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Opera 6.03 - The Wild Child of Browsers?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the home-of-the-singing-fat-lady dept.

IEEE1394 writes: "Ever wondered what other Internet browsers are available outside of Internet Explorer? Opera 6.03 from Opera Software boasts itself on being 'the fastest browser on earth.' Does it really live up to its claim of being unique and being fast? Is it the wild child of the browser family and can it ever surpass Internet Explorer as the browser of choice? Let's find out." Funny, IE isn't my browser of choice ...

9 of 579 comments (clear)

  1. IE often HAS to be your browser of choice by duffbeer703 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many banking and other websites do not render properly with Mozilla, and I'm never going to pay for a browser like Opera.

    So unfortunately, sometimes you must choose IE.

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
    1. Re:IE often HAS to be your browser of choice by rknop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      c'mon man. I use Mozilla at home quite a lot and I design web sites (although I do more back end stuff than anything), but let's face the reality of the situation: If I'm designing web sites, I design for IE. Usually, my pages are fairly simple and work just fine in Moz, opera, etc, but I ain't waisting my time making scripts cross-browser compatible, etc, because those folks paying the bill don't care and the customer is always right.

      You are part of the problem. You should be designing web pages to the standards, not to IE. Design to the standards, the site will work with IE. Your employer's happy, your customers (even those who don't use IE, or wouldn't if you weren't so ignorant in your web design choices) will be happy, and nobody even has to know that you aren't writing IE-specific stuff.

      Given that there are web standards out there, and that IE implements them, I just don't undersatnd this attitude that you must design for IE. What's the problem with you people? Sheesh.

      -Rob

    2. Re:IE often HAS to be your browser of choice by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Look, I design HTML so it renders in anything, no problem. But the standards are ridiculous and have no bearing on the real world. W3 validators say I can't put form elements in tables!!!! Hello? What do I tell employers/clients when their forms look like sh*t!? Sorry, but even though Netscape, Mozzilla and IE all render this page just fine, It doesn't conform to standards and my ethics won't allow me to code it?

      But when I'm doing heavy Javascripting/DOM stuff, I ain't taking the trouble to write several versions of scripts. I always present the option of netscape/mozilla compatibilty, but when they use nothing but IE, they don't care. I'm working on an intranet project right now that has some government employees on Sun's. I said "we need to take the extra time to make this netscape compatible", the team lead says "oh, they have IE on termnial server, we're not bothering!".

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
    3. Re:IE often HAS to be your browser of choice by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ok, now that I've been modded out of existence and insulted, I'll go over this again, in slightly more forceful language.

      Despite the comment by a poster below, I'm "reasonably intelligent" (and have the IQ test to prove it) and certainly not ignorant of standards and fully capable of writing standards-compliant HTML/Javascript. But I don't. Here's the reason why folks: BECAUSE I'M NOT THE ONE PAYING THE BILL! I don't write web pages for me, I write them for folks who pay for them. If I want to do something for fun, or enjoyment, I'll play hockey or do some woodworking or play poker, but I program for a living. To house and feed my family.

      You CANNOT tell me it does not cost more to develop multiple versions of scripts to do interactive content. And any monkey with any number of graphical editors can knock out static HTML. You're only paid for dynamic, server side code in something and client-side scripting. It takes more development hours ($) to develop multiple versions of scripts, and more QA test machines and personnel ($) to test those pages on multiple platforms and more support personnel ($) to support those multiple platforms. Thus, many, many folks footing the bill for all this lovely web development chose not to incur those extra costs to support the 3-4% of the user base that doesn't use IE (those were the last numbers I saw). For an intranet/extranet application (where most of my work is done these days), that number declines to less than 1% in most cases.

      I guess you could call me immoral for working for such "heavens", but I don't consider browser/computer/OS/hardware platform choice a moral issue. Sue me.

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
  2. Advertisment? by W2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was expecting to see "This article sponsored by Opera Software" at the end of that posting. Has Slashdot started taking cash for posting articles that are little more than advertisments for a particular product? Or in this case, a link to a review which is as far from "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" as can be?

    In either case, I read the review, and it beautifully disproves Opera Software's claim of making "the world's fastest web browser", with load times varying between 50% and 300% of IE's on the pages that were tested. Opera also displays ads unless you register it (for $39!) -- why bother when it doesn't offer any major advantages over another non-MS browser like Mozilla?

    It should also be noted that Opera has had some Microsoft-esque security holes in the past ...

    --
    Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
  3. What is Opera's competitive edge? by Orangedog_on_crack · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If any "alternative" browser is going to succeed it has to have some kind of edge over IE. This is only MY opinion, but unless Opera, Mozilla and the like are going to be a serious contender for the MS desktop, it will have to offer some more than just being faster. MS has a BIG advantage....IE is free (even though there is the "making a deal with the Devil factor involved with IE).

    I don't know too much about Opera, but are there any other "features" that it offers that IE doesn't, or at least doesn't do as well as Opera? I like competition in any market, but if it doesn't have anything substantially additional with it that IE doesn't, then I can see it gaining much market share, especially since one has to pay for the ad-free version? Maybe someone here can shed some light in this.

  4. Features by eddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, I use Opera because of the features. I like the MDI. I cannot live without the ability to go back/forward using only the mousebuttons ("gestures"). I can press ctrl+g to quickly apply my own stylesheet to the page, as can I disable image-loading with a click. I can use the zoom-control to get up close when I need to (which happens), I can press F12 and quickly enable and disable javascript/plugins/popups. I can press CTRL+J to get a window with all the links on a page. I can enable automatic periodical refresh, I maximize frames with the click of a button. When exploring large link-collections I can use the special 'create linked window' to browse efficiently without having to open/close lot's of windows.

    I'm sure mozilla can do much of this, but IE? IE is - as far as I'm concerend - a joke as far as features go.

    Opera is all about the small things which makes my browsing fun and efficient. That said, I have a long list of things I wished it could do, some of them from IE (I want a page 'properties' function)

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  5. Re:of course it's not your browser of choice, but. by barzok · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, it's such a terrible burden to have to write HTML-compliant code, instead of having IE render just about anything you throw at it.

    Write correct, clean code and you won't have any trouble with Mozilla-based browsers.

  6. Mouse gestures... Annoying?! by levik · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The comment on the reviewer's part about the mouse gestures being annoying pretty much invalidated the whole review for me. I am using Opera full time, and find genstures indispensible to the extent that when forced to use IE/K-Meleon due to Opera's rendering issues, I constantly find myself trying to "go back" by right-dragging the mouse to the left.

    That somebody who took it upon themself to review the product did not wish to take the time to familiarize themself with one of its biggest features speaks to a certain lack of proffessinalism... That aside though, I don't see how the gestures can be considered a "con". Even with them turned on, I find it difficult to perform one accidentally (I myself only use the back and forth navigation and never run into a problem of triggering another gesture accidentally). Finally, since there's an option to turn them off, I really fail to see how, iven if they are "annoying", their inclusion can be held against the browser.

    I think that it's by providing these features that Opera can succeed in the marketplace alongside of IE. One great feature would be trying to predict the next link you will click and pre-loading that page. (Like for multi-page articles).

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    Ñ'