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Opera 7 for Mac OS X Preview Released
apetime writes "A preview of Opera 7 for Mac OS X has finally been released. The new version brings Mac Opera up to date with the latest Windows and Linux releases, including the Presto rendering engine, Opera Mail client, Opera Chat client for IRC, and integration with Mac OS X's Keychain and Address Book. After fears of cancellation when Safari came out, this is great news for recent switchers and Opera fans, and another great browser choice for Mac users."
Now 'a days innovation is coming from Mozilla - not Netscape or IE.
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Take, for example, Slashdot itself. Try viewing it in several different browsers. Everyone I know find that Opeara and IE tie for first place in making the site look good, with Mozilla/Netscape 6+ as a close second, but Konqueror as a distant third.
First flaw... you're saying it's possible for /. to look good. It's easy to use once you figure it out, no question, but the designers completely ignored aesthetics (which I'm fine with.)
Second, more important flaw... IE, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari render /. exactly the same for me, with the only difference being that I don't see ads while using Safari. Safari handles all the pages I visit well enough to certainly never think there's a flaw in the way it's doing things.
Opera, besides its excellent rendering engine, also has the tabbed interface working in its favor.
As does Safari...
Opera lets you reopen the browser after a crash or application close and have all the pages that were open at the time of the crash or close.
I've used this feature in the past and hated it. To begin with Safari crashes so rarely its essentially never, and on top of that I'm not sure I want to have everything I was looking at open automatically for the next user if I was too lazy to close all the windows before quitting. Sure, some people will say I was looking at pr0n or whatever, but there is plenty of private stuff accessable through a browser (email, for one). This is a feature that's nice for a small group, definitely not for me.
I'll take Opera and Mozilla over the others any day.
Safari isn't perfect, there's room to grow yet. But the only one of your arguments that held water is a niche feature, and you completely ignored rendering speed, actual browser speed (Mozilla can be downright sluggish... Firefox is pretty nice though), how well it conforms to Apple HIG and whether or not it uses the OS graphic libraries (I'm an OS X themer, so that's important to me and everyone else who applies system themes).
After taking the time to look through the new Opera for a good comparison to Safari so I could write this, I've become more convinced than ever that I picked the right browser as my default.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Though I'm not entirely sure what the Opera 7 browser brings to the Mac world as I'm mostly a PC user, nor could I say how it stacks up against Safari, but I can vouch for it's performance on Windows.
1. It's VERY customizable. Aside from the hundreds of skins you can download... Buttons, toolbars, panels, etc., can be dragged anywhere you want. There's even a window you can open with all the possible buttons that you can drag'n drop onto where you want them on thr browser. This may not be as much of a selling point for Mac users (i.e. iTunes brushed metal look vs. Winamp's nearly unlimited possibilities for it's GUI/appearance), but being able to alter the browser to fit my needs, instead of having to learn to adapt to the browser's limitations, was very much appreciated.
2. Want to search for something on google? Type "g query" in the toolbar, and you're here. Amazon? "z query". Ebay? "e query". I can barely program, but even an idiot like me figured out how to alter a few lines of code so "t query" gave me the results at thesaurus.com for a word I needed synonyms for.
3. DAMN GOOD implementation of mouse gestures--which of course are highly customizable. I can open windows in the background, open links in new windows, go back a couple pages, with the quickest of movements. I barely even touch the navigation buttons.
4. This is what F12 quickly lets you do.
5. It's frickin' FAST.
6. I can turn off images/stylesheets with a quick click.
7. Userful for when web designing: Opera shows current size of window in it's title bar. Also, checking if a page's code is validated can be accessed by hitting ctrl-alt-v.
I dunno about Opera being better than Adobe. You forget that Opera whined about Safari when it came out.
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I bought one of the most expensive machines from Apple, upgraded to latest "Panther" etc, now using latest Safari....
Man I tell you, its the only app in OS X I try to stay away. If Opera guys fix Java 1.3.x lockdown issue, I will buy it as I did in my windows days.
Yes, Apple codes great stuff, completely "pro" but believe even not giving user chance to use other engine rather than Google makes me mad.
The point is, as we like Apple, OS X we don't HAVE TO like Safari. I am one of them.