Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers

An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."

Comments

Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who finds that 99%+ of my time is spent waiting on DNS and data transfer and shit? I'm never actually sitting there, data downloaded, waiting for my browser to respond.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[B4light]

Just use your favorite browser, and forget all that startup speed crap and "My javascript is faster than yours D:"

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[internewt]

Am I the only one who finds that 99%+ of my time is spent waiting on DNS and data transfer and shit? I'm never actually sitting there, data downloaded, waiting for my browser to respond.

Depends on your browsing habits, maybe?

When I am browsing forums I regularly visit, I ctrl-click in FF on all the new post icons, opening a load of tabs in a short period. I also tend to modify my forum preferences so as many posts as possible are on each page, so each page tends to be rather large.

I find this kills FF for a while - it stops and starts responding, and if not responding and I go to a different workspace then FF will jump workspaces on its own when it does decide to respond again! This is rather irritating, to say the least.

But simple browsing, one page at a time kind of thing, is OK. But then I use NoScript, adblock etc. which get rid of many things that add delays to pages loading/rendering. I guess the regexp that adblock does on pages does actually have a penalty, but it's that or the cost of blocking ads. I'll take the adblock delay, ta very much.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[CarpetShark]

Just use your favorite browser

Too often, this is the last excuse of IE-fanbois who've lost the security argument. Don't choose your favourite browser; choose a responsible browser. You're on a network with millions of machines. When experts tell you a browser is too vulnerable to use, stop using it.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[KDR_11k]

That may be relevant when discussing IE but when the comparison is Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc there's really no irresponsible option and it comes down to preference.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[KDR_11k]

I'm an Opera user and I don't have a problem with too many tabs loading the system down, I do get some times of no response but that's usually when I've done something else and the browser got paged out by the OS and needs to reload itself.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us use Blockbuster online. We need the "my javascript is faser than yours"

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[mr exploiter]

And witch is this responsible browser you're talking about? I hope you're not talking about firefox, just look at the secunia main page to see why.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[mr exploiter]

That may be relevant when discussing IE but when the comparison is Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc there's really no irresponsible option and it comes down to preference.

LOL @ Safari and no irresponsible option in the same phrase. Damn apple is good at marketing.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Safari really is not in the same league.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[E IS mC(Square)]

>> ome of us use Blockbuster online.

Then your problem lies elsewhere - not with javascript or browser.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[beelsebob]

And what is irresponsible about choosing safari?

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[CarpetShark]

No security is foolproof, but IE is clearly the least responsible choice.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Mozk]

Ctrl-click? Does your mouse not have a middle button?

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's produced by Appl$ therefore it's teh evilz.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody else offers in-store exchanges. I drop my dvds in the store monday and by wednesday I have three more movies. netflix cant beat that :) If I return on Tue, I can have three new relesases on tuesday itself

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[buchner.johannes]

Use an aggressive dns cacher. The web will feel faster.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[internewt]

I use a laptop most of the time, it only has 2, though both at once acts as a 3rd under Linux. Ctrl-click is just easier to press, cos trying to press both at once ain't too easy.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Draek]

Safari may be a bloated piece of turd that looks out of place at anything that's not OSX and bundled with some of the worst pieces of bloatware ever seen, but the engine itself is good, fast and secure, and you have the KDE devs to thank for that.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[sznupi]

You would really like the responsiveness of Opera in many-tabs scenario.

If you do check it out, remember to turn on "Window" menu in options (lists all tabs in current window, and is actually usable - you don't have to scroll through it like in FF, no matter how many tabs), "hold down right mouse button and move scroll" (hard to explain...but its great), and list of all tabs (in all windows) in sidebar (with search)

And yes, Opera has Adblock built-in, you just have to provide it with a list... http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[AmiMoJo]

It's more about Javascript performance which is used in "Web 2.0" apps. Basically it's about making pages work more like desktop programs do with things like drag-and-drop, re-ordering of lists with a single click, advanced editing functions etc.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[TCM]

Care to elaborate what that's supposed to be?

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[ZackSchil]

Wow, that's a very interesting way to interpret the history of KHTML/Webkit development.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[rs79]

"Am I the only one who finds that 99%+ of my time is spent waiting on DNS and data transfer and shit? I'm never actually sitting there, data downloaded, waiting for my browser to respond."

If you try Opera you can actually see what it's waiting on in the status bar. Usually you'll find it's waiting for a response from some lame ass as server - which if you're clever you'll alias to localhost in your hosts file.

Every time I use another browser I feel lost, staring at a blank page going "what is it DOING" as opposed to using Opera and saying "Oh it's stuck on googleanalytics. Again".

If your browser really had all the data it needed, it would render the page. Honest. In fact they render before they finish downloading.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[hairyfeet]

I'm not sure if he is talking about the same thing, but I use Treewalk DNS server. It is VERY fast, VERY easy to setup (unless you need something fancy it is just install and use) and is only using 5Mb of RAM on this old 1.1GHz Celery that I keep as a Netbox.

It will easily cache a weeks worth of web pages, you can flush the DNS cache at the click of a button, update root hits from ICANN or ORSC, it really is a nice and easy to use DNS cache server. If you use any WinNT based OS it will speed up web surfing (and is a Godsend to my dialup customers) and couldn't be easier to use. Give it a try, I bet you'll like it.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any browser could be considered insecure. For example, Firefox is insecure compared to Opera.

What is irresponsible are the people who use and publish exploits. Normal people should be allowed to use whatever browser they please, including IE.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[ahankinson]

Why?

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[rs79]

"Am I the only one ..."

If you try Opera you can actually see what it's waiting on in the status bar. Usually you'll find it's waiting for a response from some lame ass as server - which if you're clever you'll alias to localhost in your hosts file.

Every time I use another browser I feel lost, staring at a blank page going "what is it DOING" as opposed to using Opera and saying "Oh it's stuck on googleanalytics. Again".

If your browser really had all the data it needed, it would render the page. Honest. In fact they render before they finish downloading.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[jawahar]

time is spent waiting on DNS

I believe this is solved

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[buchner.johannes]

A DNS server that does just forwarding and caching.
aggressive = caching for a week or so.

While your browser also does some caching, the dns cacher holds the cache between restarts.
As GGP mentioned, waiting for DNS to walk the tree can take seconds.
The (unix) operating system does no caching by itself.

The easiest to set up is probably dnsmasq. Point it to your nameservers, and let /etc/resolv.conf point to localhost. Set the number of cache entries and duration.

Drawback: You will not be that up to date with domains that change its IP (e.g. new owner).

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[buchner.johannes]

It will easily cache a weeks worth of web pages

I doubt that the dns cache holds web pages, you mean domain names.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[CarpetShark]

Really? So anyone should be allowed to drive whichever vehicle they want too, even if it's prone to blowing up on the highway and taking other cars with it? Get real.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use your favorite browser

Too often, this is the last excuse of IE-fanbois who've lost the security argument. Don't choose your favourite browser; choose a responsible browser. You're on a network with millions of machines. When experts tell you a browser is too vulnerable to use, stop using it.

