My Browser is better than yours!

[az]

Dude you're pissed. What looks ugly? My colors, my skin (racist! ), the way I arranged my toolbars? This is far from the default Opera config, BTW, but I like it that way.

AZ

[Sasq]

the whole damn screen

[az]

That better?



AZ

[dZeus]

Az: don't bother asking about ff, let alone installing!
Compared to opera,
- It's slow
- It's got inferior tabs handling
- It's bloated (as in large in size) even without extensions. Hmm... crappy coding?
- It's slow
- It needs lots of extensions to get even remotely usable functionality that you get standard (and better) in opera
- Oh did I mention it's dog slow?

I'll give this to FF though:
it appears to work slightly better with some 'IE-html' pages, and it doesn't appear to crash (opera crashes from time to time, although you can always restore all open pages with a single click)

[Paddy]

hehehe

Love the custom title Az!

[Jammrock]

No problems with Gmail, Motorola or DPreview with Opera.

[PAugustin]

Yes they work perfectly well

Opera ROCKS !

[William]

Motorola link that still doesn't work And you got me all excited that something had changed.

[az]

Obviously, they use some kind of browser sniffing. It's not really Opera's fault (other than having too little market share, so some companies don't care).

AZ

[isochar]

Can Opera be just a browser and not throw everything plus the kitchen sink in? For that fact, can Opera uninstall features that I don't want? Can Opera gain enough of a user base to be specifically coded for by large websites? Can security experts look at the source code?

[KvHagedorn]

Motorola phones are crap anyhow.

[az]

With Version 7.60, You can separately disable mail, chat, and newsreader (and reenable at any time). Including these features, Opera still is smaller and faster than a naked FF (and has more browser features to boot - which you don't have to use. You can configure Opera to behave more or less like IE - SDI windows, no mouse gestures, IE skin, only the buttons IE has...). (Deleting the one .dll that enables mail etc. would just free <300KB, but you are free to do so)

Can Opera gain enough market share? Certainly. On hand-held devices, it is already market leader, and its market share on desktops has risen slowly, but steadily. It will always remain third, though, as things look. Many (most) large websites do already work with Opera, and it gets better.

No, security experts can't look at the code, but being able to look at the code doesn't equal security. There are still security holes found in both FF and Opera; the security holes in Opera however almost always get fixed within a week (often before they are known - security through obscurity DOES work, to a degree. It can only be one part of the security strategy, of course), and there were less, and less serious, security holes found for Opera than for FF in the last few months.

AZ

[Jessterw]

The increase in holes found is largely a result of "more eyes looking" as FF gains market share. Most holes have also been fixed within a week, if not within less than a few days. However, I've never considered the open source and closed source natures of either browser, respectively, to be of any real consideration.

Even if I wanted to use Opera, the very fact that I have to pay for an additional license just because I've moved from Windows to Mac. I realize that it could be seen as akin to using the browser on multiple machines, but last I checked I could easily (edit: not legally per se) run Opera on two Win-based machines using the same code.

[az]

You can get additional licenses for other platforms for ~10 EUR. Yes, it costs money, but to me, it's worth it. We only expect browsers to be free because in the browser wars, two companies tried to gain ahold of the web, so they gave their browsers away for free. (Of course, I am always happy when there is anything good for free - but sometimes, it pays to buy good tea.)

And yes, I don't think the open/closed source argument should be a criterion (why does nobody use this beautiful singular, BTW?).

AZ

[Jessterw]

I don't mind paying money, mind you I already forked over $39/USD to have a browser I (now) use largely for compatibility testing (this isn't counting money spent on previous version). So having to pay an additional $15/USD to use it on a different platform is just not worth it.

I'm more than happy to pay for good software, but when I can use Firefox on almost any platform I choose without penalty and it does all I need it to do... well it speaks for itself. $54 to use a browser on two platforms is just a little much I think, though I will grant you that Opera is more than just a browser, and as such it should be considered in that light (in both pros and cons).