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Which is Better, Firefox or Opera?
Roblimo writes "Firefox and Opera are the two most popular cross-platform Web browsers. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Kris Shaffer tested them side-by-side on SUSE Linux 9.1, Mac OS X Panther, and Windows 2000, and decided that your choice may depend more on what you *do* with your browser than anything else, unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source."
Internet Explorer? It rules! You know if you want to do banking and stuff. ;)
This
I'm an Opera fan (you wanna fight about it?) and I was eager to read this article. Am I the only one who felt it ended pretty abruptly, without actually covering anything? All TFA covered was look-and-feel, RSS, and a couple of little things like ad blocking and Opera's Quick Prefs.
He didn't touch Notes, of the panels, or the hot bar, or the way they each handle tabs, cookies, the Wand, granularity of popup blocking, proxy servers, the Transfers window (and how Opera/Firefox handle downloads in general), the user-customizable CSS and link style in Opera (does Firefox have something comparable? I wish he covered it so I would know!), Opera's Zoom, quick enabling-disabling of images, methods of caching (including Opera's "delete private data" button), Opera's in-line search functionality, saving "sessions", crash recovery, little neat things like making a page printer friendly with one button...I could go on all day!
I mean no offense to Mr. Shaffer, but this article is really lacking in content. I expected something more along the lines of the 30 Days to Becoming an Opera Lover site (which is for version 7) in terms of depth. Very disappointing. I hope that Slashdot's Opera/Firefox lovers can at least turn this into a nice discussion in the comments. I missed a ton of features, but you can use my little rant up there as a starting point.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Opera - Ad supported Firefox - Free take your pick
No stupid ads.
If these walls could talk they'd probly still ignore me. --MF DOOM
If they did, they'd have a cross-platform browser and it could remain closed source.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Opera!
No, Firefox!
Yeah. Firefox. Well, there you have it.
Each browser has its uses.
Saying one is better then the other is silly.
However saying both are better then IE is truthful
Both have their merits and shortcomings. I believe no objective "better" exists.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Did the Opera CEO have to go for a swim?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
*old fashioned news ticker noise in the background*
;-)
This just in, this just in, in determining on which product in a category is best it depends on what the person/user does with said product...this just in, this just in....
unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source
People who refuse to use a useful piece of software simply because it isn't open source make about as much sense as an Ethiopian refusing food because it isn't Kosher. It fits your needs, use it.
IS, Opera, Safari are all commercial, so they can't be compared if you're ignoring commercial products.
antipaucity
Am I the only one who gets pissed off at these "head-to-head" comparisons that don't have the guts to announce a winner? I musta read about 20 for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and one of them predicted a winner (PS3). I don't care if they are wrong, I just like an article to be concluded. None of this "well, they are both good" crap.
It's simple.....FireFox
Formats pages better than Opera and it's free.
What more could you ask for?
Mozilla is better than either of them.
Outside of the ads in Opera, I think it's more of a matter of opinion. I prefer Firefox, because Opera runs slow on this computer.
I don't want ads when I'm browsing let alone built into my browser. Firefox for me!
Wait a minute... two most popular cross-platform browsers? Huh? I could have SWORE I had a copy of IE sitting in the applications folder on my mac. I guess it's only cross-platform if it crosses to your particular platform of choice, huh?
Firefox because it is 100% open source, free software.
Which is the better text browser?
Also, which is the better Operating System: Mac OSX or FreeBSD?
Who makes the better chipset? AMD or Intel (or Via, or IBM?)
Which is better: three button mouse or a two button mouse (or a one button mouse)?
'Which is better?' is the wrong question. The answer is 'The one with the larger marketshare' regardless of what the actual question may be - as this is the only thing that really matters.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
long time ago, mouse pointer over link showed the full url you were soon going to click on.
This was a really nice feature I valued many years ago.
I also use it all the time on fbsd. But lately more and more firefox. Via a binary package because the bitch does not compile from ports.
Boy are you asking for it. Never begin any question of slashdot with 'which is better?' Where did I leave my flame thrower?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Although both are wonderful products, I always found that Opera renders pages in a sloppy way, as well as it doesn't always respect w3c recommendations (even in its last release).
As pointed out, I'd continue using Firefox even if it was "worse" than Opera (because it's Free Software), but this lack of consistency by Opera is another heavy drawback.
42.
Firefox has gestures, popup blocking, ad blocking, site scripting through GreaseMonkey, tabs, themes, a million other user written extensions that can enhance your web browser, strong community support, fast updates for security fixes. And it's free, free as in beer, free as in speech. What else could you ask for ?
Operfox!
Or is that Firera?
This is a sig. Deal with it.
I am a fan as in fanatic of Opera. It is my favorite program by far. It took a while to discover all that it can do but nothing else out there comes close. Yes there are a few sites that it has a problem with and for those I use Firefox or IE.
The other side-advantage to using Opera for visiting less-than reputable sites is that chances are the site doesn't know how to exploit Opera, as it's (sadly) not really on the general populus's radar screen. I've waded though stuff that would require hip boots with Opera and came out smelling like a rose.
True, if it were open source it would be that much more wonderful, but as for closed-source programs, IMHO it's an example of a company Doing It Right.
Chris Knight is my hero.
The only thing that counts is how well pornsites come up and render! JEEZ! where have you guys been? *smile*
ive been using opera since 4.x.. but only on-and-off.. it wasnt until 6.0 that i switched. 6.0 was amazing, as is 7, havent upgraded to 8 yet (i customized 7 so much im scared to upgrade.. same with 6 but i eventually did it)
i cant get used to firefox.. it has tabs but it still likes to open new windows sometimes.. opera is ALWAYS self contained in its own window
plus i think i have ocd and i hate change
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this article, this posting, or the comments regarding them
it's hard to choose
come on fhqwhgads
Oh, and btw, the article was pretty lame... it should have compared at least a few use cases like "develop/test web pages" or "read webmail and view flash content" or "glaze your eyes at pr0n" (ok maybe not that one, tho it's probably the widest usecase for browsing there is).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"No matter who wins....IE loses!"
Based on this evidence, I would say Firefox has the upper hand.
Funny that he chooses FF over Opera because of the AdBlock extension. Especially considering that, not only does Opera not have AdBlock, but it throws in a few banners of its own.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
emacs is clearly superior to vi
Oh wait... Nevermind
it'd make slightly more sense if he'd said halal instead of Kosher (Ethiopia=borderline Islamic, Kosher is the Jewish food guide.. not that its much different), as the Qu'ran says that eating non-Halal food out of necessity to avoid starvation or sickness is no sin in God's eyes.
Disclaimer, IANAM - I just read the book out of curiosity
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
...and this is wrong...how?
Emacs.
If Opera had a true Adblock equivilent (regex capable would be nice) it would be enough for me to switch. Even better if it had the extensibility Firefox does but I could live without the other extensions but not adblock.
Interesting that he chose the most up-to-date versions (presumably firefox is listed merely as 1.0 not 1.0.x) of the browsers, but consistently used ond versions of the operating systems. Suse 9.1 has been superceded by Suse 9.3, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther by Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and Windows 2000 by Windows XP SP2. Not that the versions of the OS within a platform is going to have a big impact, and presumably, the platform itself, but it just seems glaring to me. Kind of like testing MS Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org 2.0 on Windows 98 and RedHat 9 with wine
Free MacMini
...unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source."
So, you're not willing to consider software because it's not open source? Even when it might be (*gasp*)... better?
I love Opera. It's a sleek, fast, well designed browser with a terrific user interface. I'm also a full-time Linux user; while i like and support the open source "movement", i do it because it's simply a better OS (for me) than the alternatives. The price is right, of course, but that's not the main reason i chose it. At all. Just chose what's best for your needs. Then see if it's worth it's price. Opera is, for me.
I also like Firefox a lot. It's Mozilla sans-the-bloat, and renders pages very well. Still, it's much slower than Opera and the user interfase still needs polish. It does have some perks i'd love to see in Opera though (like AdBlock), but overall i keep gravitating to Opera. Specially because of the memory footprint and interfase (yes, i know FF supports things like mouse gestures via plugins, and that's why they are no good. Opera was built with that stuff in mind and integrates them perfectly).
You are wrong. They are both free of charge. If you don't want ads, then Opera is not free of charge but then again you weren't being very specific.
Internet Explorer 5.x was available until very recently as a free download for SCO Unix too. I believe IE6 is Windows-only though.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
My company makes me use IE, you insensitve clod.
There are partial, unsatisfactory solutions to these problems with Opera, but why bother when Firefox makes it so easy? Same reason why I don't use Konqueror either.
LET THE HOLY WARS BEGIN!!!!!!
Dirty Pirate Hooker
With or without a side of ass-nuggets?
Notice that as Firefox and Opera compete for the lead, and Safari, Camino, Mozilla, and Konqueror speed behind, IE is not even in the race. It's been lapped five times while it was in the pit, and the driver just woke up.
What does it have that Firefox doesn't that is worth the expense?
OS issues aside.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
think either is better - but my personal choice is firefox because it renders web pages beautifully and is very fast. It is also free - which helps. But I contributed to the mozilla org foundation so I guess it isn't free in my case - but I would still choose it because the way it renders web pages.
I do like opera but why would I want to pay for something when there is something free and better (in my opinion) available. Kind of like why would I pay for windows when I can get Linux.
I'm not sure about FF vs O, but I know that vi is better than emacs.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Con's:
I really like Opera, except for adblock of course, and mostly because of its weak client certificate handling. On my work I have to use 3 or 4 different client certificates for the Intranet and 2 more for external sites. Most browsers select a client certificate to present to the server automatically, and only offer a selection box if there is more than 1 possibility.
:).
Opera however insists of me having to select from all 6 certificates, often they are presented such that I cannot distinguish between them. Also after that the cancel button is selected by default.
I am very sure that Opera developers never use client certificates or they would not put up with this horrible handling. Change requests have been ignored under the pretence of security, which is absolutely nonsense (I deal with client certificates professionally, I know at least in this area what I'm talking about
Vi or emacs?
Gnome or KDE?
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
He's one of many in the "Fandom of the Opera"!
Get it? "FANDOM"...of...the...opera?
Ok, never mind, sorry.
My wife got tired of Internet Explorer crashing and taking the operating system with it, so I bought her a copy of Opera for her Windows machine. She's very happy with it. I use Safari on a Mac laptop as my primary browser, but I maintain an extensive collection of other browsers to allow me to test websites. I even use lynx from time to time.
