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Microsoft to Pay AOL $750M in Settlement

aoteoroa writes "Microsoft will pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AOL on behalf of its subsidiary Netscape last year, the companies said Thursday. At first blush the deal looks good, but I can't help but wonder how a deal that ties AOL to IE again will negatively impact my favorite web browser." Here's a news.com story that also covers it. Is the browser war over? If so, it sure was anticlimactic.

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  1. Re:Yep, they're over. by a8f11t18 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    There is, logically enough, people actually pay money for
    opera, you know.. they dont simply use it because its nonfree haha :p

    why you should use opera and not firebird

    -half the size, and quicker and slicker

    -customizable smart & fast mouse gestures Firebird
    plugins only can hope to match

    -slicker tabs implementation with visual changer
    and better keyboard operability

    -thoughtful window management whether you browse
    MDI, SDI, tabbed or a combination thereof

    -superb sidebars that ought to make Firebird ashamed

    -better, more extensive options for GUI customization,
    and unlike Firebird it's of course fully drag-and-drop

    -spatial navigation & excellent customizable keyboard
    shortcuts for easy keyboard-only control & navigation

    -more customizable for end-users out-of-box, and for
    the more experienced users there are simple ini files

    -status bar can auto-hide away from sight when not needed,
    and as all bars in opera more customizable than those in FB

    -customizable multiple adress bar and field web searching

    -easy skinning with user customizable colour schemes

    -more accessible zooming and unlike Firebird also works
    on images and other elements

    -contextual functionality like lookups in search engines &
    dictionary, translation, paste & go, go to URL, and more

    -Session management with crash recovery which can also be
    used for multiple homepages

    -notes functionality that is handy for a number of things
    & integrated with mail client

    -customizable cache handling

    -innovative & unique light-weight mail client with quick-reply

    -a little better download manager with quick-download function

    -multiple user style sheets with good built-in accessibility
    options, and uhm, commodore 64

    -fast forward & rewind

    -can display photo files on the Web in a slideshow

    -quick-deletion of all sorts of private data

    -supports w3c compliant web navigation bar functionality

    -customizable auto-reload coupled with good reload options

    -Great fullscreen mode, and also includes small-screen rendering

    -offline, more accessible documentation, and not some hack from a third party site

    -can turn images on and off on-fly through button or keyboard

    -scroll bars can be turned on and off

    -can show links in tooltips and toolbars, handy when status bar is on auto-hide

    Otherwise it does what Firebird does.. it has good privacy options, good cookie and popup handling, a password manager, good standards support etc.. etc.. the only things I feel Firebird does better is type-ahead find (that opera lacks, although it does have an option for in-line find but it's not the same), and that you can schedule notifications for bookmarks.

    Actually you only have to take a look at the menus of both programs.. Firebird's look deserted, and it looks much like a raped version of Mozilla if you ask me.. Mozilla has much better functionality and customizability than Firebird, but unfortunately, it's a complete pig to use.