Actually the security argument has switched 180, maybe that is why all the Firefox focus is on speed and other things these days. Just look at the security advisories from companies like Secunia, Firefox is the new king of vulnerabilities, by a huge margin (seriously, a lot of FF users are in denial on this, because it is not how it used to be, but look at the reports!). IE8 on Vista is probably in general the safest browser to use today, also because it runs in protected mode sandboxed from the system with less privileges and access level than even a standard or limited user.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

A web browser cannot kill people. Get some perspective.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[easyTree]

Really? So anyone should be allowed to drive whichever vehicle they want too, even if it's prone to blowing up on the highway and taking other cars with it? Get real.

That's a fail in your 'Car Analogy 101' course...

Anyone should be able to drive any car, regardless of whether it has a top-of-the-line security system to keep "teh evil fux" (tm) out.. it's other predators that are the problem, the gp is saying.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[easyTree]

It's awesome huh? Name another browser which can have 50-70 tabs open and still feel snappy..

I cannot understand why there's such poor uptake by the general n00bs^H^H^H^H^Hpublic.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[easyTree]

The windows sidebar works for me. Manage your tabs as a list, multi-select, filter, close, minimize etc..

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[damburger]

How can someone post such a comment on SLASHDOT of all places? I am running the latest version of Firefox on a MacBook Pro 2.5Ghz dual core with 2 gigs of RAM, and I constantly get beachballed if I have the temerity to click on more than one thing in the span of ten seconds.

This site has slowed down for me over the years, despite my computers getting faster.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[damburger]

Some people use BitTorrent. Most torrent tracker sites don't overload the javascript, and its free.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[damburger]

Because there is a cost in user time/annoyance to switching software. So long as the benefits Opera offers over Firefox give less of a return than the cost of switching, people won't do it.

Don't underestimate the value of a familiar user interface to someone who doesn't really give a crap about browser wars.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[easyTree]

It's not a question of following the banner of some alternative browser manufacturer, it's about making one's life easier and/or better.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Anonymous Coward]

* For ctrl+click it is ctrl+shift+click in opera. I also had problems with ctrl+click habit. Now I got used to it.

* for add blocking I use Addsweep. It works nicely.
The only feature I am missing is tree style tab. Other than that I am happy with opera. No more memory hogging.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[mdwh2]

Since when was Firefox the dominant browser? That argument applies to both Opera and Firefox, in comparison to IE.

And remember that Opera was around long before Firefox was thought of - your reason is in fact one of the reasons I won't bother switching to Firefox, because any benefits there may be are less than the costs of switching.

Re:Who cares how fast the browser is?

[Shadyman]

I'm pretty sure the parent poster wasn't talking about the Witch browser. It's rarely used and even more rarely spoken about.

Shiira

[xrayspx]

I looked at that like a year ago, and it looked as if it hadn't been updated in years then. Are they back to work on it? It was quick, but it was also very crashy when I tested it out. Now that KDE4 is in Ports, Konqueror works nice and fast on OSX also, however it crashes way too often too.

...checks site... Yeah, looks like Shiira has seen some activity since February of this year. Prior to that the previous news item on their site was Jan '08, and before that, July '07. Could be nice.

Re:Shiira

[Korin43]

Yeah I feel the same way about Midori. I read that it's significantly faster than Chrome, but I installed it and it crashes constantly. I'm sure it's easier to make a fast browser if you don't bother to make sure it works..

Re:Shiira

[dhovis]

Shiira is WebKit based, which means it is the same basis as Safari and Chrome. If Shiira is faster than Safari, it is probably using a more recent WebKit build than the currently shipping Safari. You can also get Safari with leading-edge daily builds of WebKit from http://webkit.org/. When WebKit introduced the Squirrelfish and then Squirrelfish Extreme Javascript engines, they were available in the WebKit daily builds first.

If nothing else, WebKit has really pushed standards compliance and speed.

Re:Shiira

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, but in my case, the super cool browser I am using is another obscure browser nobody has updated for *checks the site* about 10 years. But when I talk about it with other geeks, they just envy me for knowing and using that obscure thing that they almost !@#$%^ NO CARRIER.

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

But K-Meleon is completely broken to begin with.

And what's all this stuff about the fastest browser? *cough*lynxoffbyonedillo*cough*.

Re:Of course

[hairyfeet]

What is wrong with Kmeleon? The "little lizard" as my customers call it is GREAT for older hardware, and if you use the new CCF ME build it comes with ABP built in, and even can be run straight from a thumbstick without modding!

So I don't know what your problem with the lizard is, but I have found both the stock and CCF ME builds to be faster than FF3, especially running on older hardware, easy to run on OSes as old as Win95(there is even a quick tutorial on the Kmeleon site and links to the two files you need to add), it isn't flashy or bling bling, but that to me is a virtue. If you need a super fast browser with ABP support, you can't go wrong with Kmeleon CCF ME.

Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

The Acid3 test sort of bugs me. Yes, it's nice that browsers are fast, but even the most complex pages have lower kilobyte counts than most internet connections allow for, which means servers are the lag points, not your browser. I'd love to see a usability test sometime, rather than a flat-out speed rating. Webkit's neat, but with so many people using their browsers as a primary operating base - and we see proof of this approach in Google's development of the Chrome OS - usability is being sorely ignored in many technological benchmarks. I can't tell you how annoying it is to have Firebox' Live Bookmarks fail to load every ten minutes, it breaks the RSS experience. And while IE has its flaws and benefits, it's emulated, not inovating and old hat. Chrome is nice, I like how my computer treats it, but it's still in the works. Who's going to decide to pick up a new browser based on a speed test? Yes, CNet included some key features and noticed bugs, but Shiira and Arora both get termed works-in-progress, which does not make them underdogs now, it makes them next year's underdogs. And by the time they're ready for mass adoption, all of their good points will likely have been emulated as thoroughly as anyone cares for. Acid3 is like telling people your browser has 700 horse power, instead of the 300 horsepower their browsers have. No one cares if you top out at 200mph, the speed limit's still 60, folks.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

But Shiira is from Japan !! You can't just emulate that !! Japan is the greatest country ever !! Anime and stuff and super godly bandwidth connections !! Shiira best browser ever !! ...

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[mxh83]

Chrome is nice, I like how my computer treats it, but it's still in the works.

No it's not. Chrome is not a beta product any more.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Bert64]

Exactly, fast connections, necessitating a fast browser...

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[rolfc]

I have 100 Mbit , two ways, and I'm not alone. Speed in browser is a factor. Remember, "640 Kb ought to be enough for everyone"?

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

Yeah, Google removed the beta tag from a lot of their products, but given their visible patterns, Chrome has a high chance of getting really fun when ChromeOS comes out - I'd bet dollars to donuts that the version released soon before or soon after the ChromeOS release will have made a few milestone improvements that really move it from just being adoptable to really being desirable for a larger audience of people.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[hedwards]

I wish that meme would die a horrible death. It was never suggested that 640kb would be enough in perpetuity, anybody that was knowledgeable enough to know what a kb was, knew that it wasn't that long before that people were happy to have a whopping 48kb to work with.