No, not really.
/.).
A piece of software being open source adds value to a software in and off itself. You simply can do things with this piece of software you can't do with closed source software.
Additinally, your attempt at a comparison was pretty stupid, as this is a discussion of opera(closed source) or firefox(open source). So there clearly exists a choice, whereas you try to make it sound like either use Opera, or don't browse the web at all (oh the quite on
It seems to pop up quicker than Firefox, and I don't have the ads like Opera.
I use Mozilla Firefox every day... I am just a huge fan, to me it has no BS, it's just plain and simple, and pretty darn fast. I've been happier with it now that it displays literally all web pages correctly, and even though it crashes sometimes on my Windows 2k machine, it doesn't bother me much. I prefer it because it is a free replacement for IE6, and far far better. I mean, not to bash Microsoft, (we all know how fun that can be), but honestly in my opinion IE sucks in comparision. Not only a lack in features compared to Firefox, but it looks and feels like crap. Personally, I have never used Opera myself (even though there is a free trial version). I don't see a reason why, because I enjoy Firefox so much. And I pay enough to my ISP, that I don't see me purchasing a internet browser in the future. Also it says in the review: "The differing Opera shortcuts and menus are not difficult to learn, but they may be a stumbling block for users beginning with Opera or going back and forth between Opera and another browser." I would rather get used to the quote-on-quote basic and most used menu system for my browser, because when you are working cross-platform it obviously is much easier to get used to the same menus (which also is good for business because of a productivity gain). Again, my two cents (:
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Since Safari was launched I have not looked back. When my bank did not support Safari... I changed banks. Go... Bank of America!
While I understand the sentiment and am even somewhat sympathetic to it, I think it ends up being close-minded and I am not sure what good can come of that.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Don't forget Maxthon. It's not cross-platform, but it's much better on the easy-to-use and comes-full-featured counts. It's the one I use, and I've tried Firefox for long periods of time with extensive extensioning.
(I hear Opera doesn't block ads, so I'm not really interested. Is this correct?)
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
imagine that.. the software a person should use depends on what they do and other preferences they have.... shocking.
Opera costs are USD 39 for the desktop and USD 29 for mobile.
I still don't understand why someone will choose pay for a browser.
There are good free/opensource options. I think Firefox is the best choice. Why will I pay for a browser?
ajf
programmable regex expression based ad blocking just makes sense. getting rid of porn ads, casino ads, and body part enlargement ads is so easy with firefox, it alone is reason enough to make the switch.
now opera just rubs me the wrong way... think about it, if people actively seek out ad block solutions, what makes them think sticking a rotating ad in a browser would entice people to switch over? aren't there other more effective way for them to make their software free?
someone who deters from philiosophical choice because of conveinance is nothing but an oportunist who would sell there own mother if the deal was good enough.
Why? How much are you offering for her?
Last time I checked Opera (8.0) had these problems:
- No XSLT support - CSS is not the only stylesheet language out there and FF in IE both support it.
- No support for building arbitary DOM trees for in-browser XML generation (also supported by both FF and IE).
- It took seven tries to succesfuly import a certificate. Sometimes it would show up in the cert list, only to disappear after a restart.
- It has no support for digital form signing. (FF provides crypto.signText function and there are numerous free components available for doing this in IE)
- When using SSL with cert based authentication, everything got slow. Really sllooowww. It took 30 seconds to load a page over LAN and several seconds for JavaScript events to fire.
- JS errors are completely useles. They basically say: opps, something went wrong.
I'd be glad to hear about solutions to the problems listed above, but until then, I'm convinced that FF (and even IE) is a much better choice than Opera.
My biggest problem trying to use Opera was simply the overwhelming amount of stuff it does. All that stuff you mentioned- Notes, Transfers, etc, I wasn't even aware of.
Opera seems to have a lot of bang for the (big) buck, which is good, I just wish there was an easy way to use it all.
R(k)
The Jewish policy is the same. There are three sins which one should die rather than commit (idolatry, murder, incest) -- otherwise, saving a life overrides all prohibitions and requirements.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wow, I'm getting disappointed in the Apple Slashdot zealots.
Firefox isnt at its best out of the box, it just has the potential to be; Its all of the many plugins that makes it the best, so each user can pick and choose what they want to see in their "best" web browser.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
Nathan's blog
Nice logical fallacy you got there. Dazzle us with another one, Socrates.
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
Let's cut to the chase. We don't need no stinkin' comments!
[nt]
The reason there are so many extensions is the basic design of firefox supports extensions. Firefox is build using XUL, Javascript and XPCOM. This makes features easy to add. The Firefox Architecure is great. Watch it grow.
is better than all of these !l
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~jcorneli/a/elisp/nero.e
Opera was my primary browser for quite a while, and it is faster/slicker with a better features set (especially MDI tabbing).
But once you escape the comparison on pages that work, the stark reality is that many pages don't work.
I switched to firefox a few months back and while not as slick as Opera, it is good enough, and for the pages I visit gives me the better experience. So I can do my banking for instance.
Since switching to Firefox, I seldom have to call up an IE session anymore.
Also plugins offer fucntionality I can't live without, like selective flash blocking.
Pre-empting those who say it is the fault of poor web coding and not Opera, in that some pages block or serve poor code to Opera.
Yes that is correct, But it just doesn't matter! It doesn't matter where you point the finger, the result is an inferior browsing experience.
I'll try Opera again (if ever) when they get better spoofing modes, better flash blocking.
Actually, on this linux box (Ubuntu, using Gnome) I have Kazehakase set as my default browser...mostly because it loads far faster than either of them--less than one second to open even when not cached. It's Gecko based and uses Gtk, so integrates well with my system (also nice when using Xfce on less powerful systems).
It's easy to set up to keep a searchable full-text history (with thumbnails), plus has a few features Firefox lacks without extensions...session saving, toggle between multiple proxies and mouse gestures to name a few. Its zoom enlarges images like Opera's does, unlike Firefox's which just does text. It is a bit unpolished still, however, but it's a neat project:
http://kazehakase.sourceforge.jp/
saving a life overrides all prohibitions and requirements.
So I can worship another god before JHVH, as long as the other god is going to save someone's life?
just just render, but which is better for stripping the pics and vids off the sites!
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
The browser and OS battle seems to be to geeks what the Ford vs Chevy battle is to rednecks.... anyone want to buy a "Calvin pissing on the IE logo" window sticker?
Well, I love spyware, so neither will work well for me.
(Actually, that's kind of true...three quarters of my freelancing is spyware removal)
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
Personally, I prefer IE (ya ya ... whatever), but do have Firefox installed for when I do some web dev. stuff.
Most people (average joe schmoe) probably could careless if a browser, or any other application is open source or not (and for those who do care if it's open source or not, how many of them can actually do anything with it?), but what matters is price.
One of the reasons why IE dominated Netscape in the early years (when you had to actually pay for IE. and Netscape was free), is because they ended up giving it away to ISPs and off of their website for free (and yes, they later ended up bundling it).
The reason why I don't use Opera, is because it costs money, which usually I don't have a problem with paying, but when there's so many other options out there, why would I want to pay, when something like IE or FF works (almost) just as well?
Only as long as the god doesn't have an idol, otherwise it would be idolatry which is one of the ones he listed. Or maybe just as long as you worship the other god directly and not via its idol.
I would agree that in my experience Opera and Firefox are pretty competitive with one another, but one big difference that didn't seem to get much discussion was the price. Unless things have recently changed, you have to either pay for Opera or have it show you banner ads. If the browsers are otherwise comparable, that difference would seem to tip the balance in the direction of Firefox. I know it did for me.
I used to use Opera 6. I even paid for the ad-free version I liked it so much. The interface was good, and most of all it was fast, even on my slow machine. Eventually I switched to Mozilla/Firefox when it became more stable and seemed to work better with the websites I frequented. I really did like Opera quite a bit, but now that I'm back in grad school and every dollar counts, I can't see going back to paying for a browser if I can get a roughly equivalent one for free. I don't mind banner ads that much and used the ad supported one for a while, but I just found I couldn't give up the screen space that the ads took up.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Did the Opera CEO swim across the Atlantic yet? If not, Firefox is better.
I really don't think there is any such thing. Open source is simply a design strategy and licensing policy. Now, I could understand a claim that someone wouldn't use software because it's not Free Software, but not because it's not open source, there's really no associated ethics with it. The philosophy is simply that "With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow". Are there really people who wouldn't use software simply because it doesn't use this development strategy?
How do you like your flame wars? Holy, or Trollish?
Which browser serves up pr0n pages faster and allows you to remove any history of your 'activities' easier?
And by "this wont feature will not work..." I mean "this feature will not work..."
That's the last time I post without previewing, promise.
- shazow
This article is trash, as much as I like Firefox, it's a bit unfair to opera users "OPERA'S OFF THE TABLE BECAUSE IT'S NOT OPENSOURCE!"
I'm an opensource advocate, but I admit, some opensource shit is not all perfected, firefox is great, though it could be faster.
MUCH FASTER. like *clickdoneloading*
If you don't know what is in it, why are you running it? :P
I use mozilla, opera ,firefox in that order of pref.
And there are a lot of IE sites. I usually let them know the are not standard complient.
If it screws up all three browsers it's the site's problem not mine.
If I need the site (like Dish network) I bitch at them every time I go there, if I don't need it, I just avoid it.
Lynx(browser.org) schools them both. Especially in the way in which it views ads graphics!~
to tell us that both are good and some people will prefer one to the other? didn't we all already know that?
... bastion of journalism. From the first paragraph: (emphasis mine)
I see the editorial control on NewsForge is similar to Slashdot's.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Opera has some hellaciously cool ideas, but it's flat-out buggier than the Firefox project, which, while still imperfect, is much more responsive to bug reports and seems to exhibit an overall higher level of competence in its code. DHTML in particular is practically unusable in Opera thanks to the poor quality of its Javascript interpreter. Add to that the ease with which non-trivial extensions (many of which duplicate Opera's hellaciously cool ideas) can be added to Firefox, and I see no reason whatsoever to use Opera in any but the most specialized environment (I hear it's quite popular for embedded applications due to its relatively small footprint).
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
http://ha.ckers.org/imagecrash.html
Haven't tried anything else.
Here's the HTML:
a) We have more browsers than Ethiopians have food, we can afford to pick and choose.
b) Kosher is a religious thing. Would a truly religious person rather live now and go to hell later or die now and go straight to heaven? I'd say the latter.
