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"Fastest Browser On Earth" Cuts Crud

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-faster-go-faster-go dept.

gabec writes "The guys at Opera have been rewriting their rendering engine over the past 18 months, tossing out legacy code and making the browser more DOM compliant with the intention of making the self-proclaimed "fastest browser on earth" even faster. They claim to have succeeded, according to this article on ZDNet.. Fun stuff.. ;)"

9 of 614 comments (clear)

  1. Dillo by mlinksva · · Score: 4, Informative

    It needs work, but Dillo is the fastest graphical browser I've ever used. As fast if not faster than a text-only browser like lynx, links or w3m. Galeon feels incredibly slow next to Dillo, and Galeon usually feels pretty fast to me.

  2. Marketing spin... by billnapier · · Score: 5, Informative

    From reading the article, I get the feeling that the real reason for the rewrite is not to get better speed, that would just be a side effect. It sounds like it had to be rewritten because they were running up to limitations in what they could do by just extending their current engine. These things happen from time to time with larger projects.

  3. Re:I've fallen in love with Opera, but... by yog · · Score: 5, Informative

    even simpler than that!
    F12 r --> disables popups
    F12 w --> enables popups
    It's an instinctive subsecond keystroke for me now.

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
  4. Re:I've fallen in love with Opera, but... by yog · · Score: 4, Informative

    Er... try hitting ctrl-G
    switches to user style sheet
    This is possibly the best feature in Opera.
    Renders nearly unreadable pages readable, e.g. gray text on black, microscopic type size, lack of word wrapping. ctrl-G fixes it all.

    Moz and IE don't have this feature as far as I can tell.

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
  5. Re:The truth by lpontiac · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've designed pages with popups.....I admit, popup advertising is annoying, but having the larger version of an image appear in a popup when I click on a button....or poll results, or a movie clip, or ....etc,etc,etc is a interface feature I like and employ.

    If you want to block all popups, you can do it in IE by killing Javascript, or you have have a proxy kill the Javascript which does the popping up. What makes the "kill popup" feature in Mozilla so invaluable is that it only blocks "unsolicited" popups - it will let Javascript pop up a window in response to a click, but not otherwise. So you kill the ads, but pages still work as designed.

  6. Mouse Gestures for Mozilla..... by WD · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can add Gesture capability to Mozilla. Just get This.

  7. Re:This is a bit silly by 13Echo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Opera upgrades are always free to the next full version number. This means that if you paid for 5.x, then you can upgrade to 6.x for free. Paying for 6.x gives you 7.x for free, and so on. Upgrades are also reasonably inexpensive. I see it as renewing your license for a few bucks every two years. It is worth it to me, for such a great peice of software.

  8. if you like ie6 by arnonym · · Score: 4, Informative

    if you like ie6 but are missing features like tabbed browsing, a fully configurable pop-up blocker etc., try the crazybrowser (what a stupid name). it's basically an third-party upgrade for the ie. it's free too!

    http://www.crazybrowser.com

    i used to surf with opera, but since 6 it got unstable when viewing more than 7 tabs.

    --
    sic luceat lux
  9. Monte Hurd Here... (aka the anti-christ it seems) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everyone take a deep breathe. Now exhale. I am not the great satan here guys... ;-)

    Let me clarify...

    My comment was taken slighly out of context in the CNET article. I believe in standards and we test against Opera and Mozilla on a continual basis and I'm no MS fan. Let me repeat, I believe in standards 100%.

    I was trying to make the point that now that Microsoft has achieved browser market dominance (with proprietary extensions included), strict adherence to standards is EXACTLY what Microsoft hopes non-MS browser developers will pursue as doing so necessarily creates incompatibility with IE. This in turn leaves users with the impression that non-MS browsers are broken or not as advanced when they fail to render pages in the manner IE has led them to expect.

    I don't like Microsoft's tactics at all. Period. But unfortunately, at this point in the game, a browser's market penetration is more a measure of end-user acceptance than it is one of developer acceptance. The point I was trying to get across was that non-MS browser developers should co-opt Microsoft's proprietary extensions strategy and use it against them! By supporting all of the MS extras end users wouldn't perceive non-MS browsers as lacking. As a developer I can appreciate the fact that this would take some work. It's not a perfect solution, but the sad fact is Microsoft isn't going to change it's ways and no amount of name calling will change that. ;-)

    Just trying to think of ways non-MS browsers could turn the MS tide. Does this make any sense?

    -Monte Hurd
    Systems Architect
    Starphire Technologies