The ACID3 isn't really a standards test, and passing it is about as useful as having the biggest dick in the room. Sure there's probably some utility to it possibly, but realistically it's not really going to make any meaningful difference. In fact the test itself purposely violates the standards in a way that a standards compatible browser shouldn't really be expected to deal with. Remember kids, friends don't let friends write poorly formatted HTML.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Blakey Rat]

What does the word "emulated" mean in your little screed?

For example, in what way is IE "emulated?" Do you say that because it runs in a security sandbox?

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

Right, maybe emulated is the wrong word. What I meant by that was IE is the ultimate fallback - it does just about everything every other browser does, but doesn't seem to do any of it very well - it's inclusion for the sake of "me too" at this point.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[sznupi]

Well, if you say that you should love Opera - it really shines when it comes to UI responsiveness; lean & fast (where it counts; who here doesn't open pages primarily in background tabs?)

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Redfeather]

To be fair, I haven't used Opera on my main computer for about two years, so I should try the new release. I used it on my BlackBerry Bold for about two days, but after crashing my phone eighteen times in 48 hours, I figured I'd give up the ghost.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[sznupi]

Seems Opera for Blackberry isn't very representative...hard to blame them given virtual non-existence of Blackberries outside North America (at the least - it definatelly worked great, also ~2 years ago, on my mobiles...both Opera Mini on "classic" S40 Nokia and Opera Mobile on Symbian S60)

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[BenoitRen]

"super godly bandwidth connections"? You must not know Japan. Compared to other industrialised countries, they switched to broadband quite late.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[blackraven14250]

....which can mean they have a higher level of technology installed in most areas....

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Ilgaz]

Japanese developers have a unique style of developing, especially on open source. There are some really hidden treasures who aren't too popular because author didn't set an english page etc.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish that meme would die a horrible death.

Hi, Bill!

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[hkmwbz]

As I said to the other guy, you can blame RIM for no proper Opera for Blackberries. They apparentlu refuse to share important info with Opera.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[hkmwbz]

Blame RIM for no proper Opera for Blackberries. They apparentlu refuse to share important info with Opera.

Tested this Weekend...

[Dr Egg]

5 browsers than render Slashdot with just as much broken CSS as every other browser! Download today and see what you can('t) see!

Re:Tested this Weekend...

[Kreigaffe]

I don't think I'd rag on browsers for displaying a shlob of code as it's given to them, I'd rather rag on the shlob of code for being a complete mess.

Re:Tested this Weekend...

[rs79]

"I'd rather rag on the shlob of code for being a complete mess."

So far that hasn't worked. Plan B?

Netsurf

[rhyder128k]

Netsurf is a little known, low resource browser that's worth watching. It started life as a RISC OS (Acorn) browser but it's now cross platform. The show stopper is that it doesn't yet support javascript, but they're working on it.

Re:Netsurf

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a thin wrapper over WebKit. What else in that category? Midori, Arora, Tear (on maemo devices), uzbl, Rekonq...

Re:Netsurf

[rhyder128k]

No, it uses its own layout engine.

Re:Netsurf

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it's only available for some obscure operating systems like RISC OS, Amiga OS, BeOS and Linux. Wake me when it runs on something that people actually use.

Re:Netsurf

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a thin wrapper over WebKit.

No, it looks like it has its own HTML renderer:
http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress#WebStandards
http://www.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/develop#Compiling

Re:Netsurf

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. NetSurf has nothing whatsoever to do with WebKit.

Re:NetSurf

[Anonymous Coward]

NetSurf doesn't use WebKit. It has it's own layout engine.

I would first post,

[__aaaojf4823]

but I guess my browser wasn't that fast!

Opera

[mxh83]

Personally, I hope Opera doesn't gain any further market share, because it is not open source. It is becoming less and less relevant.

Re:Opera

[Zixaphir]

Que the purists versus the Pragmatics...

Re:Opera

[ale_ryu]

What? It's a private company, if they don't want to release their code you cannot force them, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's not like you don't have any alternatives.
I personally don't care if a software package is open source or not as long as it does the job properly, and I don't think it's less relevant for not opening up the source

Re:Opera

[SteelRealm]

Right, closed source and still more secure and less vulnerable then Firefox and dedicated to privacy and quality. Open Source is good as a concept and should obviously be furthered, and maybe Opera will eventually go Open source, but to want a company to burn and their quality product to die off simply because they want to remain closed source is probably the most childish thing I can think of.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because other browsers have caught up with Opera's features, doesn't make Opera "less and less relevant."

Despite not being open source, be thankful for their innovative ideas.

Re:Opera

[gmuslera]

Probably most of what you enjoy today from your browsers have some origin in Opera. Not remember if was my main browser ever, but had been using it since 1996. Small, fast, secure, multiplataform, usually the most innovative in its own time (tabs, gestures, fast javascript, starting page with captures of your preferred sites, i think i saw all of that in opera years before than in any other browser, open source or not).

Would be great that it become open source (originally was commercial, then ads sponsored, then free, the evolution looks like going in that way), but anyway they did and keep doing a great work as they are, and you owe a lot to them even if never used their browser.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source seems unlikely as Opera's main business is browsers for mobile devices and other devices that do not run normal OSes (like the Wii). I assume their various browsers share a good amount of source code with their desktop browser.

Re:Opera

[sznupi]

Uhm, it is steadily gaining market share in some areas, even on desktop

http://www.ranking.com.ua/en/rankings/web-browsers-groups.html - over 30% in Ukraine, similarly in Russia, and not bad at all in few other countries in central Europe

But what's more, it dominates mobile browsing in developing markets with its Opera Mini. You might of course think that only smartphones in style of iPhone are relevant, but a billion people, or two, might disagree...

Re:Opera

[mxh83]

My post was misunderstood probably because it was incomplete. Due to Opera not opening up their browser, people can't make addins like Firefox. Useful things like Roboform don't work either. If they made it open source, it could have grown faster. Now even Chrome has overtaken Opera, because it's open and people are developing cool stuff for it.

Re:Opera

[BenoitRen]

I'm sure most of those ideas had already been done elsewhere. For one thing, tabs in a web browser was done by MyIE2, a browser shell for IE, first. Opera did not invent it.

Re:Opera

[gmuslera]

MyIE2 0.1 is from 07/2002. Opera was MDI since the 1st release, and introduced tabs as we know them now in 2001. Just found its history that could give a bit more light on the topic.

Re:Opera

[BenoitRen]

Allow me to correct myself. While I was right in that an IE shell came up with the innovation, it wasn't MyIE2. It was actually NetCaptor. From Wikipedia:

Browser tabs were introduced by NetCaptor in 1998, later by IBrowse in 1999, following by myIE2 and MultiZilla (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[1]) and Opera in 2000, Mozilla Application Suite in 2001, Konqueror and Safari in 2003, Internet Explorer 7[2] in 2006 and Google Chrome in 2008.

Re:Opera

[ruemere]

Opera users have Widgets.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Opera

[rs79]

"Personally, I hope Opera doesn't gain any further market share, because it is not open source. It is becoming less and less relevant."