I've only seen one tab catcher in Firefox, and it doesn't work so well. Opera's intention is to keep everything well maintained in one window, from IRC to browsing to downloads. I also enjoy the speed of Opera compared to Firefox.
The only issue I have with Opera is the customization options in specific features like IRC. I can't seem to find the preferences for IRC, like sounds and so forth. Other than that, I have no problem with Opera. Hell, I even like the CEO's wacky devotion to it.
Slashdot has become the Society for Installing Linux (or FOSS) on Top of Other Things. "Today we saw Linux installed on no less than three other things." It is all rather a bit silly.
Technically, it also depends on what is implied by "idolatry." The Baptist conception of idolatry happens to include "putting other things above God," which in this case would include worshipping other gods.
IANAB, but I went to a Baptist school for the great majority of my primary, middle, and high schooling.
This thread is useless without pics.
Oops. Wrong website. Sorry.
This space for rent.
The Ethiopian food example is incredibly biased. People need food. People don't need software.
A better analogy: People who refuse to use closed-source software are like those who refuse to buy products from companies that damage the environment/run sweatshops/ban unions/etc.
Even if a product is better from a functional standpoint, a consumer may not consider it better than another product for a variety of other reasons. For instance, a friend won't use Quicken. The product may be best of class but when he considers Intuit's EULA and privacy concerns, he'd rather go to a lesser functional product.
Considering whether or not a product is OSS is one way to say "I like a future where a majority of software is OSS and I want to help make that happen". It's standing up for a principle you believe in, even if you may have to suffer a bit (using beta-quality software or software with fewer features).
I do web programming. The fact is, Opera is less compatible with IE in terms of Javascript and rendering than Firefox. Firefox is almost 100% compatible with IE in those respects.
My local bank's online checking/savings management as well as every credit card I have. It just works. Please let me know which banks DON'T work with FireFox so I can avoid them if they send me a sweet 0% balance transfer deal. Thanks,
Blar.
gay ass post. Which is better? Leave it to some OSS zealots start some stupid thread about something being better. You don't even include the browser that has 90% of the market share.
...which one has 'vi' built in and which one has 'emacs' built in again?
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
(say "security" and watch the firefox crowd blush) I hate to say it, but you have to be a real nerd to appreciate the miniscule differences between browers. All the new features do is detract from the web content. (after all, the web is about content, it's not a fashion show)
I will argue that content is king, and the ability to access that content without a hassle is the only selling point that matters. Look at google. It's a dirt simple interface, you type some keywords and you get what you want, no hassle.
From my preferred stat provider, IE is actually back UP in marketshare to 91%. I think that this reinforces my concept that amount of hassle, not # of features, is what sells.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I'd use it. But Opera runs well.
Best Slashdot Co
Actually Kosher made perfect sense and I'm sure it was intended.
There is a long history of Judaism in Ethiopia.
Go read.
"He'd already RATHER be bowhunting!" -Max Filmont
Firefox coz it provides just what I need and nothing more. If I need to install stuff that I like, I can install extensions. It is also not tied into the OS so I have no problem getting rid of it, if I want to. Lastly, the security hole patching cycle is pretty impressive , one example being just last week.
I mean really, I don't use explorer cause it does suck, I like opera because it IS faster than Explorer and Firefox...
To discount Opera just because it is closed source (but you can still get a free version) just shows the attitude that drives most of slashdot. Our way or the highway...
Why? Well, an article like this usually starts a flamefest. And Firefox, just by the name, should do better in the flames...
"But there is still stuff missing, such as reorganizing tabs (supposedly taken care of next ff version). "
:)
.part, and delete them if the file fails to transfer fully. Redownloading a several hundred meg file is irritating, so I find I use wget just to avoid going through firefox whenever possible."
:)
:)
miniT extension does that
"The quick prefs thing is a really big thing for me, but for some reason firefox users don't care."
Care to elaborate what quick prefs are? The ability to adjust preferences somewhere different than tools->options? I really am clueless...
"FF doesn't let you control cookies as easily as you are able to in opera. "
Have you tried cookie culler extension?
"The disabling of images is something I used a lot more than I thought I would. Saving sessions was awesome. I'm sure there's an extension for that somewhere."
To block _anything_ you can use RiP (remove it permanently), and you can use adblock to blocks images (specifically ads, but any other image too). Saving sessions is achieved through 'session saver'
"Crash recovery was nifty, though crashes were rare."
Session saver also recovers your browser from crashes.
"Opera also overrides the replacing of the status bar text, so you always know what you are clicking on before you click on it."
Firefox has an inbuilt 'annoyance eliminator' that does the the same thing.
"And the transfer window is a big pile of crap in mozilla. Seriously that would probably be my number one gripe. That and its habit of saving files as
Okay, I'll give you that one =)
"Another thing that aggravates me is when I'll open a bunch of links in separate tabs to read in a few moments, then 2 minutes later a window pops up saying the server couldn't be reached. But when I go over to the tab, the url bar is blank, so I have no idea which links I clicked on that couldn't be reached. In Opera, even if the page doesn't load, the url bar still has the location you tried to visit, so you can see if the link was typoed or if you even care in the first place."
This is EXTREMELY aggravating in firefox and made me exhibit great bouts of anger. Until I found the 'show failed URL' extension. Now it behaves like you'd expect it to.
"Opera never registers right clicks on web pages that pop up those copyright notices because it interferes with mouse gestures. There's no way to disable that in firefox that I'm aware of without finding the javascript options in prefs."
The extension you're looking for in this case is called 'allow right click'
"Lastly, I hate that firefox doesn't obey normal unix copy and paste rules. There's no option to right click in a text field and delete everything in it without highlighting the text that is already there. In opera you just click in the box and type ctrl+U. This is particularly annoying when I'm messing with phpmyadmin."
That's the only gripe I don't know an extension for. But I'm sure one's available
In conclusion, as long as you familiarize yourself with all the available extensions, firefox is great. But the fact that you have to manually add them, can be either a pain or a pleasure, depending on whether you like tweaking
Personally I only ask boyfriends for a Porsche and their credit card, not diamonds.
Diamonds are so passe (aka. poor resale value).
. . . then you better not be running KDE.
I tried Opera when it first came out - a light fast browser that fit on half a floppy disk, and was good competition to Netscape. I liked Netscape's user interface better, so I wasn't going to pay for the non-demo version of Opera, but it really was small and fast and worked well on underpowered machines. I haven't actually used modern versions of Opera, but I gather it's no longer small and minimalist.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Opera is my browser of choice because it does two indspensible things:
1) Remembers webs sites that are being browsed; thus if I go home, or Windows crashes, I am brought back to where I was. Extremely useful for reading articles for any subject.
2) My wife from Beijing just jetissoned IE for Opera because of its reading feature!!! She can have it read articles and listen to the pronunciation (mechanical sounding but correct pronunciation). This is invaluable for a non-English speaker.
Many features are not used by me, but I am going to see if I can link it to my Fusemail account to consolidate mail AND browsing.
My major complaint is the sites that refuse to recognize it as IE.
"what are you saying? people should just sin to stay alive? I'm not fully familiar with the do's and dont's of most religions but your statements seems very ignorant to me..."
FF and Opera don't aren't religions yet, but http://www.io.com/~dierdorf/emacsvi.html
if the Churches of Emacs and Vi now live in peace, there's hope for everyone!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Opera is the only browser I found that doesn;t do a new page lookup and cache sync when pressing the back button. The gain in speed is considerable.
I know of no one who uses Opera, but, then again, I don't get out of my parents' basement too often.
Blarf.
Ask and ye shall receive. I'll be sure to look into these, thanks.
...opera is off the table because it costs money. :P
Considering just how much money keeping "legal" with software sucks out of the company budget on a yearly basis (it used to be bi-yearly, but now Big Apps are shifting to variants on the subscription model...), more paperwork and POs for a web browser - when all the machines already have one - just can't be justified.
Quick prefs enables access to common configuration options (cookies on/off, javascript on/off etc) via an easily accessible "quick" menu. Great for when you're diving into a site that you know is a steaming pile of javascript-ridden cookie-dealing crap but don't like browsing that way all the time.
Session saver doesn't offer Opera's level of startup options last time I checked. You know:
a) Resume from last time
b) start from my home page
c) start with a blank page
etc.
Hence if you get stuck in a browser-bashing page due to clicking the wrong link in Slashdot you may end up with a nice saved session of "I'm looking at gay porn!" that it troublesome to get rid of. Not a problem in opera.
And the Firefox download manager sure does suck.
Plus you missed his point about disabling images. Opera has a button for this in the corner of the browser window, which toggles on and off image loading at will. An old feature, I know, but it's still good when you're in a hurry on text-based pages.
I think you maybe need to spend more time with Opera before proclaiming extensions are the solution to all of its feature advantages.
People are allowed to have value systems that don't make logical sense to you, just like you're completely entitled to disagree.
For a lot of OSS converts there is a (somewhat protracted) faze where they reject anything not ideologically in-line with their beliefs (I'm speaking from personal experience, but this is probably in-line with a number of other Slashdot users). This is perfectly natural.
The next step is realizing that freedom (as in GNU) *can* co-exist with proprietary (and dozens of others) ideologies and that BOTH/ALL serve a purpose. Not everyone arrives at this second conclusion (nor do they need to) but getting bent out of shape because someone disagrees with your own idealogical decisions (whether you or I for that matter believe ourselves to be correct is largely irrelevant...whats it change?) seems *just* as silly as the post you were responding too.
Quack, quack.
Actually Kosher made perfect sense and I'm sure it was intended.
I reckon it wasn't intended - I'd say it was just an example of a people who might stave and just an example of a reason to not eat something.
I have no idea what's up with your machines, but I use FF on machines as slow as a p2-266, and I have no such issues.
I've been recommending FF to my clients since pre-1.0 and no one has reported issues similar to yours, FWIW.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
However saying both are better then IE is truthful
both are better at complying with standards. However, there are still pages that don't work or look right in firefox/opera w/o tricking the site into thinking you are using IE.
Just yesterday, I had to open IE (I usually use Firefox) to run McAfee Freescan (which uses an ActiveX control, I think).
ALL THREE browsers have their uses on the platforms they support.
In my opinion, Opera is better. It's smaller, faster, and has more features. The feature I find most useful is user style sheets. You can add a list of your own personal style sheets to the ones that come with opera 7 and up... In effect, you can skin web pages. Look at my Journal entries for a /. style sheet.
