Being a web developer that rigorously adheres to standards and closely monitors and occasionally participates in W3C activity, and being knowledgable of browsers in general, I thought I'd take some time to give you all the skinny on this.
Despite Opera's reputation as "the standards compliant browser", it implements far less of current W3C standards than Netscape or in particular IE. Specifically, CSS-positioning (part of CSS2) appears to be completely non-existant.
Since Opera only implements a fraction of the Netscape/IE functionality, and until recently was completely unportable (Windows only), it's not too surprising that it is much smaller and faster.
Anyways, I'll list some of the pros and cons of Opera and some features/misfeatures it shares with its competition (Netscape/IE).
[Oh, one last thing before the list. MDI and SDI have been mentioned. For those of you who don't know what they are, basically:
SDI -- Single document interface. A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single window giving a view of one document at a time.
MDI -- Multiple document interface. The ability of an application program to show windows giving views of more than one document at a time.]
Some pros:
Excellent support for keyboard navigation. No need to use lynx and give up graphics just because you hate the mouse. (Of course, the Open Source Mozilla will ultimately allow the same.)
Fast and small. Despite its lack of features, for most of your browsing you will appreciate the speed.
That's really all of the pros. While only two items are listed, both of them are extremely important and make for a much different feel compared to the bigger fish. Anyways, the cons:
Non-free. You must pay $30-$35 dollars to use this software after 30 days of evaluation. You may not obtain its source code either [neither with IE nor NS[1-4]].
Right now, still pretty much Windows-only. IE also runs on Macs, Solaris and HP-UX. Netscape 4.x runs on almost everything under the sun. Mozilla runs under even more platforms.
Still has crashing bugs just like Netscape and IE. In particular, with JavaScript enabled there are plenty of sites that bring down the newest versions. (Not nearly as bad as NS4.61 on my Debian box though, which likes to crash 1/10th of the time I close a window. (Wasn't always this bad.))
Anyways, my current favorite browser is IE5 though I almost never get to use it because I'm stuck in Linux with WindowMaker so that I actually have a productive and stable environment. IE5 really does implement most of the current standards and is quite fast (being seemingly hooked into the lowest guts of Windows), though Mozilla will be the true 100% compliant browser and smaller and faster to boot. I hate most of Microsoft's products, but a few things like their browser and Powerpoint (which Linus admits liking) are really okay.
So,
Use IE5 now if you can. Netscape 4.61 or Opera if you can't.
Make a 100% switch to Mozilla the day it is released. The current M9 release is actually somewhat stable and usable, and it's really cool to watch the CSS on your pages come to life under that browser.
Don't switch back to IE or Opera until they implement the standards as good as Mozilla.
That's enough writing for now, Christopher
XFree86 needs more developers.
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It's kinda sad how short the XFree team is on developers when more or less 99.999% of Linux users use X and 100% of distributions package it. It could really use some more commercial support from RedHat and SUSE, though they have helped a little bit in the past (RHat donated NeoMagic code once...).
For information on becoming an XFree86 developer, please visit the XFree86 developer page.
Also, you non-programmers that use X can do your part by knowing that RedHat and other commercial Linux vendors have ears for their customers and showing concern for the frequency of XFree86 release cycles is a good way to let them know that support for X development is very important to the success of Linux.
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Being a web developer that rigorously adheres to standards and closely monitors and occasionally participates in W3C activity, and being knowledgable of browsers in general, I thought I'd take some time to give you all the skinny on this.
Despite Opera's reputation as "the standards compliant browser", it implements far less of current W3C standards than Netscape or in particular IE. Specifically, CSS-positioning (part of CSS2) appears to be completely non-existant.
Since Opera only implements a fraction of the Netscape/IE functionality, and until recently was completely unportable (Windows only), it's not too surprising that it is much smaller and faster.
Anyways, I'll list some of the pros and cons of Opera and some features/misfeatures it shares with its competition (Netscape/IE).
[Oh, one last thing before the list. MDI and SDI have been mentioned. For those of you who don't know what they are, basically:
SDI -- Single document interface. A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single window giving a view of one document at a time.
MDI -- Multiple document interface. The ability of an application program to show windows giving views of more than one document at a time.]
Some pros:
That's really all of the pros. While only two items are listed, both of them are extremely important and make for a much different feel compared to the bigger fish. Anyways, the cons:
Anyways, my current favorite browser is IE5 though I almost never get to use it because I'm stuck in Linux with WindowMaker so that I actually have a productive and stable environment. IE5 really does implement most of the current standards and is quite fast (being seemingly hooked into the lowest guts of Windows), though Mozilla will be the true 100% compliant browser and smaller and faster to boot. I hate most of Microsoft's products, but a few things like their browser and Powerpoint (which Linus admits liking) are really okay.
So,
That's enough writing for now,
Christopher
It's kinda sad how short the XFree team is on developers when more or less 99.999% of Linux users use X and 100% of distributions package it. It could really use some more commercial support from RedHat and SUSE, though they have helped a little bit in the past (RHat donated NeoMagic code once...).
For information on becoming an XFree86 developer, please visit the XFree86 developer page.
Also, you non-programmers that use X can do your part by knowing that RedHat and other commercial Linux vendors have ears for their customers and showing concern for the frequency of XFree86 release cycles is a good way to let them know that support for X development is very important to the success of Linux.