So why is Opera so bl**dy slow?

[Fat Tone]

It takes forever to download a page. Selecting radio buttons takes an age to be visible on the screen, and running JS goes at a snails pace. I remember this last time I tried Opera (v7 I think). Why aren't you Opera users moaning about this? IE is much much quicker.

[gt40]

It takes forever to download a page. Selecting radio buttons takes an age to be visible on the screen, and running JS goes at a snails pace. I remember this last time I tried Opera (v7 I think). Why aren't you Opera users moaning about this? IE is much much quicker.

Must be you
my pages load much quicker with opera versus IE.

[Mehen]

I find IE7 to be really quick.

[Gurm]

Opera... is... twitchy.

For most people it's really quick when you first install it.

For some, it's really slow right away.

For others (such as myself) it gets very slow after a while, but starts off quick.

There is little rhyme or reason to it. The Opera developers seem at a loss to fix the issue.

[Dr Mordrid]

'cause it ain't FireFox?

[ZokesPro]

You know, if Opera was just a tad bit faster, it would be THE ultimate browser.

[Jammrock]

99% of the time Opera runs just as fast as day one. And I use Opera as my primary browser, so I use it a lot. There are exceptions, like when a page has certain scripts and JS that Opera can't do, in which case I use IE7 for those. But that's only 2 sites I visit regularly, so no big deal. Beyond that, it renders just as fast as always.

[Jessterw]

You know, if Opera was just a tad bit faster, it would be THE ultimate browser.

And the joke of the day goes to...

[az]

For me, Opera still is the fastest browser. There are some sites that'll slow it down heavily when I have open 20 or so tabs of them. Usually though, Opera starts becoming slow (taking half a second to close a tab) at about 100-200 tabs.

[Gurm]

For me, Opera still is the fastest browser. There are some sites that'll slow it down heavily when I have open 20 or so tabs of them. Usually though, Opera starts becoming slow (taking half a second to close a tab) at about 100-200 tabs.

Yes, this is the experience of many people. Sadly, others have a different experience for no explicable reason.

I actually haven't tried Opera with my new motherboard and CPU, I'll be interested to see if it's an architecture problem, or if it really does relate to my surfing habits and/or sites frequented.

[az]

By the way, an Update to 9.02 was just released, with some security, some speed, and some compatibility fixes for stuff like yahoo mail, flickr, etc.

[Nowhere]

Hmmm...my buddy did dislike Opera until he began browsing pr0n exclusively under IE/Virtual PC...

[ZokesPro]

@Jesterzwild: Opera is the ultimate browser IMO for one simple reason FireFox was when it first came out. Malware and spyware protection. Now that FireFox is as much a target for malware and spyware as IE is, there's really no point in using it anymore. I'd rather use a browser that lets me browse any site without getting infected then to limit where I can and cannot go by using FireFox.

[Nowhere]

Adding my experience...it's definatelly the most usable browser on this dual p2 266Mhz with 128mb under win2k if I want to borwse with large number of tabs opened. Yes, there are some sites which cause problems...but they feel heavy in other browsers too. And no problems with sites that are visibly well designed and/or with w3c validation. So it seems that Opera usually simply isn't forgiving to sites with lousy design.

Just too bad some of new Google services heavily utilising ajax aren't supported as good as under gecko... (Google is missing here some chances IMHO (yeah, not very big ones...) - Opera is quite strong in Central Europe, probably Northern too; and it so happens that here Google owns search market totally...)

[Jessterw]

@Jesterzwild: Opera is the ultimate browser for one simple reason FireFox was when it first came out. Malware and spyware protection. Now that FireFox is as much a target for malware and spyware as IE is, there's really no point in using it anymore. It's garbage, plain and simple and I'd rather use a browser that lets me browse any site without getting infected then to limit where I can and cannot go by using FireFox.

I can see that, though I disagree that Opera is any more safe than Firefox or any other browser. It's simply not targeted directly. The fact that Firefox is doesn't make it garbage either.

I'd venture to say that OmniWeb (a Mac browser) is the ultimate browser, but that'd just be a personal opinion based on preference (though I don't use it).

As an aside, I never thought Firefox was the ultimate browser. It was good later on in its development cycle, but the only thing that made it worthy anything was its support for standards and the extensions.

I wasn't poking fun at your liking Opera, but rather the finality of you saying it would be "THE ultimate browser". It's purely a matter of preference.