Mozilla's User style sheet is in a folder and you have to change the style manually, and I think the styles just cascade together with the authors, instead of overriding them. And that's if you can get it working. Right at this moment I can't get it to work at all. I think the spec says that for usability, a user should be able to override the authors styles.
Though most of Operas frequent changes are reversible, some of the changes I find annoying. Previously you could disable Iframes, but it's not the same now. The browser still accesses the net to download the iframe even when you're offline.
it's not even so much that opera costs money (which is enough for me to ignore it), but the free version has ADWARE in it. adware. f*ck them! a trial version or something, but not adware. that's just sh*tty.
No problem, glad I could help.
Someone write a plug-in that deals with RSS feeds the same way as Opera, then the argument is over! We have a winner!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
But where can I download the HTML extension?
Why should I even bother with what others think is better. What is it with people always wanting to know from others how they should think what is the best.
What is better this or that? Who the F. cares what others think. Try it out and see for your self. It is not that if you use the one you are not able to use the other.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
totally killed whatever incentive there is to downloading their browser. Their page just looks so lame! WTF is the deal with "Super Chauncey!"
That guy in the cape is weak! Hey opera, you can keep your overpriced chauncey code.
...because both of them are better than IE!
So I can worship another god before JHVH, as long as the other god is going to save someone's life?
Well, that's rather unlikely to happen since there isn't any other god except the one God who created the universe.
"Lastly, I hate that firefox doesn't obey normal unix copy and paste rules. There's no option to right click in a text field and delete everything in it without highlighting the text that is already there. In opera you just click in the box and type ctrl+U. This is particularly annoying when I'm messing with phpmyadmin."
Simple (in Windows, dunno about Linux). Click in the box, press ctrl+a, press delete. Sure, it's one more step (3 instead of 2), but the functionality exists.
I haven't spent any time with Opera, and wasn't really bashing it nor proclaiming Firefox was better. When I said _all_ I meant all the ones he mentioned, not all in general.
Okay, so there are apparently a few which firefox didn't solve, but I when I replied I based my reply on the information the parent gave me - not having worked with Opera, I could only comment on his comment.
That being said, Opera having feature X and Firefox not having feature X, doesn't necessarily mean Opera is a better browser. With the multitude of extensions, I'm sure I can find some obscure one which is exclusive to Firefox, but, again, that means nothing, since the multitude of features are available to both browsers. Saving sessions works differently (I'm not sure I get the difference still - I can set about:blank or some homepage in tools->options, why do I need session-saver to do that? Or are you referring to starting with more than one tabs every time? I think that's also possible, though with a different extension), but it's still there.
All in all, I think the main difference between the two isn't the different features, but is the fact that Opera comes with all of them 'pre-installed' while Firefox makes you install them individually. Also, I don't have to pay for Firefox (yeah, I'm a cheap bastard - sue me).
Can't we just agree different browsers have different features suited for different people and none is inheritantly better (unless of course, we're talking about IE with *is* godawful)?
Looking at the story title, I guess not...
I tried Opera when it first came out - a light fast browser that fit on half a floppy disk, and was good competition to Netscape. I liked Netscape's user interface better, so I wasn't going to pay for the non-demo version of Opera, but it really was small and fast and worked well on underpowered machines. I haven't actually used modern versions of Opera, but I gather it's no longer small and minimalist.
It most definately not minimalist as it comes with lots of features other browsers don't have. As for small, it won't fit on a floppy but is definately smaller than either IE or Firefox (without any extensions installed). For this, you get the full browser, a mail and news client, IRC client, RSS reader, notepad, awesome customisation and heaps more.
you look at gay porn?
http://trolldot.org
When you press F12, a quick preference context menu is displayed, where you can change the options you periodically might want to change: Browser identification, GIF animation, plugins, Javascript, popup blocker settings
As for all the things you namedrop extensions for: This is built right into Opera, and it just works . There is no messing around, looking for all the extensions you need, no experimentation with mutually incompatible extension. There is no performance degradation due to installed extensions. It just works.
My current Firefox installation has a set of extensions that brings back the most essential stuff Opera has, such as user scripting, improved download manager, mouse gestures, bindings to an external source viewer, tab handling. On a newly rebooted computer, starting Opera takes 4-5 seconds. Firefox takes 45 seconds!. (And no, there's nothing "wrong" with my Windows installation: my Firefox and all extensions are up to date, my HDD is defragmented, my registry is clean. There is no spyware.)
The internets, that's where!
I only use firefox on sites that don't support opera -- aka sites that opera doesn't support
The mouse mappings are my favourite things about opera, you can quickly switch between tabs in your MRU list using the right mouse+scroll wheel and open/reload/close tabs using mouse gestures.
You can get most of these things in firefox or IE, but you have to install plugins or external programs, but it turns me off to have to set that up on every machine i ever use. Oh, and uhh, i have no trouble with ads under any browser because i block them at the system level with a nice, fat hosts file.
Uhh so, yeah, that's why i suggest you try opera (and get yourself a fat hosts file)
If you don't get a smooth ride, do you try to change the highway or your car?
Firefox has more features and more compatability and could care less why.
I used opera for years until something more usable came along. Bonus that it is free and open source.
Opera's basic UI is as straight forward as it can be: click, browse, forward/backward, bookmark and print. All the goodies are really useful but are not required to do basic things. Read parent's link of "30 Days to Becoming an Opera Lover" if you want to learn more. You'll notice Opera's transfer window the first time you download something.
I prefer: ... i don't have a Mac yet :)
Opera for Windows
Konqueror for Linux
and err
Firefox comes as a second close option on Linux though.
The frustrating thing about Konqueror - is that it won't save password unless I use that annoying KWallet, but Firefox will - and some of the plugins are pretty handy. So Firefox its a very close second option. Opera on Linux looks yuck (and guess what no voice support ! )
I first tried Opera back in the 2.x days and didn't like it as compared to Netscape of the same vintage, but kept checking back from time to time. When it got to the 4.x's I started using it a bit and by the 5.x's I started using it as my main browser. I've never paid a penny in cash for it and, admittedly, seldom click on an ad link.
I also use FF, Mozilla, Konqueror and, under duress, IE. It depends on what I'm doing with it. The main feature that keeps me coming back to Opera is the ability to reload the previous session on starting up.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I can only think of one use for IE, off the top of my head:
As a tool to access a web site in order to get a better browser.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
check this page out
After applying it's really fast=]
Keep in mind when assessing Opera that they've been the only organization to make any significant new leaps in the world of browser design for the past seven or so years. They had things like tabs, cookie management, skinnability, session management, and plugins *MANY YEARS* before FireFox was even a glint in Ben's eye. Even the whole concept of a fully customizable interface came from them. Whenever I find a neat new feature in any browser I see, I always track it back to Opera.
Don't think I'm a fanboy, though. If you want to know what I think, they're both bloated piles of shit. Opera has been practically unusable due to sixty million useless new features brought about every minor version since version five and FireFox never lived up to its competition in its infancy (Galeon <=1.2, etc.) or in modern times (Epiphany, Kazehakase, etc.).
(Also: No client side XSLT for Opera because of fear of client execution? I wonder what they think Javascript is.)
Extensions, Extensions, Extensions. Why doesn't someone make some of these features part of the main suite? Many extensions don't mesh 100% with other ones. Extensions are a great idea, don't get me wrong. But I run FF on multiple computers - I do not want to re-download and set up 5-10 extensions on every box, but that's what's needed. Opera offers many of these features out of the box. Is there some kind of Überextension pack that I can just install - or, even better, one Überextension?
Everyone knew this, right?
...etc...
---
How can I use Netscape plug-ins with Opera?
Opera has the ability to use almost any plug-in that is designed for Netscape, even if the plug-in doesn't list Opera as a supported browser. Generally, this is how you'd install plug-ins for use with Opera that do not have support for Opera by default:
Most plug-ins come with installation wizards, i.e. programs that are used to install the plug-in on your system. If you are given a choice by the installation program, make sure that you install the plug-in for use with Netscape, and not Internet Explorer. Follow the on-screen instructions and complete the installation of the plug-in.
Opera works mostly OK. Some quirks I have encountered one time or another are:
- Well Fargo has an ill conceived attempt to block access from non IE or Netscape browser. The big irony is they claim they do this to improve security (by forcing me to switch from Opera to IE!!!) Latest version of Opera is doing fine now.
- Citibank has a neat Virtual Account Numbers function that at one time requires ActiveX. Works on Opera now.
- When logging in some of Fidelity' site, identify as Mozilla or IE to get pass the user-agent checking. Once logged in, it is safe to switch back to identify as Opera. All this switching can be done easily by the F12 menu.
Finally this year I used Firefox to file my tax with Web Turbo Tax.If I had a "sex budget" that covered the several thousand dollars an expensive diamond ring costs, I'd be extremely happy.
I RTFA and it skipped my favorite feature! Anyway, my favorite feature of Opera, which has kept me using it since 4.0 or so, is the ability to scroll web pages (with the scrollwheel) while the cursor is outside the web page "pane".
You know, like, have it hovering over the Close button. You know...for sensitive web pages you don't want people walking in on...
I love Firefox for being free and easy to use. I downloaded Opera, but didn't like that I'd get ads while I browse unless I pay for it. Now, perhaps the coolest Extension for Firefox is translating the page such as the Swedish Chef would read it (for those who remember the Muppets) known as "Bork Bork Bork". In a very close second place tie, Google Preview and TabBrowser Preferences.
Opera sessions are full sessions. It will reload not only all of the tabs with the relevant pages loaded, the pages are the exact page you had (not pulling the newest page if say you had /. front page loaded), scrolled to wherever you were on each page, and contains all of your browsing history for each tab. I find this the handiest thing in the world for doing research on the net - I can start a new window and run multiple searches in seperate tabs and keep all of my efforts at all times. I can even add my saved sessions as a bookmark so for gaming in Guild Wars, I have a bookmark that will load all Warrior related pages in one click, same for any other classes I need.
It's been at least a year since I tried Firefox, but I've found Opera far more user friendly, and I like the fact that all of these features are built in - no hunting for extensions and hoping the extension works correctly 100% of the time. And the price - ads in the corner? Hasn't bothered me in 4 versions of Opera - you learned how to ignore banner ads, these are even less intrusive than those because Opera's are up in a corner of the window and don't interupt the flow of my browsing.
Just my 2 cents.
1). Shut up.
2.) They're entirely different situations.
3). I use Gnome.
