Comparing Firefox 3 With Opera 9.5 On Linux

Joe Barr writes "Mayank Sharma has two recent stories on Linux.com; one evaluating the performance of Firefox 3, and the second comparing it to Opera 9.5. Which is better? For most people, it's probably more a matter of familiarity or personal preference, but these stories provide hard performance data to consider as well. Sharma notes, 'In terms of rendering JavaScript, Firefox 3 had the edge over Opera 9.5 in the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which has an error range between +/-0.8% to +/-11.3% depending on the type of test. In the JavScript Engine speed test, Opera 9.5 scores over its peers when it comes to error handling, DOM, and AJAX.'" Slashdot shares a corporate overlord with Linux.com.

Comments

Re:Easy.

[Koiu Lpoi]

Frankly, with as many features Firefox has copied from Opera, it'd better be good. Don't get me wrong here, I love FF, but there's no denying that some of their "latest greatest" features are ripped straight from Opera.

If Opera was FOSS, the Firefox team wouldn't have had to write nearly as much code. (insert smiley for people who will inevitably think this is completely serious)

Re:awesome bar = f u bar

[Koiu Lpoi]

Cue mountains of posts pointing out, yet again that oldbar doesn't make it exactly like it used to be, just close.

Re:load gmail!

[at_slashdot]

Opera loads old version of GMail and that works fine, if you want the new version you need to navigate to this link: https://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser (which also works fine in Opera)

Opera screen real estate vs Firefox

[kestasjk]

The first thing you notice when you launch Opera 9.5 is that it occupies less desktop real estate than Firefox 3, with less toolbar space and smaller borders, giving you more room to view pages. The thing I like about Firefox is how changeable it is: Screenshot

I've been organizing the bars like that since I started using FF, and I find it makes for much better use of that space than just a gray, blank area.

Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox

[Airw0lf]

The thing I like about Firefox is how changeable it is: Screenshot I've been organizing the bars like that since I started using FF, and I find it makes for much better use of that space than just a gray, blank area. Opera's interface is every bit as customisable if not more so. Right click on any toolbar and click "Customize." The "Toolbars" tab will let you play with which toolbars you want to show, and where you want them. The "Buttons" tab will allow you to place just about any button anywhere you want. Finally, you can even make your own buttons. See the Opera wiki for more information: http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons

Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox

[Vectronic]

Excluding the Menu Bar (Opera uses the standard/forced top one) Opera can do that aswell, you can drag/drop any button/checkbox/dropdown/etc to any other bar (excluding the main side panel buttons)

You can also quicky drag a webpage, or an image onto a toolbar, to create a temporary "favorite" of sorts... its not particularily useful, but ive used it, mainly so i dont accidentally close the tab.

Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox

[SilentChasm]

Opera's interface is every bit as customisable if not more so. False. I challenge you to put a "back" button next to the Help menu on the menu bar, then. You can do it in IE. You can do it in Firefox. Opera forces that space after Help to be waste. Here it is:Screenshot :P

There's a back button, forward button and an addressbar next to help. Not technically what you said but close enough that it shouldn't matter. Probably technically cheating aswell as it's not the 'real' menu bar.

You're right that you can't put stuff in the menu bar in Opera though, and you should be able to. It is a waste of screen space. In order to make that screenshot (without manipulation), I used the custom buttons page on http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons to add each of those menu items to the "Main Bar" (after clearing it), then I added the back button and decided to go a step further and add the address bar and forward. I had already used the toggle menu bar custom button to hide the actual "Menu Bar" (I normally don't have a menu bar even, the panel is enough).

If you look closely I have the entire main menu as a button in the tab bar (labeled "Menu" with a black arrow next to it). If I click that I'll get a menu with all the main menu bar items in it. Over on the right I have a view button which will display the "view bar" where I've hidden the menu toggle button.

I could have combined everything on the menu into the tab bar instead but it wouldn't have looked like the main menu colorwise. I could have everything in one bar like the great-grandparent has in their firefox screenshot. Less than their screenshot even if I put everything in the tab bar instead of a seperate one.

Also there is a panel toggle on the left of the screen. I typically don't use the main menu except for the File-> Import/Export menu options so hiding the entire thing makes sense since all bookmarks, history, widgets, mail and newsfeeds are available in the side panel and most settings are accessible via keyboard the shortcuts F12+none, ctrl, shift.

If you really want to get bitchy about wasted space you could put all the menu options, the addressbar and everything normally in a toolbar into a custom panel and get rid of every bar (even the tab bar if you want) and just have the panel toggle at the edge of the screen. Hide it when you don't need it. You can't get much less wasted space unless you changed the theme for your desktop to use less space for the window decorations (I think that would be going a little far). The entire window would be space for the page except for the small scrollbar on one side and the panel toggle on the other (not necessary with keyboard shortcuts).

Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox

[Tony Hoyle]

Firefox has been able to do this for ages. In fact it gives you a menu with all the recently closed tabs and you can pick which one you want to restore.

Re:awesome bar = f u bar

[aussie_a]

Here's the best example I can think of for this awesome feature.

1) Go to this page in a new tab
2) Now close that tab.
3) In a new tab start typing "Warlord Tiefling" in the location bar.
4) Notice how a link is coming up and how it is highlighting the word as you type it. But if you select it and hit enter, you'll see that the words "Tiefling Warlord" do not appear in the URL.

This is the awesomeness of the awesome bar. It doesn't just search the URL of your history and bookmarks, it searches the page title as well! So while trying to remember the URL for the Warlord Tiefling page would be impossible, the awesome bar means you don't have to.

Re:Easy.

[at_slashdot]

Opera can disable scripts per page or globally, and you don't need a plugin to do that.

Re:But what about plug-ins such as Flash?

[Fjandr]

You can enable it on a per-site basis.

Honestly, if a site is designed to tell you that it won't allow use of a browser that can render it perfectly, it is one developed by people who obviously didn't even bother to test the functionality of the site under those other browsers. Developers who are that lazy aren't going to look at weblogs and give a damn about removing meaningless browser restrictions.

Opera 9.5 is a good browser

[Jerry Smith]

Ibook 500 mHz, 320 ram so it was quite a nice machine SEVEN years ago.

Yet Opera 6.5 runs GOOD, whether Firefox 3 won't run or just takes ages to start. Only/main advantage of FF is that it's customisable, with all the addons to 'improve the browsing-experience'.

I really appreciate OSS but at the moment Opera is the best browser for my older machines. My 2 cents.

Re:awesome bar = f u bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera's awesome bar goes a step further, not only does it search the URLs and the titles of your history, but also the content. If I type Warlord Tiefling in Opera 9.5's address bar, I get this page as one of the results, because you motioned it, aussie_a.