


In a way, it doesn't matter that much to me because it won't work with anything before XP [or maybe Win2000]. I refuse to use XP and Vista. I've got 98 on one of my computers and ME on the other.

[element42]

I use Konqueror for web browsing on my linux box occasionally, and would definitely use it more if it supported mouse gestures a la Opera. I think I'm right in saying that Safari uses the same rendering engine as Konqueror, so despite having never used Safari, I'm willing to believe it's a nice browser :nod

[The Boye]

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Firefox 3 beta.

[Lance]

What about it?

[infoxicated]

It robs all your cookies from Firefox 2, meaning that when Yahoo! Mail doesn't work in it and you switch back you then find that all of the sites you asked to remember you don't any longer. That's what.

[Lance]

Lovely, just lovely. [/sarkyness]

I prefer to use either an email client that is separate from browsers or to use webmail. The constant development cycle of browsers always puts your contacts list and saved mail content at high risk of destruction.

[infoxicated]

I use Yahoo! Mail and that's it.

Well, until MicroSoft buys up Yahoo! - then I'll be looking elsewhere. ;)

Learned a harsh email client lesson with Thunderbird a few years back - lost contacts and years worth of mail due to their profile system being simply awful and I don't think I'd ever trust a stand alone email client again. Web based mail for the win! ;)

[The Boye]

lulz

I think it's aces, fast and user friendly.

Beta - caution. ;)

How's you Foxy? Long time no type, auld yin!

[Lance]

Rob: Yep. Right now, I just use two webmail services.

[element42]

So I discovered yesterday that I can (easily!) get Konqueror to use mouse gestures.
It's still not as nice as Opera though, despite its bugs under linux.

[Rapier Racer]

I hope Firefox isn't about to go down the tubes, what am I supposed to use instead? Don't like Opera period so thats not an option.

[infoxicated]

I think it's safe to say it's sticking around, and that version 3 will hopefully regain some of the memory footprint it's always had. I quite liked the beta I tried, but I'll stick with version 2 until the next one is finished.

[G'Kyl]

Don't know if it's wise to get back to this old thread or better start a new one, but I figured this was the way to go...

Anyway, so I downloaded Opera 10.50 (and .51), and for me, this is the worst development my favorite browser has seen since I started using it (which was 4.something, I believe).

What's with the animation when opening and closing tabs?!
Where did server name completion go - why do I get a F..KING web search when typing "wipeoutzone" instead of an automatically completed "www.wipeoutzone.com"?!
What with the constant crashes and lock-ups?!
What's with the stupidly marked words after doing a "find in page" search as compared to the MUCH more readable version from before?!
What with the changed-for-the-worse "wanna save your password" pop-up?!
What with NOT being the fastest browser in the world anymore?
What... I mean, what the F...?!

Sorry for getting annoyingly pissed about this rather unremarkable issue, but the way Opera now works gets me worked up all the time I experience what's been "disimproved".

Anyway... am I missing something? Why did they go the way they went? And much more importantly: Is there any way to make Opera work as it did before 10.5?

Ben

[rdmx]

Typing wipeoutzone then hitting ctrl+enter will automatically complete it to www.wipeoutzone.com (http://www.wipeoutzone.com)
I think opera was just trying to make it consistent with other browsers

[Dan Locke]

Is there any way to make Opera work as it did before 10.5?
You could try downloading an older version from OldVerson.com (http://oldversion.com/Opera.html)'s Opera page.

[infoxicated]

I felt the same about the way Firefox was going.

Watching it get so bloated and memory hungry was like seeing history repeat itself - went through all that with Netscape Navigator.

Due to that I've been using Chrome as my primary browser for months now and I really do like it. It does a couple of things that irk me, like there's no "properties" for when you right click on an image, but it does everything else so well I plan on sticking with it.