And there you have it. Open source has now been elevated from a cult to a full blown religion.

"I don't care if it's the best, it doesn't mesh with my personal belief system, and must die".

Choices are good. I'd choose Opera even if I had to pay for it. It's good that poeple have choices.

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html

Re:Opera

[Ash Vince]

Open Source is good as a concept and should obviously be furthered, and maybe Opera will eventually go Open source, but to want a company to burn and their quality product to die off simply because they want to remain closed source is probably the most childish thing I can think of.

He's a Stallman baby, what do you expect?

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is cancer.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably most of what you enjoy today from your browsers have some origin in Opera. Not remember if was my main browser ever, but had been using it since 1996. Small, fast, secure, multiplataform, usually the most innovative in its own time (tabs, gestures, fast javascript, starting page with captures of your preferred sites, i think i saw all of that in opera years before than in any other browser, open source or not).

That is impressive. Opera's first public release was in 1996, and it cost money (no free version, just limited trial period), so you paid for Opera from its first release when very few knew much about it (or about it at all), especially outside of Norway. With user acceptance like that, and you are not alone, it is a bit strange it never have caught up with a wider audience after they made it free (as in beer).

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera may not have renamed them to "tabs" until 2000, but they had the functionality in 1995: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MultiTorg_Opera.png

Re:Opera

[hkmwbz]

Due to Opera not opening up their browser, people can't make addins like Firefox.

That has got nothing to do with open source. You can make addons for Firefox because it has an API for that. Opera could easily add one as well without opening the browser's code.

Now even Chrome has overtaken Opera

No it hasn't. Opera is still the #3 browser worldwide according to StatCounter. In Europe, Opera's market share is higher than Safari and Chrome's combined.

Re:Opera

[mdwh2]

I take it you post the equivalent comment in every Apple thread about OS X? Please do so, so I can watch how quickly you get modded down.

It's curious that when it comes to Opera, we have no end of "but it's not open source" whining, yet no other product is held to the same standard.

I think that open source is a great thing. But that doesn't mean I think all closed source software should die - that's the sort of fringe argument that gives OS advocates a bad name. Except when it comes to Opera, for some reason. Honestly, I don't get all the Opera hate here - especially when they were the first browser to offer an alternative to IE, after it won the original browser wars, long before Firefox was even thought of.

It is becoming less and less relevant.

Nonsense. If market share is all that matters, by that reasoning we should all be running Windows and Internet Explorer. By your logic, Linux is "becoming less and less relevant".

Re:Opera

[mdwh2]

If they made it open source, it could have grown faster. Now even Chrome has overtaken Opera, because it's open and people are developing cool stuff for it.

Citation needed?

And there are vast numbers of counter examples of software where closed source is used vastly more than open source software (Windows vs Linux being the obvious choice).

Since you love Chrome so much, why aren't you saying that Google should whither away and die, because they haven't open sourced their search engine code? Surely they should do that, right?

Arora's reason for existence

[David Gerard]

Woulda been nice to add the reasons these browsers exist - e.g. Arora was created specifically as a test wrapper for the Qt WebKit component. In fact, right now I'm compiling the current git of Qt so I can compile the current git of Arora because Ubuntu 9.04 only includes Arora 0.5, which is rather old and rickety ...

Camino exists because AOL made an abortive move to make a lightweight Mac Gecko browser and it's still around from that. K-Meleon exists because there was no lightweight Gecko browser at the time, i.e. it's before the mozilla/browser internal fork that became Firefox.

So what's the story behind Shiira?

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[Magic5Ball]

K-Meleon was pretty awesome on the (dated) 32MB Lappy 486 when IE3 and Opera were choking hard on DHTML.

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[Hurricane78]

But isn't Konqueror THE Qt WebKit browser?
By the way: Why wasn't it in the list, while Opera was?

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[Sir_Lewk]

As a KDE user I can say that Konqueror sucks hard for modern webbrowsing and uses the KHTML engine instead of Webkit. I strongly advocate anyone using KDE use Arora, the difference in propering rendering alone is worth it.

As to why Opera was listed and Konqueror wasn't I can't say. I'd guess though it has something to do with the authors probably deciding there was a good reason Konqueror wasn't popular ;)

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[medlefsen]

Konqueror is KHTML, not WebKit. Though I think they are working on the ability to choose or something. I agree though, it should have been on the list.

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[Zarel]

No, Konqueror still uses KHTML, which WebKit was based on, but is inferior in many ways. There was some talk about switching it over to WebKit a while ago, but they eventually decided it was infeasible.

I was surprised Konq and iCab weren't in the list, though; they're pretty important browsers. And I didn't really understand why they published things like Acid3 scores, considering the majority of the browsers on the list used rendering engines from the four major browsers (two Gecko and two WebKit browsers).

By the way, I wouldn't recommend using Konqueror. As a Web developer, I consider KHTML one of the worst major rendering engines to support (yes, even worse than Trident from IE7+).

Re:Arora's reason for existence

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh there's a WebKit KPart that you can use dude.

Fast, but with a catch

[chill]

Sadly, it's riddled with bugs. The current full release wouldn't run on our Mac, and although the latest developmental build would, it suffered frequent crashes, making it hard to recommend.

I think that qualifies as a showstopper. It is, after all, a browser for a computer touted as "it just works".

Re:Fast, but with a catch

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is referring to Shiira, not Opera, for those who didn't RTFA. I think Opera's currently the best browser available on the Mac.

We use Opera on a daily basis

[ducomputergeek]

It has a few interesting features, like being able to have the browser refresh a page every x seconds instead of having to code that in. Useful for the web-based admin panel that lets users request 3 hours of internet time at the coffee shop. We use it with Google Docs and Gmail as well as Pandora. Seems to use less memory than FireFox and it's not IE. It also seems to be stable enough to last days before having to be restarted. It even has a bittorrent client built in.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[TheModelEskimo]

I used to use Opera for Windows a lot. It was really stable and generally just an awesome browser. Very fast. Then I found out it had an EMAIL client built in, of all things. Started to use it instead of Outlook, and it handled tons of mail via IMAP without a hitch. Wow! Then I found out it had IRC chat support. Another (though less polished) awesome feature.

Then I moved to Linux. I've used it on 5 separate Linux machines, and I still can't use Opera for the length of a single day's web browsing without a crash. It hates Flash. It also seems to hate GMail, so I'm surprised you like it. Slashdot and Opera don't seem to get along now, either. Overall, it's a great browser, but for whatever reason, the Linux version just sucks. My wife still loves it on her Windows laptop, though she despises its weird interactions with GMail.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[burni]

I concur,

+ Sidebar, fast Bookmark organization with on-the-fly buzzword search, StickyNotes
+ Opera also has a nice eMail-Client(pop3/imap) built in, good adressbook features
+ quick settings like disabling/enabling plugins, java, javascript, cookies
+ very good cookie management

++/-- community feature my.opera.com bookmark synchronisation, not forced nor mentioned, has to be found File -> sync...

