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Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers

Posted by timothy on from the html's-great-blessing-is-heterogeneity dept.

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."

12 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares how fast the browser is? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Who cares how fast the browser is? by sznupi · · Score: 4, Informative

      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/

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    2. Re:Who cares how fast the browser is? by rs79 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "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.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
  2. Arora's reason for existence by David+Gerard · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. Fast, but with a catch by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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".

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  4. We use Opera on a daily basis by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  5. Browser wars = Moot by clinko · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    This is the nerd equivalent of celebrity gossip.

  6. Re:Opera by SteelRealm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Opera by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Opera is 3rd biggets browser outside USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:Opera by rs79 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?