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Opera: Firefox User Figures 'Inflated'
Anonymous Coward writes "ZDNet
notes, 'The chief executive of Opera Software claimed on Monday that the market share figures for Mozilla Firefox are inflated, due to its support for link prefetching" In addition, "Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers" and "Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer' "
Firefox only prefetches links when the links are marked on the previous site as "hey you might want to prefetch this".
Specifically on Google, only the top result is marked as prefetch. And even then, only when Google has determined that most visitors would choose it. Google has said that they mark it for things such as prefetching cnn.com when somebody searches for "CNN".
The article states: "...which means that Firefox will pre-load the top search results into its cache." which is innacurate. It should say "...which means that Firefox will pre-load the top search result into its cache when Google thinks there is a very high probability you will visit the first result."
Currency exchange rate calculator and foreign exchange converter
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
GMail now gives the full interface by default to Opera 8.0+ users. They used an unusual interface (XMLHTTPRequest) which most pre-8 versions didn't support. The 8.x betas (and maybe 7.61, IIRC) supported this feature, but GMail didn't recognise them. You could override the check by adding "?nocheckbrowser" to the end of the URI: http://gmail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser
I reverted to using Firefox for a while, but now I'm happily back to using Opera. Been a happy, registered user since 5.0.
- AlanH
1. "Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer' "
Isn't that fraud?
No. Fraud is about using lies for direct financial gain, and requires specific intent. Opera identifies itself as IE for interoperability purposes, something that "modern" tech laws (such as the DMCA) protect.
Plus, the whole point of the www is that it is browser independent. So this is unstandard behavior, and should be shunned(2).
I'm sure Grandma will think it's great that her bank and realtor websites don't work because Opera is taking a stand.
The real blame for this lies first in Netscape (which extended the web in many incompatible ways, but at least worked on every OS) and later in Microsoft (who used Netscape's tactics to sew up the web). If Tim Berners-Lee was dead, I'm sure he'd be rolling in his grave. Instead he's had to settle for being alive and helping correct this nonsense.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Even if the Opera dude was right, Firefox is free, open-source, extensible and has a bazillion amazing extensions. I'll take that over paying for Opera or using the free version that is stuffed with adware.
I agree that Opera is a decent browser and they've been decent for a long time. I just don't want to pay for a browser or be forced to view advertisements. And thanks to Firefox, I don't have to.
My only complaint is that Firefox seems to run painfully slow on OSX.
I have 2 mod points left, but you're not getting one for underrated :)
Under and over rated, to my understanding, are the generic +1 and -1 options. It covers all the reasons you might want to adjust a comment but don't have existing options for, like 'Completely wrong' or 'Proper use of iambic pentameter in a ruby script'. It never gets listed as the reason though -- if I modded you under (or over) rated right now instead of commenting, your score would go up or down, but no word would appear next to the score.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Opera reports itself as "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.01"; this isn't a case of Opera being completely unidentifiable by default. A swift F12-i and Opera reports "Opera/8.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)"