(-) They should leave out the bittorrent client

++ I think it's more userfriendly than FF

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[SteelRealm]

I've actually had Opera crash on me very, very rarely on Linux and used flash just as much as on Windows. Not a Gmail user though so I don't know how it reacts with it. Also very few problems with it and Slashdot, or, well, "few". Only as many as other browsers.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[richlv]

i'm an opera user on linux for many years now.
1. flash on linux is broken in any browser. that's why i don't even have it installed in opera - if i really want to see some flash stuff, i fire up firefox (haha). additional benefit - less ads.
2. i didn't use gmail much, but i used it some more recently - seemed to work perfectly;
3. slashdot, hehe. slashdot randomly breaks and them gets fixed again, although i'm not completely sure it has ever worked completely without problems ever since they javascripted it like shit. while it can be used, some problems annoy a lot "_

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[hedwards]

I don't think that Opera does use less memory than Firefox. Perhaps if you're going really nuts with the extensions Firefox will use more, but all the figures I've seen indicate that the current browser has a really low footprint.

http://dotnetperls.com/browser-memory

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[Anonymous Coward]

AAAAAAAAAAA++++++++++++++++

Package arrived safe, in one piece, and the 'it was still pulsating when opened....

WILL BUY AGAIN!

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[kamatsu]

Opera might not use less memory than Firefox at first, but give Firefox a day to start consuming your RAM and then we'll see.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using opera 10 beta 2 on windows, and all of my slashdot problems disappeared with 10 beta 1. Maybe you should just switch to 10? I don't know. I had a lot of problems with 9.5 and onward until the 10 alpha. 10 beta 1 had some problems with random stuff, and 10 beta 2 has been very solid for me (though they tweaked the UI, which is a little annoying. hopefully they fix that in beta 3/ regular release).

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[sznupi]

Some weird people value the results of actual real life usage more than benchmarks.

Try to run both browsers for a week or two, with 100+ tabs in several windows, and then you'll know which one's GUI remains responsive, which one treats your RAM gracefully.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[partyguerrilla]

The thing this benchmark forgot to take into account is Opera's memory cache feature. If you don't disable or configure it and leave it on automatic, Opera will use a determined amount of RAM, depending on how much you have installed. This benchmark seems to not have disabled this feature, making the opera results useless.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[BikeHelmet]

And I despise Slashdot's weird interactions with Firefox. Did you know that in this text edit box, I can only enter text in approximately 80% of it? The final 20% is obscured by what appears to be a fully transparent layer, which intercepts clicks, meaning I can't select/replace/delete that text without using the keyboard to get over to it.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[REggert]

I'm reading and posting to Slashdot using Opera on Ubuntu right now, and it works just fine.

I'll admit that the Linux version of Opera seems less stable than the Windows version (it seems to crash fairly regularly, though some websites seem more likely to cause a crash than others), but I've noticed the same thing from Firefox.

The main problem I've encountered with Opera has been badly-designed websites that _require_ MSIE or Firefox (usually the former) either explicitly or by using non-standard features only supported by that browser. I generally try to avoid such sites, though sometimes it's impossible to get around them.

Opera is by far the most standards-compliant browser I've used.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[Spit]

Yeah the flash thing is an issue. I just keep it disabled most of the time and use Firefox for flash video. I don't really have problems with gmail.

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[netux]

Check out the current beta for Opera, on 64 bit flash is CPU intensive, but it really doesn't crash anymore (to many pages with flash at once may prove fatal though)

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2009/08/07/whats-with-the-red-dots-on-the-tabs

Re:We use Opera on a daily basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Those benchmarks are rubbish. First of all, the guy doesn't test normal browsing. He specifically states that he avoided loading certain types of pages, in effect skewing the results. Second of all, he only opens 3 tabs per browser. That is hardly reflective of real use. Finally he only runs the browsers for about 3 hours. I'm the kind of person who normally keeps a browser running for 3 weeks at a time and I think many people keep their browser open for at least a full day continuously.

I have a test of my own with Firefox vs Opera. Firefox (with only Adblock Plus) had been running for 3 days continuously, browsing many different web pages until it reached 1,481,128K memory use and 100% of one of my cores; enough that I had to close it because it was unbearable to use. Opera (with its built in ad blocker, email client and notes pane in regular use) has been running for about 12 days continuously, browsing similar web pages and is sitting at 370,548K memory use and is using very little CPU time.

My conclusion is that the guy who made those benchmarks is clueless, not very thorough or a Firefox fanboy.

Browser wars = Moot

[clinko]

Do I get a Firefox prize in the mail if they hit 72%?

This is the nerd equivalent of celebrity gossip.

Re:Browser wars = Moot

[4D6963]

This is the nerd equivalent of football

FYP.

GO FIREFOX!!!! WHOOOOO!!!

Oprah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought she had her own browser now. Luckily I just misread it.

Underdog?

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I'm not sure if a browser like Opera, which is available on many many [many many] platforms - from set-top boxes to game consoles to mobile phones to actual PCs - can responsibly be called an underdog browser by anyone - regardless of the opinion of the submitter. And it runs pretty well on all those platforms too. The only thing I've seen Firefox, Chrome or IE run decently on is a PC (Fennic? Mobile IE? Surely you jest!). (Disclaimer: I never use Opera on my PC's, but I do use it on all my mobiles)

Re:Underdog?

[TwinkieStix]

Isn't it the case that Opera Mini is to Opera as the Android browser is to Chrome?

Re:Underdog?

[hedwards]

It is an underdog mainly because it makes up such a tiny portion of the browser market and because it failed to gain any meaningful traction against IE. Include Firefox on a list of underdogs right now seems to be completely innapropriate, it is in most places the number 2 browser and in some areas it's even the top dog. With the exception of South Korea, I can't think of anywhere that it couldn't conceivably overtake IE.

Re:Underdog?

[kamatsu]

Yes, in other words, they share much of the same underlying code, but the interface is different.

Re:Underdog?

[sznupi]

Yes and no.

Opera Mini has some relation to Opera Desktop, but is much further from it than Android is from Chrome; it is a JavaME app that requests Opera servers (running full Opera engine) to render/redraw/transmit pages to mobile phone in compressed & streamlined form.

Android browser equivalent would be Opera Mobile - as the other poster says: same engine, different UI.

Re:Underdog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera Mini is like Opera + VNC.

Re:Underdog?

[hkmwbz]

Opera is bigger than Safari and Chrome combined in Europe.

Re:Underdog?

[hkmwbz]

It is an underdog mainly because it makes up such a tiny portion of the browser market

Then Safari and Chrome are as well. Opera is bigger than Safari and Chrome combined in Europe. It's #3 and bigger than Safari and Chrome worldwide as well, but not by that much. Opera is the #1 browser in countries like Russia.

Honestly...

[Zixaphir]

None of this speed thing matters to anyone but this small enthusiast crowd who actually care about a few nanoseconds of difference. I mean, seriously, have you ever switched to a browser because of it's javascript performance before... y'know, Chrome?