[G'Kyl]

Oh, I tried an early version of Chrome and didn't like it. Since I figure they improved it a lot during recent months though I'm gonna give it a second try. It's gotta count for something if a Firefox users says it's worth it... :)

Dan: Yep, I could do that. But I'm not too fond of using older versions. Might be alright for a few months, but sooner than later you'll just need a recent version.

insertcoin: Thanks!! I didn't know that - now this actually makes things a lot better. :)
And I agree on that they probably tried to make Opera "feel" like similar programs - what with Windows now being forced to point out to other browsers... So, I understand, I really do. They better be careful not to lose their group of core users though - the one who kept them going for years.

Ben

[Dan Locke]

The Opera releases at OldVersion.com go up to 9.01.

[q_dmc12]

"Because new isn't always better!":clap

[OneAVGNFan]

Before my laptop went under, I had Explorer and Safari.

[KGB]

Speaking of Opera, anyone know why I know can't sign in to Ebay or Amazon using Opera but can using IE. It just loads up the sign in page again. I can sign in to Wipeoutzone and other websites OK. Cleared the cache but it's still not working. Can't play Youtube Vids either but I think that's another problem.

[Dan Locke]

Do you have Flash turned on? I sometimes turn it off to get away from those HORRIBLE Flash ads with sound, then forget to turn it back on again.

[Lance]

Ben, just about all the things you mention can be switched off or on via checkboxes in opera:config [enter that in the address bar box] under "user prefs". That includes the address box search and the UI animations. I usually change about two dozen settings in config. Customising a new version for my prefs takes about 10 minutes, and that includes customising the pop-up menus, the keyboards shortcuts, the toolbar configuration, custom buttons, and custom skins. And importing bookmarks. Of course, the time is short because I'm already familiar with the settings I want to change, and already have customisations in older versions that I can transfer to the new build.

BTW, the newest version is 10.52 for Mac, and Linux/Unix, though it is not yet a 'final' release. For Windows, it's 10.52-build 3370.

I dislike Chrome for two reasons... uh... three reasons: totally inadequate customisation of the UI and keyboard shortcuts, huge installation took more than 70 megabytes of harddrive space for a browser that is very limited in features and abilities [and all of it is hidden away in the deep guts of the OS where it's more of a pain to access by somebody who knows what they're doing], and 3- it updates without asking. And 4-, [if it hasn't changed in the last 3 or 4 months] unless you know where to remove the dll, the damned thing phones home every 24 hours to report a synopsis of its activity.

[Dan Locke]

Cool; another person on the Internet who hates Chrome. Until now, I'd thought that I was the only one.

[ProblemSolver]

What Lance said.

I'm still waiting for Opera 10.50 to be released for Linux.

[G'Kyl]

Lance: Customizing is the issue. While I am willing to spend a few minutes setting up options - editing configs is something I can't be bothered with any more. ;) Simply a matter of how much of my time I want to sacrifice for "secondary computer stuff". I need things to work from the get-go. :)

Oh, and Dan: Yep, I switched back to 10.10. Opera actually offers a couple of versions for download themselves. Thanks for the hint though!

Ben

[Lance]

Editing the userpref config takes about 3 to 4 minutes in Opera once you've done it the first time so you know what you want to change. I counted how many changes I made to the newest build config section, and it turned out to be 31. I'm a bit of a customising extremist; few people would change even that many. All of those changes were done by checking or unchecking a box, or changing a number [for in line-search background dimming level, for example], or pressing an arrow-button to move a number from '2' to '0', or some such. Each individual choice has a restore to default button.

Editing Firefox configs is very different because, if I recall correctly, all choices are displayed ungrouped other than alphabetically and all of them are displayed up front on one extremely long page, while in Opera, different categories are grouped so you only read and scroll through the type you need to change. And there was little in the way of checkboxes in FF; you had to type out the changes after clicking on the option and it asked you a question and opened a textbox for you to type in. I hope their method has changed on the latest versions.

-------------
edited to add> Opera 10.52 Final was released today for Mac and Windows. As far as I know, the Windows version is build 3370, the test version released a couple of days ago, which is the one I'm using right now.
Linux/Unix still being worked on.