...decided that your choice may depend more on what you *do* with your browser than anything else
I like to browse the web with my web browser, I don't know about the rest of you. I tried once, in vain, to go to robot://clean-my-apartment-now.lan/ but Firefox couldn't get there. Maybe Opera can?
Since Mac is not open source I assume the open source fundamentalist would just write it off.
you are an idiot who don't know anything about unix copy and paste. please shut the fuck up.
That depends, if the highway is full of potholes and random assorted things that make it no longer driveable then changing your car is pointless. It would be more logical to point out to the dept. of transportation that the highway is a POS, rather than trying to keep changing cars till you find one that can drive over the top of dead cattle.....that was rambling, but I think I got the point across.
But like you said, you could care less, so more power to you...freedom of choice and all that.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
As I've done a full and fresh reinstall of XP on another machine (Didn't do FAT32 this time, went back to NTFS for security permissions, etc) and only used Internet explorer for two things: Windows Update, then downloading Firefox. Used firefox to download all my standard barrages of anti-virus, and anti-spyware, and installed no other programs other than those. I locked down access to Internet Explorer, created a new user account, used it exclusively, only using Firefox for browsing, and still got spyware installed on my machine. (I don't accept attachments from emails, ever, FYI.) I'm curious to just use Opera on another machine with the exact same installation methods (Full format, overwrite with binary, format again, install XP on NTFS, Windows Update, install Opera, lock out IE from the net, and get AV/AS programs,) and see if I get infected with spyware still.
On a side note, even with a full update of definitions for anti-virus and anti-spyware, and an immediate yanking of my network cable from my network card, killing all access to the net, I still get spyware and trojans after cleaning (Using Microsoft Anti-spyware, Ad-Aware SE, and Spybot all at once, then running F-prot and AVG anti-virus to wipe out the trojan downloaders.) I go to sleep, wake up, and one of the automatically scheduled scans will never fail to find stuff I had just removed hours before. How can I stop this? Don't tell me "Use *nix or buy a Mac," the answer will be "No" to the former and "I already have several" to the latter.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I was an avid Firefox user until I was literally forced to uninstall it at work. Avant Browserhttp://www.avantbrowser.com/ Kicks Ass. Not as expandable as firefox which will instantly lose it's points, but the download is is less than 2 meg, and Speeds up IE HUGE. It uses the core IE engine, without all the crap. Firefox is slow now in comparison. :|
Anyone else find it as worthwhile as I do?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
"unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source"... RMS, stop posting under pretend names! :P
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Look up what comparison and contest means.
I didn't know the opera has it's own browser.
I would highly suggest Opera to any power user. Users that use POP mail a lot and are looking for something that integrates into browser. Users that use RSS technology and want a feed reader. Users that want mouse gestures or some quick way of accessing the methods, users that want a built in IRC client, users that just want many built in features (please don't state that Firefox can have all these features, because that would require you to install extensions, which will make it more bloated).
- Teja
its fast. more so when you revisit a page. Seems its caching mechanism is superior. Also like its RSS feature. quite intuitive (did i spell it right?).
It does sound promising; does Opera have some sort of an adblocking and spellchecking feature? Those are the only two things I'd like to have that I haven't heard anyone mention. :)
While I didn't think too much of adblock before I installed it, after I got used to it, ads on web-pages blind me. And I post too much on the internet to not have a handy right click->check spelling feature
If it has those two things, I might consider switching, or at least giving it a spin.
unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source.
I'm a "use the best tool for the job" kind of guy, and less a "get hung up on utopian ideals" kind of guy- and while I certainly respect your choice and the reasons behind your choice, COMMENTary like that belongs (guess where!) in the COMMENTs section, not in the story itself...
- registered Opera user
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
It's somewhat unpopular (and/or blasphemous, depending on your PoV) to look at religion from a historical perspective.. but if you analyse the motives behind the Commandments which are shared by Jew, Christian and Moslem, they all aim towards supporting a stable, cohesive and mutually respectful society.
.. or, in extremis, preachers (depending on whether you accept the Gospel of St.Thomas). Essentially it comes down to paying attention to your own people first.
In that context I'd see religion as a lifestyle requiring a degree of long-term commitment to the mutual goals of the society it forms, and Idolatry as any interest outside of that society which threatens ones commitment to the "faith" and the lifestyle it intends.
You can define that as worship of metallic gods, excessive devotion to the accumulation of wealth, even worship of human heros, demagogues
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
As an Opera user I've tried firefox because of all the hype on slashdot and amoungst other nerds. You know what I found out? Yes, it can do a ton of things through extensions. But extensions suck.
Care for an example? Let's just try mouse gestures. I'm hooked on mouse gestures. Back, Forward, New Window. I hear Firefox supports mouse gestures now so I decide I'll try it. Download Firefox and install. Hey? Where the **** is my mouse gestures? Oh.. install an extension. Okay. It is easy enough to get the extensions. Now which one do I want to try? Well this one has really annoying trails when I actually do a gesture. Hate it. Try another. This one seems pretty good, but I have to configure the gestures that I use to match what I'm used to. I finally settle on something that almost works the way I want it to. Now I notice that tabs don't work the way I want them to... And I need an RSS Reader. There's always 5-6 crappy extensions for anything you want the browser to do.
I hate to tell you, but that is piss-poor UI design right there. It is the whole delusion that everybody in the Linux community seems to have. Let's allow you to do everything and be completely extensible, but make it a bitch to configure. I don't want to recompile my kernel every night, thank you. And I don't want to spend hours configuring my browser to do what it should have done when I first installed it.
Some things should just work. Options are great, but no one seems to have examined Firefox as a PRODUCT. Firefox is a pain to use. It doesn't just work. Most extensions are unforgivable hacks. And no I don't want to fix it just because I'm complaining. You shouldn't have to be a developer to use damn browser. That and I enjoy getting paid for my work.
The Open Source community needs to stop making apps and start making products.
Partial solution ... I recently learned of the Ctrl-Backspace key combo, which deletes a word at a time. Works in OpenOffice.org too.
As another poster said, pressing Ctrl-L will Move the focus to the URL entry box and highlight all the text (without copying it on the X-Selection) so a simple backspace or delete will erase it all. Of course if you want to paste a URL, then the simplest thing is just to middle click in the browser window.
According to your choice of faith, the One God has manifested himself many times. Speaking as Yahweh to the Jews in the Torah and Old Testament, he is wrathful, a hard taskmaster, yet caring, loyal and wise.
2400 years later: To and Through Jesus, God, as Jehovah, but also as Yahweh-that-was, spoke of love, compassion, kindness, understanding and atonement - self-sacrifice in the name of the ideals being an acceptable choice, for all reward will come afterwards
615 years after that, Mohammed begins to receive instruction from Allah, who identifies himself as the same God known to both earlier religions and their prophets, but who now speaks with harsh promises backed up with kind promises, a steely-eyed determination that people must stand up for themselves, that some things ARE worth fighting for, but at the same time imposing hard codes of honour and respect, demanding tolerance, love and devotion but promising heavently rewards beyond anything ever promised before.
So - if you worship God by obeying his words which were later withdrawn... are you really worshipping him correctly at all?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I use both browsers. They each make a good alternative for sites that don't work with your primary choice of browser, as there are very few sites that work with neither. If you do run across a site that works with neither, send the webmasters an email saying that you won't be accessing their site because it doesn't work on your two favorite browsers. This is more effective than using IE or a user agent switcher, since that only convinces webmasters that "everyone uses IE," and therefore encourages IE-only sites.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Even if it wasn't answered.
I used to use Opera on both my PC and Mac. Then I started switching to Firefox. I liked it's cleaner interface and it seemed to encounter less rendering problems with pages. I got another reason to go with Firefox when GMail came out. It was always better in Firefox, it didn't even support Opera at first. Even now you don't get advanced formatting options when composing emails on Opera. All that being said, Opera is still the speed king, especially on Windows. Safari 2.0 on Tiger seems to be close in speed on a Mac, but Firefox is way behind on both.
"Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source"
I'm an open source developer, and have been involved with open source for 10 years now. However, I still find the above statement short sighted.
Let me illustrate my point by providing some examples:
Google: not open source, we all use it
OSX : not open source, people love it (including open-source people)
Firefox: open source, we all love it, but 99% of us will never even see the source code behind it, let alone touch it.
Windows: not open source, some of us are forced to use it, most of us dislike it.
So, there is no rule. Just because something is not open source it's not immediately bad!
Simpy
That's not "from a historical perspective". Projecting your own values onto people and texts from hundreds or thousands of years ago is complete disregard for historical perspective.
My bank works in IE and Firefox, doesn't in Opera no matter which setting you give it:
www.trader.ca.
Search for a car. In IE and Firefox you can select the make and model.
In Opera it doesn't matter which Identify as string you set, it doesn't work.
After years of dealing with this, Firefox to the rescue.
One thing I've noticed using both browsers for some time now is that if I leave my computer on for extended periods of time, or my memory gets fragged, Firefox becomes REALLY sluggish, whereas Opera seems to handle it just fine.
:)
And also as previously mentioned, Opera allows browsing by keyboard nicely; so at work: FireFox, at home on the Laptop, Opera. Still sitting on the fence as to which I'll "swtich" to
Clever signature text goes here.
Who is this guy kidding? Might as well call it Firepig and
gets worse each release. In XP I regularly get mem usage > 75MB and Peaks > 150.
Interesting... And what does the Qu'ran say about "using" the Qu'ran out of necessity (if no other source of paper is within hand's reach...). Would that be a sin in god's eyes?
SCNR...
I have seen an unbiased comparison (grin) that presents some of this in a tabularised form.
I realise that many people say "b-b-b-but extensions let you pretend you've got Opera!" and that's nice, but with the real thing you don't have to go and find the dang extensions.
For me, Opera is the best browser. There are things that could be improved with it. (Which means that there is a future for Opera.) There are still web sites that (stupidly, unnecessarily) deny access to Opera. [Don't get me started on that.] But, all-in-all Opera is my default browser.
(Disclaimer: I use a filtering proxy with all my browsers ...)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
So, to bring this back on topic about browsers: it's ok to worship Konqueror, but not to worship Konqi, the dragon.
it's ok to worship Linux, but not to worship tux, the stuffed penguin.
Clever signature text goes here.
To highlight the location bar without copying it into the middle click buffer, hit CTRL+L in Firefox (or Mozilla).
Quite simply becuase it's officially supported software at the company I work for (IBM).