But, in my opinion, if you switched to Chrome, your reasons probably included that Google was backing it, and therefore it stood a chance in a "market" (I use this term as loosely as possible) dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox? Oh, and Safari if you just HAPPEN to use a Mac.

Re:Honestly...

[kamatsu]

As a person that uses google docs, gmail, facebook and slashdot often, I love the fast JS in Chrome.

TraceMonkey isn't nearly as good - it has a strange habit of slowing FF down to a crawl at random intervals.

Re:Honestly...

[sznupi]

Since when "JS speed" is synonymous with "browser speed"?

Re:Honestly...

[rs79]

"None of this speed thing matters to anyone but this small enthusiast crowd who actually care about a few nanoseconds of difference. I mean, seriously, have you ever switched to a browser because of it's javascript performance before... y'know, Chrome?"

It's not a few nano seconds, and yes I swiched.

I live in a very rural area. We got broadband *last year* and until then I was on dialup, and 28.8K dialup at that.

Clicking the "back" button in any browser meant I had to wait for the stupid thing to fetch all the stuff from the net. This sometimes meant a couple of minutes. In Opera it was *instant* (if you set the caching parameters right in the Opera control panel).

To this day, if I had to use any other browser to do what I do my work would take me longer. I've tried, honest, I try everything. But nothing comes close to the actual productivity increase that Opera provides.

I've used Opera as my only browser for eight years now. As soon as something better comes along, I'll use that. But I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Honestly...

[rs79]

"Since when "JS speed" is synonymous with "browser speed"?"

Since always?

Facebook and slashdot made some rather painful markup/js code changes in the fall of last year and around new year. On large pages this caused the act of simply trying to scroll a page grind to a screaming fucking halt with near-second response times. Upgrading from Opera 9.whatsis to 10 made them instant again on this old laptop of mine.

Re:Honestly...

[sznupi]

Sure, JS speed is part of browser performance nowadays, but isn't synonymous with it.

As an Opera user, you should be well aware of this... (ability to handle gracefully large number of tabs, responsive UI, etc.)

Tags are fun

[VocationalZero]

internet skelator operasucks browsersonplanets tech software story

Wait, what? Also

in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc.

When I aim loosely, I usually miss.

Opera not an underdog

[strstr]

It's full featured and well established browser and quality is unsurpassed, and it's in widespread use on other devices like cellphones, PDAs, gaming systems (Nintendo DSi), etc. The only problem Opera has is that no body is using it on the PC platform even though it's probably the best browser available. But still, compared to all the other browsers mentioned, it has a huge lead in market share and use, I think it's like the 4th or 5th most popular browser on the Internet.

Re:Opera not an underdog

[rs79]

"It's full featured and well established browser and quality is unsurpassed, and it's in widespread use on other devices like cellphones, PDAs, gaming systems (Nintendo DSi), etc. The only problem Opera has is that no body is using it on the PC"

How would you know?

For a fairly long time Microsoft would detect Opera and throw junk at it so it didn't work as well as IE. So for a while Opera identified itself as IE. That's why those geniuses at CNET don't think Opera ever hits their site, and why their, and eveyrones, IE numbers are wrong - they're artificially high.

Out of the box, for many years, Opera didn't identify itself as Opera. Veteran Opera users know thwe first thing you do with a new release is make sure it identifies itself as IE if it isn't still set that way from "the factory".

http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/843/
http://sillydog.org/forum/sdt_3373.php

http://news.cnet.com/The-Acid2-challenge-to-Microsoft/2010-1032_3-5618723.html

"Microsoft's own Web servers are configured to send different versions of Web pages to disparate browsers. For example, the servers sniff out the Opera browser and send it different style sheets from the ones they send to Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. As a result, Opera renders pages differently."

And by differently, they meant "largely unreadable" but were being polite to their advertisor.

Re:Opera not an underdog

[JoeInnes]

Wrong. In Eastern Europe, Opera is actually surprisingly widespread. In the UK, most people use whatever came with their computer (ie: IE), a significant minority with a little technical knowledge use Firefox, and any other browser is really a pretty small market. However, in Eastern Europe, Opera is quite widely used.

Re:Opera not an underdog

[hkmwbz]

The only problem Opera has is that no body is using it on the PC platform

Opera has more than 40 million PC users, and growing. It's bigger than Safari and Chrome combined in Europe. It's #3 and bigger than Safari and Chrome worldwide as well, but not by that much. Opera is the #1 browser in countries like Russia.

FF

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to browser I'm like that:
ommmm Firefox ommmm Firefox ommmm Firefox ommmm Fiiirefooox Fiiirefooox ommm

Arora

[Sir_Lewk]

It's good to see Arora getting some more attention now. I've been using it now for more than half a year and I must say it's the first webbrowser I have actually liked in several. I would definetly consider it the best OSS webbrowser on linux right now, particularly if you're running KDE (although Arora is desktop agnostic, it is Qt). I've been fed up with Firefox's bloat (ever try comparing Firefox and Seamonkey these days? Guess which is heavier...) for some time and Arora is a nice change from that.

Re:Arora

[kamatsu]

(ever try comparing Firefox and Seamonkey these days? Guess which is heavier...) .

Oooh, i know! I know! It's Firefox, right?

Do I win something?

Re:Arora

[Sir_Lewk]

Just the "Deductive Reasoning" award of the week, congrats! ;P

Re:Arora

[TeknoHog]

I've also been using Arora on and off for some time, and I can't help feeling it's just like Phoenix again. You know, the light and fast browser that was built out of Mozilla's codebase, that was supposed to be just a browser, nothing more.

CNET is overrated

[deanston]

This is a good survey to show what kind of people care to take CNET surveys.

Re:CNET is overrated

[rs79]

Cnet is not overrated. It's a great way to see if you know what you should have learned 5 years ago.

Cnet is the short bus of tech sites. This serves most people perfectly well.

Opera is 3rd biggets browser outside USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera's desktop has almost 4% market share and is bigger than both Chrome and Safari. Check the latest numbers at www.statcounter.com. Even Net Applications, which is more skewed towards US and western Europe, show Opera's global market share at 2%. CNET's visitors does obviously not represent the Internet population so it's a bit weird to compare Opera, the world's 3rd biggest browser, to small unknown providers.

Besided this, Opera's mobile browser is the biggest in the world, still bigger than iphone. Worth mentioning is Opera as the only browser available on Nintendo Wii or DSi.

Re:Opera is 3rd biggets browser outside USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the biggest in Russia and Ukraine.

UI speed is important

[sznupi]

And Opera has no equals in this regard (yeah, it's not that much visible on pimped-up latest PC, or if not opening more than few tabs...but this is /., we don't deal with normal usage patterns here)

Opera is dominate compared to the irrelevant?

[BitZtream]

Opera, Firefox, Safari/Chrome ... these are the underdog browsers. Everything else is irrelevant, sorry if your random fork of something else browser isn't a major browser, but if you're a fork or use the rendering engine of one of the 4 main browsers then you are irrelevant at this point.

Re:Opera is dominate compared to the irrelevant?

