"Hasn't google slowly been selling out for eon's now? I mean, what about the adsense bull, even in their gmail beta."
In case you hadn't noticed, Google's profits come from text ads. That's what they use to fund their services! How is adding text ads to mail any different from adding it to web searches?
"And try this one on for size, the latest version of Google's toolbar adds new links into web pages. Granted, its optional, but still kinda morally bad."
Let me see if I get this right... Google has an optional toolbar which the user must choose to download and install, and this toolbar has an optional feature which must be activated manually by the user for each page he or she wishes to use it on, which adds relevant links.
How on earth is it "morally bad" to add a button with an optional feature on an optional toolbar, when this feature isn't even enabled by default?
Please tell me that your comment was dripping with sarcasm:)
What, exactly, are you doing in the preferences dialog? I personally change maybe three or four things in the entire preferences dialog on a default install. What on earth are you changing?
Just because the options are there doesn't mean that you need to change all of them!
"But it still takes me less time to set up a fresh Firefox install with the extensions I need than configure a fresh Opera install."
I call bullshit. It takes far longer to find and install extensions, not to mention restart Firefox, than to simply add or remove toolbars and buttons in Opera.
Half an hour? Yeah right.
You know, you are the kind of people giving Firefox a bad name by making up these lies about other browsers. But hey, you have seen the light! You are a member of the Firefox family now, so lying about other browsers, especially Opera, is your duty.
Don't flame me! Those are not my words. This article in The Register explains how Mozilla's response to the IDN spoofing issue has not gone down well with "the rest of the world".
Does Mozilla suffer from being too US-centric? If Mozilla was, say, Japanese, surely they wouldn't have accepted a fix like that?
"The difference is that when Disney wants money, they're greedy, but when you want money, you're not."
No, the difference is that Disney has loads of money, and they can spend some of that money, in cooperation with other major corporations, to lobby for laws that remove our rights, and make them more money at the same time.
The difference is that Disney can afford to buy laws. He can't.
"Opera is a closed, albeit stuffed, box. Firefox is extensible, light (on features) and open."
Give me a break. Opera is far more lightweight than Firefox, but still more functional. I don't care if it's "open" or not - I just want to get the work done. With Firefox it's an endless battle with extensions. With Opera it's install and go.
"The majority of the features you can get in Opera you can also get in Firefox, but without having to use everything else."
The problem is that these extensions are buggy, and they pull in different directions, whereas Opera is a professional, thoroughy tested single product where all features work towards a common goal. Opera's strength is integration and the way it makes everything more efficient.
It is funny that Opera is smaller, faster, and lighter on resources than Firefox, despite being easier and more efficient to use, and having loads of useful features.
"Bloat is more than the size of the compressed installer. Memory usage and CPU usage compared to the useful functions is also important to look at."
Opera uses the same engine on PCs and mobiles, and has done so for years. Gecko doesn't fit on mobile phones, but Minimo is working on stripping it down for that.
So Opera already runs on comfortably on memory/CPU limited systems, while Gecko does not. Now, what was that about bloat?
Dillo is nearly unusable for use on the real web. Just wait until they've added all the necessary stuff to actually work on the web. It'll be a lot bigger.
Does it even support Unicode? That alone could double the size of the application.
How did you measure the speed? Opera 7 is clearly faster for browsing because of the UI features that make things easier and faster to do.
Also, you seem to be forgetting that Opera 7's engine does a lot more than Opera 6. Opera 7 can handle fully dynamic pages, something Opera 6 never could.
Conclusion: Opera 7 is faster at most things, and has a better and more efficient UI, but you are really comparing apples and oranges because Opera 7 was rewritten from the ground up to do a lot more than Opera 6 ever did.
"I'd say that feature-per-MB is roughly comparable. Don't forget BTW, that Opera's binaries are all ASPack'ed."
What? Firefox is bigger than Opera, has fewer features, and you are still saying that feature-per-MB is roughtly comparable? I'm not sure I follow you there...
"Bloated in it features it certainly is. For the average consumer Opera just has far to many features, it scares them."
It is only bloated if the additional features clog down the program, which they don't. Have you seen Opera 8? It's a clean browser by default, and the e-mail client is hidden until you create an account.
Opera has many features, but Opera 8 doesn't shove it in your face.
So Opera is basically full-featured, yet it doesn't confuse people because the default UI is very clean, and it's smaller and faster than Firefox.
Face it, Opera is not bloated. Firefox zealots will need a new angle of attack to complain about Opera.
Why aren't you responding to any of the comments to your post? Instead, your Bush-loving friends mod people -1 flamebait for pointing out things that are unpleasant to be faced with?
Guess he doesn't feel like backing up his comments. The important thing is that he got to bash someone who wrote the truth about Bush! And as we all know, if it's negative and it's about Bush, it's "nonsense"!
"Science is far from untouchable. 100 years ago science said that it wasn't possible for mankind to visit the moon. Science is in a state of flux, it is always changing."
Your point being?