The problem is that the extensions that you *always* want installed are different from, say, the ones that I *always* want installed. Having them built into the browser would doubtless annoy some users (such as myself) who don't use some of the extensions built in. All in all, I think it's a good idea to have it as modular as it is.
That said, building in some sort of "export extensions" such that the browser importing the extension list previously exported would use the Firefox Update functionality to automatically download and install all the extensions used on your other browser installation would be a welcome addition to the browser itself.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Also, I don't have to pay for Firefox (yeah, I'm a cheap bastard - sue me).
You don't have to pay for Opera, either.
Learn to love Alaska
Because some of us use Firefox to just browse.. and we don't want any extension any special features we just want to browse with popups blocked by default.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I use Firefox, but I'm constantly on the edge of switching to Opera just to keep my system resources under control. In the last week, I've had Firefox's memory usage cap 200MB with no tabs open and I've had it's CPU usage ride near 100% for five minutes (till I shut it down) with no tabs open. Opera never does these things. Even when Firefox is performing 'normally' I still find that it uses far more resources than Opera does.
Firefox's current performance makes it impossible to, say, leave it open while I play WoW, despite that fact that there are a great many situations in which I would want to do so. Looking up info, killing time without logging out of the game, reading HTML docs while setting up game addons...
Like ABN-Amro. My internet banking is flawless with Moz and Linux.
Opera seems to be a bit more efficient than Firefox, and certainly is usable for example on my old 120MHz Compaq Armada laptop with 32MB RAM (Debian 3.1, Xfce 4.2) which I configured today.
Oh, and may I recommend naim as an AIM client? Talk about efficient chat!
As to adblocking, I have no idea, I have been using eDexter for a long time and I have such a tweaked hosts file, I do not even use adblock when I run firefox.
There is one more thing I would like to know whether I can do through FF extensions. One thing that annoys me a lot whenever I run FF is that, unless I spend time creating a whitelist, I can either have all pop-ups open (even those that would display adds if I weren't blocking their images) or none of them, not even those I want to open. Opera has an option for this that is "Block unwanted pop-ups," that opens pop-ups when requested, but ignores pop-ups on page loads and the like. Can I do that in FF?
Thank you very much for your extension list, I'll give it a spin! I hope I get to love it, because I am feeling morally obliged to pay for Opera now, with all the use I'm giving to it.
I've set up Opera to delete cookies when closing.
Problem is, every now and then, there's a cookie I'd like to keep; i.e. auto-login ones. (Not a fan of the wand, and it won't work on this site regardless, due to weird things going on with the URLs..)
Should be possible..?
Thanks,
That is a step in the right direction. It works on the autotrader site, still doesn't work with my bank though.
I had been using Opera steadily since about 3.51 or something, right until firefox came along. I may give it a try again with ua.ini.
I'd love to use Opera because it's fast, but until it lets me cram the back-forward-reload icons, google box, and address box all on the same line as the "File Edit View ... Help" menus, forget it. All the other browsers let me do that.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
>>"The disabling of images is something I used a lot more than I thought I would. Saving sessions was awesome. I'm sure there's an extension for that somewhere."
:)
>To block _anything_ you can use RiP (remove it permanently), and you can use adblock to blocks images (specifically ads, but any other image too). Saving sessions is achieved through 'session saver'
He's not talking about blocking specific images, but about getting rid of all of them. Hitting Shift-I will instantly hide all the images on a page (and not show any more until you hit it again). You can put a button for it on your address bar if you want.
Presumably there's an extension for that too, but it's irritating to have to spend time sifting through the crap to find the relevant 10 or so extensions to bring Firefox up to par.
I have the same problem. I think the answer might be that I'm comparing it with Opera, which is lightning-quick.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I did. Lost everything -- just an XBL binding error messaage. All my extentions. All my Adblock info. Passwords. Bookmarks. Gone forever -- the support board said it was probably my fault -- old theme for new release, and showed how to create a clean profile...w/ nothing. Dusted off Opera, d/l Ver 8, and started its steep learning curve. Open source sucks...they are elitist and out-do MS in blaming the user. If you try to use more than a couple of their 'hundreds' of themes you get compatibiliy problems. Most of them are alpha anyway, written for the authors only. "Open in IE" is the most usefull. Freaking "Pinstripe" theme...disgusted.
Extensions are great, but they will always be a problem for the end user. People that read slashdot may have time to customize their browser to the fullest extent by searching for hours for the perfect extension to do the job, but the average person just wont do this. Opera already has all of these features built in and ready to be used, all you need to do is download and install ONE program, ONCE.
If you follow Judaism, all other Gods are by definition false Gods. Therefore worshipping any other is idolatry.
If you are like me, FireFox is off the table from the start because it is not secure...
This is due to the philosophies behind the features included in both Opera and Firefox. Opera crams in everything useful they can think of (or at least, it appears that way), and Firefox includes only the features they feel everyone will benefit from to avoid bloat, while leaving the extensions up to others.
Now, I'm not saying Opera is bloated. It's just that the Firefox developers felt that the average user doesn't care about mouse gestures or quick prefs, or doesn't use the browser enough to care. Most Opera users I know started using it because of the extra features.
The big problem with extensions is they're never guaranteed to work with the current release, and some conflict with each other. Maybe the Mozilla team will come up with a package of "officially sanctioned" extensions guaranteed to work, but I doubt it. I'm sure they have their hands full working on the features in the next release.
Personally I put the people who refuse to even consider a closed source application for purely ideological reasons (as indicated in the slashdot blurb) into the same little box as those corporate IT managers who refuse to consider opensource applications 'just because'.
Ideologial reasons? In military and confidential commercial R&D environments, using closed-source apps is meanwhile a big no-no!
In such environments, it is mandatory to get the sources of commercial products (under NDA), perform a thorough security audit through security staff and independant security consultants, compile the verified stuff, and only then use it.
Of course, and sadly, most people and companies don't care that much for the confidentiality and integrity of their data and rely quite heavily on random software vendors.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
"Opera also overrides the replacing of the status bar text, so you always know what you are clicking on before you click on it." Firefox has an inbuilt 'annoyance eliminator' that does the the same thing.
This behaviour annoys me to no end. After a quick look around, I couldn't find how to enable this option. Where is it?I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to tell such LIES!
I didn't see anyone answer this question, so...
If you hit F12 in Opera, a popup lets you toggle stuff like enabling javascript, plugins, cookies, or gif animation, plus some other stuff. I keep most everything turned off, and it's easy to turn back on when you hit a page that needs it.
Konqueror on KDE, and safari on MacOSX.
Much better then both of the ones in the 'news clip'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's easy, Mozilla.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
Whatever's up with Nagaro's comp is up with mine too.
.. but it's far from being the resource hog that Opera was when I was last using it as my primary browser (at least 18 months ago). I find FF quite weighty on WinXP too - but then I generally use it with several extensions (eg webdev toolbar) which probably account for that.
FF is quite slow for me on Slackware 10 (2.6.x)
Slack runs on a 1.1Gig Athlon; XP on a 2+Gig Celeron (would you believe I can't recall the processor speed - shocking!!).
With a mill OSS contributors we need to rely on exts?
Next, OSS car doesnt run w/o the "wheels" ext?
oh i just noticed that you were talking about macs and since i havent used a mac for years, hmm.. do they have something like vm ware where you could emulate windows? otherwise. umm...
*runs away*
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Really, how is it that much better? Firefox is designed to run on a closed source operating system, so what's the point in dissin Opera?? Firefox "supports" closed source 100%, even if the app itself is "open" under a non GPL license.. Firefox does not run all by it's lonesome, it needs an underlying operating system to function. The FF devs go way out of their way to do multi billion dollar for-profit corporation called Microsoft's work for them, yes? But we are supposed to dis Opera, who actually come up with some neat stuff *first* all the time?
Moz/FF are working hard to make closed source for-maximum profit MS Windows "better", yet closed source MS contributes *nothing* back. This is just raw indisputable data, correct? If FF was developed *solely and exclusively* to run on open source operating systems (which I would certainly prefer) I could see the major distinction from the adherents, but as it stands now, nope, it's a minor point of contention at best, a pot meet kettle situation.
You can't have it both ways, if "anyone you" allegedly "supports" open source, you would *stick* to open source then in your development and evangelizing. To do otherwise is maximum hypocritical.
MS is laughing all the way to the bank while it's major work gets done for it for free,(from both Moz and Opera) then later on they can snag the innovations, tweak it and re-release it as their "own" and still profit from it. It's saved them umpteen billions from having their shaky no-security cookies yanked out of the web security fire again and again and again for a few years now, I bet they are *well* pleased for the freebie breather they got. Just watch this "mindshare" deal as the next IE with tabbed browsing and whatnot gets released.
Marbles
(At least their credit card sub-site doesn't work properly with Firefox.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
working middle click under OSX?
:D
for fuck's sake
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
AFter hearing all this, I decided to try Opera and have come to this conclusion: SHIT OPERA IS FAST! Even with Firefox's pipelining and maxrequests set to the highest possible, Opera is still faster by a long shot. However, Firefox is still fairly new (1.0.4) and Opera isn't (8.0 or 8.1), so they still have much to do, and with the new Gecko engine, the next version of FF should be much faster.
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
Use Proxomitron (on Windows) or Privoxy (Unix/Windows too) to block ads.. They work great -- configure one of them once, point all your browsers to use their localhost proxy port (or your router if you're on a home network), and you get ad-blocking for any browser you use.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. --Benjamin Franklin
People who don't care about mouse gestures simply haven't tried them yet or used them enough to be used to them.
Years ago, at a W3C conference, I nearly got into a fistfight with the Amaya folks (they swung first!). I was the senior engineer on a GUI HTML editor project and they wanted to know why I didn't test the output on Amaya. I told them it's because "Amaya doesn't matter." That's when they started swinging....
Best Buy can have you arrested
I, personally, consider viewing ads as "paying for it"
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. --Benjamin Franklin
You can block ads/urls by filtering them in 'filter.ini'. I'll skip the explanation and point you at Opera Adfilter. About the same, not as smooth, but just as effective.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I haven't seen it mentioned but FirefoxforOpera is a blog dedicated to making firefox more like opera.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I think Firefox is the best browser out there at the moment. The one thing Opera has that I think Firefox is missing is a resumable download manager integrated right in. I could always download one and there are tons available for Linux but not really any good ones for Windows. They are either too bulky or have too many ads.