[Excelcior]

I wish I had something to add to this, but you just totally summed it up. There are only 4 real browsers (IE, Mozilla, WebKit, and Opera)... everything else is just a tweaked version of one of them.
And as for me, I gotta say, Opera has always worked the best for me. There are a couple of websites that don't like anything but IE (Mapquest and anything run by M$ft), but for all the rest, there's Opera. Even on my Ubuntu laptop, I use Opera exclusively. Crashes way less than FF.

~just my $.02

AMAYA!

[themeparkphoto]

You should all run Amaya, the OFFICIAL W3C browser. By definition, this is the only 100% compliant browser

Underdog?

[Runaway1956]

As with any set of statistics, it depends on where, when, and how the measurements are taken. Visit this page, and play with the various settings to see how well Opera does in different countries. It seems that anyone who uses eastern European languages prefers Opera.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-RU-daily-20080701-20090808

Why they have to be open source?

[Ilgaz]

Opera grew beyond whatever you could imagine in just last past 2-3 years. Opera says they support web standards and they actually do, even in cost of market share. Their development model is nobody's business. As far as I have experienced as a user since 3.62, it works.

Perhaps, one day, they may decide to follow Apple's model but I don't see a reason for it. Just 1 question: Where is Firefox for Symbian S60? If you check the reason and the fact that Opera has a S60 application since first S60 Device (NOK 7650), you can understand why they don't want anyone inside code -yet-. What if they open the source and decline 99% of impossible to scale, unprofessional code? Wouldn't they be flamed even more?

multiple pages within the browser window in win3.1

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Opera under Windows 3.11 in the late '90s (in fact I still have it installed on an old laptop here) and it had "tabs" more-or-less, that is, multiple web pages being displayed in separate windows within the main browser window. Ctrl-F4 to close a page, etc. same as today. One difference was that user had to click a menu item to see the list of open pages rather than having an area showing buttons for each page.

ETC...

[kikito]

Firefox, Safari, IE, etc

I consider Safari an underdog one too. And there's no "etc"

For me it's not about speed

[Kartu]

The following features of Opera makes it my default browser:

1. shared bookmarks out of the box
2. mouse gestures out of the box
3. single key shortcuts out of the box
4. undo on browser/tab close out of the box
5. LIFO tab ordering out of the box
6. blazing fast back-forward navigation (server isn't even contacted)
7. not really polished, but still easily customizable search/translate

There are things I dislike, though:

1. quite limited pluginability, next to no usefull plugins for Opera
2. design, it's quite ugly imo
3. "password wand" is very dissapointing, still old intrusive dialogs
4. I have to restart it once a week or two, because it eats l ike 500+mb (might be flash/java related, no idea)

On speeding up DNS URL-to-IP resolution & Oper

[Anonymous Coward]

"Am I the only one who finds that 99%+ of my time is spent waiting on DNS and data transfer and shit? I'm never actually sitting there, data downloaded, waiting for my browser to respond." - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08, @02:40PM (#28997299)

DNS queries & time to resolve URL's to IP's technically CAN be avoided (& I don't blame anyone that, what w/ all the DNS poisonings going on, + the errors in DNS itself that folks like Dan Kaminsky has found the past 2 yrs. now)... & you can do THAT, via a HOSTS file, easily.

AND, that much really CANNOT be done, via an addon for a webbrowser @ all (like NoScript/AdBlock, those only block out ads via blocking or filtering out scripting tags in HTML pages), which rewrites page format/content to remove adbanner frames etc. et al!

A custom HOSTS file will do the job, via something I call "hardcoding" a URL-to-IP Address resolution in it, for your favorite sites you use @ least... &, without using any extra CPU cycles to do so, as HOSTS are merely a FILTERING system, not a program (like browser adds are, & too many of them in use @ once? FF folks know this, you SLOW DOWN... or, like local DNS servers are, which some folks use, in lieu of remote/external DNS servers, & this costs CPU cycles, RAM, & more in terms of other forms of I/O - HOSTS files eat neither, nearly as much (only on reads of it till it is cached by the local DNS client cache, or the OS' diskcache subsystem))

(And, adbanner blocker browser add ons only work for SOME webbrowsers, not all, unlike a HOSTS file, which covers ALL webbound programs, & @ NO CPU CYCLES cost either - this, coupled with disabling javascript on every site you go to (the harbinger of doom itself, because it's used 95% of the time in malicious adbanners &/or malicious site code for attacking systems) DOUBLES your speed online, AND, can be used to make you safer online as well (by blocking out known bad sites or bad adbanner servers)...

Instead of local DNS server programs OR browser addons (which won't speed you up here this way, by speeding up URL to IP resolutions), you can use a custom HOSTS file to do so, & you already have one, but it's the default model - places like this -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file , there, you Can get a legit "starter model"... mvps' HOSTS file is a good one, & it's regularly updated as well as publicly freely available (& it's a snap to edit these, are they are just text files, & any text editing program makes that a snap, like notepad.exe).

A custom HOSTS file can make you faster in that you avoid the 30-60ms roundtrip time taken for calling out to remote DNS servers, for the URL-to-IPAddress resolution & that's assuming the one you use, is actually safe & not corrupted via hijacks like DNS poisoning, or down, period (which illustrates yet another benefit of the HOSTS file - even if your DNS server goes down? You will STILL get to your fav. sites you hardcode into a HOSTS file).

I don't know about you folks, but I PAY FOR MY ONLINE LINETIME OUT OF MY OWN POCKET - thus, I want to get my FULL "money's worth", which means not downloading & processing adbanner content, also wasting CPU cycles & other forms of I/O to do so, plus RAM... and, I don't see adbanners which might potentially possibly even bushwhack my machine, as shown here:

----

IT: The Next Ad You Click May Be a Virus:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/2056219/The-Next-Ad-You-Click-May-Be-a-Virus [slashdot.org]

----

An interesting read, in & of itself, that article above... it appears that the hosting providers for the adbanners aren't even checking what's being hosted in the code in adbanners, & thus, anyone (even malicious "hacker/cracker" types) can put up whatever they like on the

Correction on SECUNIA stats (sorry, cut N paste)

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/10615/?task=advisories

FireFox security advisories @ SECUNIA (10% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/12434/

IE 7 security advisories @ SECUNIA (22% unpatched):

http://secunia.com/product/12366/

----

Using more CURRENT #'s, for the % of unpatched bugs in Opera (still @ 0% unpatched, AS-PER-USUAL), FireFox, & IE... &, @ least "I caught myself", first - @ least before anybody else has...

