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So, does Opera have any functionality at least as good as AdBlockPlus and NoScript?

They are the /only/ reason I use Firefox. Really, for webbrowsers, AdBlock Plus is the killer app - if Opera can block ads at least that well, I'll be done with Firefox for good. If not, I have no reason to use it.

----AdBlockPlus:

Yes! From-the-box! Just right-click any "blank" (non-image nor Flash, let's say) part of the current displayed page. Then select "Block Content" (shortcut K).

It'll change to an "ad-kill mode", where the page itself gets transparent and only images and flash applets stand out normally (also from iframes).
If you click any of them, Opera will block anything else coming from that url folder (like www.google/ads/, for example).
If you just want to get rid of a single banner/flash, hold shift before clicking them.

Also, you can pre-block hosts via URL filtering urlfilter.ini ( http://www.schrode.net/opera/url_filtering/ ).

----NoScript:

Yes, also another from-the-box feature. For global settings: "Tools" menu -> "Preferences..." -> "Advanced" tab -> "Content" -> Javascript Options button.
Or, for per-site settings, just right-click the current page and select "Edit Site Preferences". You can also set CSS stuff this way, and add Javascript Files to run on some or all sites like on greasemokey.

Ahoy!

I'd probably use it more frequenty if it had some Ad blocking capabilities.

It does. Right-click on the page, "Block Content...".

By the way... http://www.opera.com/docs/history/

Integrated content blocking appeared in Opera 9.0, officially released on June 20th, 2006. Almost three years now.

And a little bit of history: http://www.schrode.net/opera/url_filtering/

Rudimentary ad blocking through urlfilter.ini appeared in Opera 6.02, released on May 15th, 2002. So, Opera has effectively had a form of ad-blocking capabilities for over seven years.

It's not as flexible as what you get through specialized Firefox extensions, but it's there, there are pre-made filters available for download, and like I said, it's been a part of the browser for seven years.

Just don't go overboard with the wildcards (* and ?), and go blocking too broad URLs like "http://*ad*" ... you might block quite a lot of stuff with that :). "http://ad.*" or similar are okay though, and of course very specific ones too, like "http://www.obnoxiousimages.com/images/advert/*"

Or indeed, for clean browsing, try: "http://*.asp" ;)

There are more options than that. Notice also that none of these are required to filter anything, the function is already built into Opera. These things just make it more convenient, but you can set up your filters manually in your filter.ini-file.

It's not as convenient as the FFx-extensions though, but I see no ads in Opera now. In both browsers, once it's set up, it's set up anyway.

The interface is clunky in this one, but it's very logical and you can block anything (of course): OperaAdFilter (freeware). You can simply filter all *.swf files if you so desire, or all servers starting with "http://ad.*". Another option for open-source advocates is C++AdBlock . If you want to know how the filtering works, there is a good explanation of it. Lastly, notice that you can block IP-ranges as well.

All of these happen to be the first things in a simple Google search .

I don't know if this was a troll, but so many people say this as "the only reason they don't switch", that it's just idiotic. From now on, anyone who mentions this again, will have their geek license removed , effective immediately!

It's not exactly the same, but you can disable/enable Flash through the Quick Preferences dialog (hit F12), or add a button to the personal bar to do the same thing. You can block images through the filter.ini file (Here is a tutorial), although it's not as convenient as Firefox.

Opera has had an equivalent of AdBlock for years. Yes, it's not quite as simple - you have to modify the filter.ini file directly instead of clicking within the browser window - but the end result is the same.

Kind of. There's a file named filter.ini that you can use to block certain sites (it was originally intended for parental controls), but you've got to add addresses to it manually. There's a good site on how it works here.

2) No option to "Block images from this site".

Not exactly an elegant solution, but you can insert wildcards into the filter.ini file. So you could block http://*.examplesite.com/*.gif if you so desired.

If you're only after the ads, you can just use the same file to block the entirety of various advertising sites. A good guide to the filter.ini file is available here.

Opera - Blocks popups
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see

I advise you to read up on Opera's filter.ini file - not as convenient as AdBlock, I'll grant you, but it gets the job done.

Opera - You must have Suns Java installed for it to work
Firefox - Doesn't need Java at all, on Windows or Linux or anything else you might install it on.

No, Opera works just fine without Java. It just won't run Java applets (which Firefox won't do either unless you install Java).

It's relatively easy to customise Opera's search list. Under Windows, it's stored in the file search.ini in your Profile directory, and is very simple to understand. Or if you don't want to do that, you can download a third party editor. I presume that is is equally simple in Linux.

Another feature that people switch to Firefox for is ad blocking, but this is also present in Opera - in this case, the relevant Opera file to edit is filter.ini, and there's a good guide to editing it here.

>Incremental find

Opera's CTRL+F find doesn't do this, but the "Find in Page Search" bar has done this for years. Opera makes it easy to add search bars to your personal bar, and although the Find in Page isn't there by default it takes two clicks to add. This has been the case for at least two years.

>Open "New window" links in a new tab instead

Default option for Opera, and customisable through the Preferences menu if you don't like it. Again, I started using Opera two years ago and the feature has been there since before then.

>Adblock

Not as convenient as Firefox, I'll agree, but the filter.ini file does exactly the same thing, including the wildcard entries. There's a nice tutorial here.

>Flashblock

Again, not quite the same, but enabling/disabling Flash is very easy in Opera (hit F12 to bring up the Quick Preferences, then uncheck the tickbox).