I, personally, consider an exchange of money to be paying for it. And no one I know even notices them. They are tiny, unobtrusive, and quite easily ignored. In the years of using Opera, I no longer even notice them, and I don't think I've ever clicked on one. I had to take a minute to hunt down where the ads even were. Sandwiched between the tabs and the menu bar (which I also don't use, since hot keys and mouse gestures generally cover all bases), I didn't even notice it.
Learn to love Alaska
Does Privoxy allow the user to prefvent downloading JS/Flash? (ie, by modifying the HTML to remove the malicious/annoying portions)?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
IE and Firefox merely resize the text on a page, so you've got a tiuny CSS box containing enormous oversize letters that overfill it. The design of the page, and often a lot of the contnt, is lost if you 'zoom' in to much.
Opera has a proper zoom function. You know, like every word processor, spreadsheet, PDF viewer and pretty much every kind of document viewer apart from web browsers have had since the year dot.
I don't use a high res display anymore (I'm back to 1280 x 720 on a projector) so I'm sticking with FF.
But should I ever go back to a high res screen, the only way I'd be be able to properly use the web would be with Opera.
but it's not because it's open-source. don't get me wrong, i used to love opera until Firefox came along. the problem with Opera i have right now is that it will actually *HANG* my X session after using it for a few minutes. otherwise, i love Opera and would use it more often!
i suspect it may have something to do with either QT or the nVidia drivers. but i have no idea.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
People have already pointed out the spell checker, which is very nice. Another way to block ads in Opera is through a custum CSS file. No ads on my slashdot.
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
Also Opera announce a release when they have proper packages available for each distribution, rather than just a tarball like Firefox does.
Waiting, or packaging FF yourself, gets a little old after a while.
Does Opera get something similar to greasemonkey? If not firefox>opera, greasemonkey is a very powerful extension.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
Try pressing F7 in Firefox/Mozilla. Mozilla calls it caret browsing. It has been around for a a few years.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
The thing is, though, the people that don't read slashdot don't want most of these features.
all you need to do is download and install ONE program, ONCE.
Yeah, and pay for it ONCE.
and once I got the right extensions (especially keyconfig so I could keep using the "z" key to go back a page, and a download extension to get the stupid FireFox downloads window out of my face - the settings option to open it and then close it after downloads simply doesn't work), everything seems to be pretty much as good as Opera was.
It still sucks, but that's because all browsers suck - nothing against FireFox per se.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The default Firefox homepage hosted by Google features a new tip on each time the page is loaded, so I wouldn't say a "tip of the day" is a bad concept, although RTFM is still superior.
"FF doesn't let you control cookies as easily as you are able to in opera. "
Have you tried cookie culler extension?
The suite had a nice cookie menu with entries like "allow cookies from this domain". It's a real PITA to allow a site to use cookies if you denied it before in firefox. In good old Mozilla it was a click away.
Even better whould be a notification like with popups or stuff and the option to block all cookies. So you can block all but see that a site send one, so you know why something doesn't work for example. And the notification could again have an option to allow cookies for the site.
It's actually the same as for popups and stuff. I don't know why there's only deny and don't tell me or bug^H^H^Hask me every time.
b4n
There are a bunch of ways to block ads in Opera, one is a beta port of adblock to Opera 8 being developed by opera forum members.
My preferred method on windows is proxomitron with grypen's set - amazing, one install, and forget. Update occasionally, and you're done.
These are just 2 out of I think 7 methods figured out on the Opera forums (some do require other software like proxomitron).
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Opera is also not free - which means I've never bothered using it.
Firefox is great! (and free)
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
This one you can fix by patching (editting) the platformHTMLBindings.xml file in your install (google on it). Its location varies by install, but I've been able to add the "readline" keystrokes to Firefox on Windows ME, XP and FreeBSD, and Mozilla in Linux. Mozilla on WinXP I don't think was successful (not sure I ever found the file). Its a pain though, because every security patch reinstall wipes the file again. IIRC, older versions of Mozilla and Firefox had these keybindings by default.
Example snippet:
Quality product for free > crappy product for fee.
Yes and yes. I'd link you, but Google is probably more helpful than me.
Yeah man! I'm with ya. This guy was offering to give me his car for free. Sure it didn't run and was only a frame pretty much, BUT IT WAS FREE! Sure I could have bought a nice car with many features that ran well for pretty cheap, but IT WASNT FREE.
I'm an Opera user who's willing to admit AdBlock is better than anything Opera currently has available.
So that's one out of 400 tries where the Firefox community beats Opera. Sweet.
FF sucked when I used it 18 months ago!!!
Opera is the clear winner for me. Maybe it's my computer (Windows 98), but Firefox is slow - and that's without running a mail program with it. The speed of Opera, the integration with M2 (including feeds), the ability to customize and the utter lack of necessity of paying for more than a dial-up connection make it perfect for me. I have to say that I love Firefox's cookie handling - being able to reject cookies. But I just can't take the slowness. Another thing I like about Firefox, which applies as well to K-Meleon, which I do use daily, is the inability to properly render certain sites that are better and faster without full rendering. One is http://moneyballs.com/ K-Meleon is about as fast as Opera, but in the case of this and other similar sites, it is faster than Opera. So I wouldn't do without either one of these browsers.
Not trying to be snarky, this is a serious question: How is IE cross-platform? Are you considering 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2003 to be different platforms?
Um, the Mac.
IE for the Mac displays differently than does IE for Windows. In order to get a webpage to look the same in IE on Macs as it does on Windows, if it's possible, it is only with a lot of spaghetti code for anything more than a simple flat page such as using tables or even javascript.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I guess I have to ask, what's real hard about proxomitron? I mean, it depends I suppose on how you want to use it, but here's how I use it.
1. Download proxomitron installer from wherever(actually I save it on my PC).
2. Download grypen's latest installer from his site. This is updated frequently.
3. Install proxomitron.
4. Install grypen's set.
5. Point at proxomitron.
6. Occasionally get the latest update from grypen and install it.
Now, really what's so difficult in that?
As I understand it (I haven't tried, but this is what I hear) AdBlock is substantially similar:
1. Download AdBlock extension.
2. Install extension.
3. Download some blocking set or manually right click on lots of ads and set to block them.
4. Ocasionally download updates for set, or right click on new ads to remove them.
Now, as I see it, I have one more thing to install as it's a separate program, and I have to set a proxy server. I gain:
1. Don't need to think about ads, 95%, including many text ads, are blocked. New ones are often blocked in updates, so I don't have to mess with them.
2. Consistent adblocking across browsers (when I start up IE for compatibility on some site, I'm not suddenly deluged by ads and pop-ups).
3. Adblocking for my entire network, with consistent control at one point.
4. Proxy for my entire network.
5. Easy migration of adblocking by zipping the proxomitron folder and planting on a new PC.
Bonus:
Integrated cookie management, un tracking links, web bug removal, vulnerability removal, click to play flash and java, extra features on google like optional thumbnails of search results...
Now, I may misunderstand simplistic - but I personally will take a fire and forget method (like and AV program) over an ask me each time(like a software firewall) if it's possibly to achieve the same thing with it.
Once proxomitron is installed, I can forget I even have it. It's not in my face, it just works.
Now as I haven't used it as I'm perfectly happy with Opera, AdBlock sounds like something I have to manually configure. I have to right click on bunches of ads etc... Unless I download a preconfigured blocklist, in which case it has MANY downsides to proxomitron, yet requires the same basic setup. SO, I really don't get AdBlock much.
All that said, there is an AdBlock clone for Opera 8 available through the user forums.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
M$ as stopped work on IE for Macs. I just did a search for M$ downloads of IE for Macs and Internet Explorer 5.1.7 for Mac OS 8.1 to 9.x, dated 7/3/2003 is the most recent. M$ said they were stopping IE for Macs because Apple released Safari.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Opera has one major downfall, its fucking ugly as sin. The layout is absolutely ungodly, cumbersome, and just horrendous on the eyes, the colors make it worse. The whole window inside a window thing has always bothered me, Opera somehow managed to do it in such a way makes me want to go out and eat puppies for dinner. I can't look at Opera without getting angry at just how poorly designed the interface is.
I don't care how fast it is, I don't care how stable it is, I don't care how awesome the renderer is, fuck, I wouldn't care if it could suck me off and make pancakes, its uglier than a hooker after her forth kid and seven straight years of crack.
</flamebait>
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Is there a specific translation you'd recommend? Right now I'm reading "No god but God: the origins, present, and future of Islam" by Reza Aslan, and it's inspired me to actually read the Qu'ran and some commentary (although I have no interest in learning Arabic in order to do so).
Because Firefox is open source bugs can be found and fixed faster than closed source browsers. I'd say that's a strength not a weakness.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yes you are. Simply hit F12 and it brings up a "quick prefs" menu to change:
4 ways to accept/block popups
Enable/disable animated gifs, sound, java, javascript, plugins, cookies, referrer logging and proxy servers
What browser it identifies as (Opera, 3 mozillas, and IE)
Quite useful, and much faster than going through tools-options and then having to find the option you want to change and click ok a couple times to get out of it.
It's not a bank, but Verizon Wireless does not allow me to submit a payment online using firefox (It just sends me back to the select payment page after hitting ok). All the other stuff (except payment) work fine. I sent them feedback regarding this issue and received this half-assed response:
And sorry to go off-topic here, but it makes me angry to receive a half-assed reply generated by a form like Hector sent me. I'd rather get a 2 sentence reply that says "Hey yeah thanks we'll look into it! Firefox is cool!". At least I know the person actually read it. If the company cares so much about my input, they can at least take the time to write a coherent response. By this I mean don't use "thank you" in 40% of your sentences, and don't use my name everytime you need to address me. I know who the letter was to, it was already mentioned at the top.
That's a weak analogy, and over-exaggerations are just stupid. Firefox works and in many cases works better than Opera.
His argument was that it was easier to just download and install one program that had every feature rather than downloading Firefox and installing extensions to support them.
My point was it's also $40, which isn't worth the 5 minutes it takes for me to install the 15 or so extensions I use. $40 is a decent chunk of change for software that I can find a free alternative for.
It can be more convenient, certainly. But never better.
I bank with Washington Mutual, have a CapitolOne VISA card, and have my investments at E*Trade. I used Firefox exclusively and all above sites work flawlessly.
I remember a discussion here on Slashdot a couple of years ago about Mozilla, around the time of ver 0.9.2 or so. At the time CapitolOne didn't work in Mozilla and I had to use IE. A Mozilla developer posted a reply to my question about that, saying that it probably would never get fixed. Then, out of the blue, it started working. Probably around Mozilla 1.2 or so.