The fact that science changes as we get new information is a good thing. Unlike religion, science is therefore dynamic, and the more you do science, the closer to the truth you get. We'll never find the full truth about everything, and we can be wrong about things, but as long as science changes as our knowledge changes, that is a good thing, and is an advantage, not a disadvantage.
Unlike religion, science is based on what we observe, what we gain knowledge about, not what we believe in. Read the post you are replying to again:
"Reason is about taking the measurable, the observable, and the manipulatable and abstracting the process and system by which they work. Faith is about believing, in the absence of reason or evidence, that something must be true for the simple fact that nobody can say that it isn't."
I am quite certain that I read somewhere that even the fix on the main trunk (for 1.1) was a workaround rather than a "real" fix. Maybe they were just confused, and really referred to this extension?
Is it true that this fix is just a hack, or a workaround, and that it doesn't really address the real issue? Just curious - I heard rumors that this was the case.
"The percentage of hits by Opera browsers on websites is decreasing."
Yet Opera's usage is increasing. Opera has remained stable or increasing for a long time, and still does. Just because some stats show lower usage doesn't mean that the global picture is the same. Most stats packages can't even detect Opera when you identify as MSIE, which it does by default.
"But more important than Opera's decreasing marketshare is that Opera is no longer the IE alternative it once was. That position has now been taken over by Firefox."
This is nonsense. Netscape and IE were always alternatives to each other. Firefox is "the new Netscape", so nothing has really changed.
Opera is as much of an alternative as it ever was, and indeed, with the Opera 8 beta, people are converting from Firefox to Opera.
"Opera has to do some pretty good marketing lest they be forgotten."
As I said, Opera has always been "the third browser". This is nothing new.
Slashdot Mirror
How on earth is it "morally bad" to add a button with an optional feature on an optional toolbar, when this feature isn't even enabled by default?
Please tell me that your comment was dripping with sarcasm :)
I have no idea why you would need to change keyboard shortcuts in Opera. Just press Ctrl+B to get a list of shortcuts.
Just because the options are there doesn't mean that you need to change all of them!
Half an hour? Yeah right.
You know, you are the kind of people giving Firefox a bad name by making up these lies about other browsers. But hey, you have seen the light! You are a member of the Firefox family now, so lying about other browsers, especially Opera, is your duty.
Does Mozilla suffer from being too US-centric? If Mozilla was, say, Japanese, surely they wouldn't have accepted a fix like that?
The difference is that Disney can afford to buy laws. He can't.
It is funny that Opera is smaller, faster, and lighter on resources than Firefox, despite being easier and more efficient to use, and having loads of useful features.
So Opera already runs on comfortably on memory/CPU limited systems, while Gecko does not. Now, what was that about bloat?
But what exactly does this have to do with bloat?
Does it even support Unicode? That alone could double the size of the application.
How did you measure the speed? Opera 7 is clearly faster for browsing because of the UI features that make things easier and faster to do.
Also, you seem to be forgetting that Opera 7's engine does a lot more than Opera 6. Opera 7 can handle fully dynamic pages, something Opera 6 never could.
Conclusion: Opera 7 is faster at most things, and has a better and more efficient UI, but you are really comparing apples and oranges because Opera 7 was rewritten from the ground up to do a lot more than Opera 6 ever did.
Opera has many features, but Opera 8 doesn't shove it in your face.
So Opera is basically full-featured, yet it doesn't confuse people because the default UI is very clean, and it's smaller and faster than Firefox.
Face it, Opera is not bloated. Firefox zealots will need a new angle of attack to complain about Opera.
Why aren't you responding to any of the comments to your post? Instead, your Bush-loving friends mod people -1 flamebait for pointing out things that are unpleasant to be faced with?
Guess he doesn't feel like backing up his comments. The important thing is that he got to bash someone who wrote the truth about Bush! And as we all know, if it's negative and it's about Bush, it's "nonsense"!
Not that I'm suggesting, insinuating or supporting anything, of course.
The fact that science changes as we get new information is a good thing. Unlike religion, science is therefore dynamic, and the more you do science, the closer to the truth you get. We'll never find the full truth about everything, and we can be wrong about things, but as long as science changes as our knowledge changes, that is a good thing, and is an advantage, not a disadvantage.
Unlike religion, science is based on what we observe, what we gain knowledge about, not what we believe in. Read the post you are replying to again:
"Reason is about taking the measurable, the observable, and the manipulatable and abstracting the process and system by which they work. Faith is about believing, in the absence of reason or evidence, that something must be true for the simple fact that nobody can say that it isn't."
I am quite certain that I read somewhere that even the fix on the main trunk (for 1.1) was a workaround rather than a "real" fix. Maybe they were just confused, and really referred to this extension?
Guess we'll never know :)
NetCaptor had tabs first, but Opera had it before Galeon. And Opera had MDI before anyone else.
Is it true that this fix is just a hack, or a workaround, and that it doesn't really address the real issue? Just curious - I heard rumors that this was the case.
Opera is as much of an alternative as it ever was, and indeed, with the Opera 8 beta, people are converting from Firefox to Opera.
As I said, Opera has always been "the third browser". This is nothing new.You mean that's funny as in "ha-ha", or funny as in "the people at Opera are hypocrites"?