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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.
Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04 looks like ass. Apparently subpixel hinting for LCD monitors isn't compiled correctly in the Ubuntu package. Most of the posts online are over a month old and, as far as I know, this hasn't been patched yet. Apparently I'm not the only one with this problem:
Here
Here
"I have found the solution to this problem. The reason you have no subpixel hinting is that Fx3 uses the in-tree cairo library, which has no LCD-filtering patches applied. You, or your distro's package maintainer, will have to compile it with following option in .mozconfig: -enable-system-cairo. You'll also need to use this command: export LDFLAGS='-lX11 -lXrender' "
And here
The fonts are so blurry and unreadable that I get a headache just browsing Google News. Until this is resolved, Firefox 3 will remain unusable for me in Hardy Heron.
The fact that you have to download a third-party add-on to even resemble the original functionality shows how little respect the Mozilla Corporation has for its users.
Firefox without extensions is ridiculously barebones. I'm glad I'm an Opera user.
Speaking of stuff that's not in stock Firefox, one of the things about Opera I almost can't do without is Tools->Quick Preferences->Edit Site Preferences. So bloody useful. Oh, and the Cookie Manager in the regular preferences dialog is pretty awesome too.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I run both Opera and FireFox however Opera never FEELS faster to me. Perhaps it is the default settings, or perhaps the sites I go to Gmail, Gcal, Slashdot, etc, all feel a lot faster in FireFox.
Also, FireFox feels easier to use.
And then, FireFox has all of the plugins I now love, and can't get rid of.
Opera is doing good, but they need to focus on their target markets needs over their speed or standards compliance.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
Well put. But that doesn't give these guys something new to whine about, does it? Instead, they are overly encumbered by the extra suggestions it provides, suggestions that they themselves bookmarked. Hell, if they don't like the link, delete the bookmark.But then again, there's a lotta these anonymous cowards whining about insubstantial things like this address bar. Maybe there's a few bugs, maybe it still has a memory leak. Who knows. If you don't like the program, uninstall. Its that simple.
One thing i can almost bet on is that despite all the bitching, they did their posting in FF3. Lol. The irony, the apathy, the whiny. I guess if it wasn't FF3, they'd be wining about having to clean their toenail clippers after each use instead of it doing it automatically.... Negative Nancy needs a cookie.
Until Opera gets developer tools AT LEAST on par with Internet Explorer (6), I find it very difficult to support Opera in any complex web interface. It also lacks proper ARIA support, and key handling.
And unfortunately, having four competing browsers is a slight headache. You have: Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and 8 coming with no hope of an end-of-life for 6 in the foreseeable future, Safari 3, though 2 still has a smidge of market share ... Also, Safari on OSX !== Safari for Windows, so there is also that to consider. Firefox 3, and 2, and really you ought to support anything from 1.5 and on, though the high adoption rate of Firefox and Safari users helps there some, where you are always targeting the 'most current' ... Count Opera 9, and immediately you have ten individual browser test cases, each with their own quirks and pains, some requiring a second (or third) machine (vm) to even test properly. So for each function, feature, and float, one has to load ten browsers. Brings new light to the beauty of unit testing.
The really brave stay up with Webkit nightly.
I love the fact stuff is moving so rapidly, but at some point supporting backwards compatibility becomes a burden.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
You missed something - how about loading the comparable XML/XSLT/SVG rendering engine in Opera? What you say? Aww darn... that doesn't even exist, and whatever miniscule implementation exists is not even in the same ballpark as what Gecko provides.