APK

P.S.=> You'll have to excuse me on the less than current #'s I posted in my last post - I re-used it from another posting I did comparing Opera, FF, & IE here before (& the results are fairly the same, Opera is clean, as usual... & the others? Are not, as usual)... apk

Cheapest "DNS Cacher" there is in IO/CPU/RAM use

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1330187&cid=29053141

Per my subject-line above: See that thread - it's about how to use a custom HOSTS file to do "Aggressive DNS caching", & a LOT more (via blocking KNOWN bad sites &/or adbanner servers + "hardcoding" your fav. sites into a HOSTS file for more speed, AND SECURITY (for less in terms of CPU cycles, RAM, & other forms of I/O used, than local DNS server programs need, and FAR FASTER than calling out to a remote DNS server (that MIGHT be "dns poisoned" or otherwise compromised, or even "down") is, which takes 30-60ns or more to resolve URL-to-IP Address equations))

APK

P.S.=> And, it uses LESS CPU/RAM/other types of I/O than browser addons do (like NoScript &/or AdBlock), & is FULLY USER CONTROLLEABLE, easily (via notepad.exe + good sources (in that thread)) + works on ALL WEBBOUND PROGRAMS (not just a specific webbrowser)... apk

Re:Cheapest "DNS Cacher" there is in IO/CPU/RAM us

[TCM]

That's a load of crap.

After I told you how idiotic it is to use the hosts file for "blocking" you come back and tell me how to use it to "speed up" DNS? Are you living in the 60s or what?

Also, you don't resolve URLs. Go read up what a URL actually is.

Please, never reply to one of my posts again with your junk advice.

You've got to be the stupidest /.-er I've ever met

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's a load of crap." - by TCM (130219) on Saturday August 15, @08:06AM (#29075347)

Is it? How so?? HOSTS files do not use up CPU, or other forms of I/O, or even RAM, like DNS programs do locally... &, they can be used to COMPLETELY avoid DNS queries (especially on today's "DNS poisoned" or possibly otherwise compromised DNS servers, see Dan Kaminsky on this, lookup his name online) which take between 30-60ms or more to travel out to the remote DNS server, & back (or more)...

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"After I told you how idiotic it is to use the hosts file for "blocking" you come back and tell me how to use it to "speed up" DNS?" - by TCM (130219) on Saturday August 15, @08:06AM (#29075347)

First of all, who are you? Nobody. It "speeds up DNS" as you put it, BY NOT HAVING TO USE REMOTE DNS SERVERS, dimwit. What is it about that, that doesn't "sink in" to that 'dull skull' of yours?? Local disk access averages, today, around 9ms, which is a HELL OF A LOT FASTER THAN TAKING up to 60ms or more to call out to a remote DNS server, & the file I/O open/read/close cycles takes less than that as well, even combined with the diskaccess time.

(Who the hell are you trying to fool?)

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"Are you living in the 60s or what?" - by TCM (130219) on Saturday August 15, @08:06AM (#29075347)

Yea, right... ok (sarcasm)! Better than living in "fantasy land of the dumb", as you apparently do...

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"Also, you don't resolve URLs. Go read up what a URL actually is." - by TCM (130219) on Saturday August 15, @08:06AM (#29075347)

WTF? When you call out to a remote DNS server, dimwit, you are ASKING IT TO RESOLVE THEM FOR YOU! Take www.dimwit.org (you know, the site you host yourself), & whatever it EQUATES TO, ip address-wise, is what DNS servers do for you... it "resolves" them for you (equates the url with an ip address).

Wake up from 'fantasy land', dimwit...

APK

P.S.=>

"Please, never reply to one of my posts again with your junk advice." - by TCM (130219) on Saturday August 15, @08:06AM (#29075347)

Please, go fuck yourself... ok? A "NO MIND" LIKE YOURSELF DOESN'T EVEN BELONG ON THIS WEBSITE, period... apk

Re:You've got to be the stupidest /.-er I've ever

[TCM]

Is it? How so?? HOSTS files do not use up CPU, or other forms of I/O, or even RAM, like DNS programs do locally...

Yeah, but noone argued that. The point is the sheer stupidity of abandoning the usefulness of DNS for a locally held hosts file. You even stir some totally uncalled-for phobia by referencing DNS poisoning or compromised DNS servers to make your "point".

But of course, if I were also too stupid to setup a local resolver, then I would come up with such crude ideas as well. Each according to his abilities I guess.

Just try to think about what happens when a server is using CNAMEs pointing to host names with multiple addresses for load-balancing reasons or changes addresses, how you are going to track that manually and how much time you waste doing that instead of spending _milliseconds_ to do it the right way.

I'm not even mentioning the time you spend defending this ridiculous ideas of yours and the lifetime you lose by boiling your blood because you are too stubborn to acknowledge your lack of technical understanding.

And regarding URLs, this is one: http://www.slashdot.org/

This is not one: www.slashdot.org, this is a host name. URLs contain host names. DNS is used to resolve host names, not URLs. I hope those details don't confuse you too much.

If you're replying, please keep it to personal attacks. Those are funny. You faking know-how, not so much.

Give me a break "networker" (user w/ a better pwd)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, but noone argued that. The point is the sheer stupidity of abandoning the usefulness of DNS for a locally held hosts file. You even stir some totally uncalled-for phobia by referencing DNS poisoning or compromised DNS servers to make your "point"." - by TCM (130219) on Thursday August 20, @07:20PM (#29140923)

No one's abandoning a thing - I still use remote DNS servers, OpenDNS (mainly because Dan Kaminsky pointed out the hassles he found in BIND, & they immediately responded)...

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"You even stir some totally uncalled-for phobia by referencing DNS poisoning or compromised DNS servers to make your "point"." - by TCM (130219) on Thursday August 20, @07:20PM (#29140923)

I suggest you look up the types of errors that both Dan Kaminsky, & Moxie Marlinspike have found in the BIND DNS system... & iirc, DJBDNS which CLAIMED TO BE "UNBREAKABLE" & offered up $10,000 to ANYONE that could find holes in it... well? They had to "pay out" recently...

I suggest you be a bit better informed, and read closer in my posts, because I still use DNS servers, & even suggest their usage (OpenDNS or ScrubIT) in this security guide I wrote that's crossed 250,000++ views in 1++ yrs.' time online (& owns 17 of the TOP 20 in GOOGLE querying "HOW TO SECURE Windows 2000/XP"), & has usually been made a "Sticky/Pinned Thread" or "Essential Guide" & is in the topmost viewed in 15/20 forums it is on also, & many times rated very well by user commentary or "5 star ratings" etc. et al. such as here -> http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/index.php?s=4dc38e5530ea768a24d8b9a145a2b493&showtopic=2662

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"But of course, if I were also too stupid to setup a local resolver, then I would come up with such crude ideas as well. Each according to his abilities I guess." - by TCM (130219) on Thursday August 20, @07:20PM (#29140923)

Now, IF I WERE STUPID? I'd waste RAM, CPU Cycles, & other forms of I/O on a local DNS server program... lol, especially when I don't NEED to, via an easily edited HOSTS file (which if you can use notepad.exe & read english? Is VERY EASY TO DO, & anyone can do it... for cheaper/for less, than running a local DNS server & certainly this operates faster than calling out to remote DNS servers, especially for favorite websites you "hardcode" the IP address - to - URL equation record for it into your HOSTS file).

"To each his own & his abilities"...

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"Each according to his abilities I guess." - by TCM (130219) on Thursday August 20, @07:20PM (#29140923)

I'm perceiving that as some sort of attempt to insult me... well, ok! The day you can do this:

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"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."

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Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row).

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 is