That's the only problem I've ever had with a financial institution with any Mozilla products.
/.: why the hell am I here?
and over-exaggerations are just stupid.
a te.
Gee, how ironic-or-perhaps-another-word-that-is-more-accur
Meaning I assume there's nothing stopping anyone from distributing (by a download or a CD) a static install complete with all the popular extensions pre-loaded.
There is only one REAL reason to choose firefox over other major browsers, and that is the one big thing it was created to provide: FREEDOM. If you value it, choose firefox, or perhaps konqueror/mozilla. If not... well, you'll find that all the features in the world won't keep you happy when some company controls your browser and the entire web.
...which is better, Christianity or Islam?
I remember QuickPrefs, that HAS to be the most convenient/attractive feature in OPera (when I was using it).
Tools>Options opens up a dialog, a window that covers up the website, and then I have to remember where (Is it under Privacy? Or Advanced? Connections?) so I close that window when I cannot recall where say, Cookies can be disabled.
QuickPRefs is a menu item, with all the choices RIGHT THERE in PLAIN ENGLISH (Load Images? Allow Cookies? Block Popups or something like that) with checkmarks IIRC to show which ones have been disabled. So my webpage is still there not blocked by yet another window.
I'm surprised you haven't given Opera a spin. A true Klingon would have tried it out, for he cares not about fey-sounding browser names.
Honestly, a 470x60 Ad window in the upper right (where no important functions are, at least on my window decoration...) doesn't bother me at all on an 1280x1024 resolution, I don't even notice it anymore. And if I do, by accident, then it contains google ads, tailored to my interests, usually remotely interesting, you know?
So, does Opera cost money? Only if you are really bothered by the small ad (HINT: It doesn't scale ith resolution).
I regularly use my laptop (Windows 2000 with not enough memory), a work laptop (Windows 2000 with half a gig), my gf's desktop (Windows ME with REALLY not enough memory chug chug chug), and work desktop (Windows 2000 quite quick.) None of them have cutting edge video cards (though all are reasonable.)
[I know none of these are Linux; I have my reasons. No flames please.]
Firefox is far quicker than Opera on ALL of these - those of you who tried Firefox and found it too slow, there was a major memory leak in early 1.0.x version which is now fixed. Until it was, I agree, Opera was quicker. It's not any more...
OTOH Opera has a killer feature which Firefox doesn't, as far as I can tell - the zoom, so you can make a page of full-size images look pretty much like thumbnails and pick those you want to save. For that reason I still have both on most machines. Someone tell me there's a plug-in for Firefox please...
Opera's text ads are quite well thought out and I find I'm actually quite often interested in the links that come up there.
Finally, on a complex page Opera's redraw is noticably slower than Firefox's. With HTTP pipelining enabled on Firefox it's way quicker loading.
Also, Opera pissed me off. The new, exciting, lightweight browser is now as bad as IE for feeping creaturism. I use Web browsers for browsing the Web, not looking at mail and using chat rooms.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Opera uses single-key browsing, so that you can get where you want using a single key instead of a key combination. Not only is that easier and more accessible, it is faster. Apart from the other shortcuts mentioned here are a couple more:
Z/X: Back/forth in history
1/2: Next/previous window
Space: Not only does it go down a screenful, at the end of a page it goes to the next page (as in Fast Forward)
What you do is next time you come across a EULA while installing a program, is simply to make sure not to read any of it & instead get you flatmate to come over it & ask him to click the checkbox & tick ok.
By doing that you are under no obligation to corform to the EULA as you never agreed to comply with it in the 1st place.
Perhaps just an XML file that could be exported with a list of all your current extensions and their settings. That way you could just host that up on a server and point a new copy of Firefox to it and say 'Go, set yourself up according to these rules!'. It would download and install all the extensions, set whatever you wanted and, in the case of things like Greasemonkey, install all your User Scripts.
Internet Explorer had something like that but not as cool.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
I don't think you should be so quick to dismiss people who are concerned with licenses. I guess you missed the Bitkeeper saga.
I don't want to (re)start a debate about whether Linus made the right choice to use BK at all. My point is that as that whole episode showed, it's not at all obvious that you should pick the software with the most features regardless of the licensing terms.
For some people, the terms of the license are themselves an important "feature". For others, not.
What I would like to see is Firefox 'distributions'. I don't know if it would comply with the license of Firefox, but I can't see why it should be a problem.
What I'm thinking of, is something down the line of Linux distributions. A 'web-developer Firefox' distro, a 'mom and pops FX' distro and so on. Or atleast the ability to easily make a distro of your own, thats distributable.
Also, they might have the Covenant there. Or, that could just make for good PR and TV shows (w/ ominous music).
Ark
"Care to elaborate what quick prefs are? The ability to adjust preferences somewhere different than tools->options? I really am clueless..." I have Opera 8.0 Under the tools pull down menu, there is a Quick Prefs submenu that contains toggles to either enable a feature or choose between a few settings. The toggles are the enabling or disabling of cookies, GIF animation, sound in Web pages, Java, plug-ins, JavaScript, referrer logging, and proxy servers. The settings are about popup blocking and identify as opera, mozilla, or IE. The quick prefs prevent me from having to search through all the options for the most common settings. They are also not as buried.
And no one I know even notices them
;-)
Well, now you know someone who notices them.
However, I agree that they're not really that intrusive and it would be easy to get used to them. As for payment, Opera is exchanging use of its browser for some extra screen space to display ads to you. While it's not money, it is an exchange of something of value; hence, you're paying for it.
I tried Opera and have nothing against it. I just didn't find that it added enough to justify the real-estate lost to the ads (yes, I'm anal and even 30 pixels count).
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. --Benjamin Franklin
Its worse than that. Mozilla needs to implement a quality control programme for extensions, which, among other things, verifies that the extension does what it claims to and no more.
I have searched for extensions and found one which appears to meet my needs, but which has only two google hits. Which emplies very little peer review. Is there really any difference between installing that and installing an unsigned activeX control? If I had the know-how, I'd program a trojan extension containing a keyboard logger just to see how long I could get away with it - as a demonstration of this huge weakness (I'd publish falsified source code, but how many end users have the ability to compile their own extensions - or even understand the source).
In the meantime, if you want a smaller, faster, better Gecko experience on windows (with Mail and news built in!) try Kmeleon. It deserves some of the Firefox hype more than firefox does.
Funny how Opera still manages to be smaller and faster than firefox, then! It can't all be the fault of open source, because KMeleon manages to bundle mail and news and quite a few features in a smaller package than Firefox, and it's also fast.
The new opera version has a little garbage can pull down, you can pull it down and reopen windows you have closed, like the recycle bin on your desktop. It roxors. Just like clicking the glasses pulls down accessability(zooming, turning off/on pictures, voice, find in page, author mode, etc)
Opera for me!
Since "Internet Explorer Has Now Lost 30% Of The Browser Market" (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/12/31/fre e_fall_internet_explorer_has.htm), I am observing the current Web Browser war with a particuliar interest. How come Internet Explorer has lost so much influence in the web? In which way will Microsoft try to remain the master of the domain?..
I personally use Opera and Mozilla; many useful tools (for example, related to web-development) were developed and I am willing to make use of them browsing with Mozilla rather than sticking to Opera without them.
As the author of the article says, "If one is willing to consider both open and closed source options, than picking one of these browsers over the other will likely come down to issues of convenience, personal preference, or the particular tasks one typically uses his browser for."
It really is a matter of personal preference. There are no "prejudices" against Opera or Mozilla, for many friends of mine use both of them. However, Internet Explorer - with all its holes, numerous patches etc. seems to sink into oblivion.
However, I am quite curious about the losers and the winners of the following Web Browser War.
With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Germany, Vitaly Friedmanvitaly.friedman -> creative.web.design.saarbruecken.germany
Uhm.. you must be superman. It takes most normal people a LOT more than 5 minutes to look for and find 15 extensions. You're assuming you know EXACTLY what extension you are looking for. Thus is not the case for new users. First they must look for a feature they desire, if they even know. Then they must install it. Then they must try it and see if they like it. Repeat.
Yes, it takes me about 5 minutes. Yes, I'm assuming I know exactly what extension I'm looking for. Uh, I did say, "the 5 minutes it takes for me to install the 15 or so extensions I use."
The average end-user doesn't need the extra functionality of Opera (or the extensions of Firefox to provide that functionality). Internet Explorer's continuing popularity is proof of that. The fact that you say "first they must look for a feature that they desire, if they even know" is proof of that.
Would average users probably prefer some of Opera's in-built features? Yeah. But to the average person, $40 isn't worth it. I find it hard to believe that a large percentage of Opera's users are "new" computer/internet users. I'd bet they're the ones still content with IE.
You're still a cheap idiot that lives in your mom's basement.
Haha. Run out of arguments, huh? I just can't believe I wasted my time with you.
I'm making assumptions here ...
...
But, just in case
I do use Opera (regularly) as I develop web pages. I just don't use it as my primary. It may now be quicker than it was 18 months ago, but I moved away for speed and the benefits of FF have stopped me going back.
I like Opera zooming and the idea of integrated mail. Also the built in gestures (which I could have but don't have in FF) were nice. I like the way images can be dragged in Opera and the better caching control. I don't like the ads and lots of the plug-ins for FF don't appear to have mirrors in Opera.
Just thought I'd mention it.
"The quick prefs thing is a really big thing for me, but for some reason firefox users don't care."
Care to elaborate what quick prefs are? The ability to adjust preferences somewhere different than tools->options? I really am clueless...
I think he was referring to something where you can enable disable things (e.g. javascript, images, flash) with a single click without opening any menus. The Firefox extension "PrefBar" is the equivalent for this, and gives you single-click access to all that junk.
Ironically there is an extension to do just that. I think it's called Mass Installer. THe idea is that on a fresh Fx install, you just install this one extension and then give it a URL where you have your list of desired extensions stored and it loads them all.
.xpi files of all my extensions in a directory, then select them all and drag & drop onto the 'extensions' window. Instant mass install of all desired extensions.
Me, I just keep the
I use both, although the 'slender fox wins on many occasions. For one thing, this fox is not just slender and tricksy in magical ways, it is also swift. Ninja-like, almost. How could you possibly choose the fat lady over the ninja-like goodness of a tricksy little fox that will retrieve your website before the website even knows what hit it...
"Success isn't a result of a spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire." - Arnold H. Glasgow
Yes - try http://firemonger.org/