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Opera Browser Beta Adds Voice, More
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005. Opera and IBM have partnered on XHTML+Voice (X+V) technology for several years, co-announcing a Multimodal Browser and Toolkit early in 2003."
Opera - Closed Source
Firefox - Open Source
Firefox: 1 Opera: 0
Opera - $$$
Firefox - Free beer, Free speech
Firefox: 2 Opera: 0
Opera - Fast
Firefox - Not as fast
Firefox: 2 Opera: 1
Opera - Very large initial footprint
Firefox - Tiny footprint
Firefox: 3 Opera: 1
Opera - Very long time between updates and releases
Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes
Firefox: 4 Opera: 1
Opera - Little setup required on first install
Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want
Firefox: 4 Opera: 2
Opera - Blocks popups
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox: 5 Opera: 2
Opera - Rendering problems on some pages
Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft)
Firefox: 6 Opera: 2
Anyone think of any other important criteria I'm missing?
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