I have a new review of Opera 9.5. Here is an excerpt.



You can visit the link below to read the full review.

Opera 9.5--My browser of choice.

It still has issues obeying correct text rendering, see the site below and view in IE or Firefox to see the difference.

http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/index.php

Also still no native menus, or a true native looking theme for vista.

Not a bad review per se...but as you've already stated in your first sentence your review is HEAVILY biased towards Opera.

Every browser is going to have their pros and cons, so it would have been nice for you to address some of these in your report.

And it looks fugly on OSX too.

i like operas speed
But lets face it
Ad blocking in firefox is easier
Operas email annoys me, and why they are so intent on making u click "Read" to make a mail as read annoys me
Glasser for Firefox is just pretty
Opera doesnt work properly with facebook, when you send a message it doesnt show it after in your message log, so you sometimes wonder if it got sent, firefox/ie No issues(and dont blame facebook, im sick of operas 'its the entire internets fault' attitude)
It still loads many pages wrong
It needs special code to work with gmail

While firefox may need extensions to get some of operas features, opera comes locked and stagnant, firefox you can get features opera will never have with

Also..opera refuses to add right clickable menus

So out of the box, yes you need extensions to get some of operas features, but also opera will NEVER get TONS of things firefox has

the theme "likeie" is pretty much perfect as far as a native-looking vista skin. google it.

I moved from IE to Opera and then to FF3 (never used FF2) now I'm back on Opera 9.5 (9.51 snapshot now actually)

9.5 really wins my heart right now and is my most favourite browser , however... I find my self using all browsers (maxthon used for IE) same time .

I don't see any issues with that site in the 9.51 preview build 10071. Only differences I really see are that IE seems to be using subpixel font rendering even though cleartype is turned off.

still use firefox, though I always like opera's instant back/forward

Opera is my favourite browser also, followed by IE7 2nd and Firefox last.

Opera - used to have some performance problems which have been fixed in 9.5, now 9.5 is almost perfect only some occasional page layout issues.
Firefox - always found this buggy and got sick of the high amount of plugins needed for features I expect, I got too annoyed with crashes and having to keep reinstalling plugins, plus bad memory leaks.
IE7 - is slower than opera but generally compatible with all sites, up until recently had no buggyness but now getting memory leaks although not as bad as firefox. Needs a built in crash recovery of tabs and multi row tab bar.

I don't have issues on any site, other than layout problems on Wilfrid Laurier's website. Everything seems to be shifted down so that text starts at the bottom of my screen, with only white space above. Could other Opera users confirm this?

Other than that, Opera is good enough for my use. Sure, some things like adblocking can be a bit tedious to do en masse, but it really is rather simple using the urlfilter.ini method. As for other extensions, most of the Firefox extensions are a bit silly (need to see the weather in your status bar? Really need to control your media player from there to? No wonder people are so lazy in real life, lol). Anything that I find myself needing is built-in.

As for the theming, Firefox isn't really native Vista-friendly, is it? Come on, the fact that the Glasser extension is so popular is just proof to that.

It is native.

I'm also an Opera fan. It's my main browser with Firefox 3 as a backup. There are very few problem with site I've encountered these days. Opera's looks has always won me over compared to other browsers. Qt is very responsive

Actually, if you will click on the View menu in the mail toolbar, you will find an option to tell Opera when to mark messages as read.

I also beg to differ with you calling Opera locked and stagnant. Sure, Opera doesn't support extensions and probably never will. However, if you will do a little research, you will find that Opera is capable of a lot of things. Check this link and you may be surprised. Opera is anything but locked and stagnant.

http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/2006/07/04/t...sions-and-opera

If my review of Opera 9.5 is heavily biased towards Opera, it is because I have used both Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 extensively and while I can use Firefox 3 with no problem, I still like Opera better. It really boils down to one thing. Although both are web browsers, they are very different in their approach in the way they do things. They appeal to different groups of people.

There are pros and cons in both programs, but as the title says, Opera is still my browser of choice.



I can confirm this on my installation of Opera 9.5. Funny thing is, if you choose "Fit to width" for the page, it seems to display fine. I am not sure what the problem is.

the caching on sites is horrible, especially on forums... never using this only half decent thing is the widgets and they are definitely not worth it.

The one reason I like Opera is probably the one reason many people don't like Opera - almost everything is there out of the box.

I tried getting into FF3 after the release, but having to go to find mouse gestures that don't crash it, doing stuff like hiding menus or putting my bookmarks in the right click context menu takes long periods of searching.

Fx has a completely different audience than Opera, I don't know why you all try to compare them...

Fx vs Opera is like Miranda vs QIP or sth...
Either you just want a working product with dozens of features but less flexibility (Opera/QIP) or you want to configure it to fit your needs completely, which may indeed take a while, but will satisfy you in every way then (Firefox/Miranda).

Plus:
- Hotkeys (Fx) vs Mouse Gestures (Opera)
- XUL (Fx) vs Toolbars (Opera)
- Places (Fx) vs Bookmarks (Opera)

...

However, I'll stick with Firefox.

for better caching I reccomend this settings.

Default settings makes it check every image etc. on forums for update so can slow down page loading I do this instead.

load opera:config

goto cache
set check expiry load to 1
click save
goto disk cache
change documents expiry to 1
documents and other expiry to 604800
make sure docs other and image modification all set to 2
click save

what this does is keeps images cached and doesnt check for updates very often, but html or php page itself cache expires after just 1 second so you will never accidently load cached page on forums. It is much faster page loading and will still be instant back/forward when flicking through history.

Before I did these settings I was frustrated myself as loading pages with lots of static images such as forums I seen it load slower than IE, because it was checking the expiry on every image now it doesnt.

For ad filtering I am currently using proximitron with opera and is very effective.

thanks so much.
i've been playing with opera myself after a while... caching is my no 1 grouse with Opera this time. hopefully this will help

edit: those settings seems to have done the trick..

now if only could fix Opera mail

Glasser is pretty sweet, you jogged my memory to try it. Thanks, its a keeper.