FireFox or Opera ?

[Rix]

As you seen in this thread, there are reports on some people's systems that Firefox truly is leaner and faster. On my PowerBook, Firefox with two tabs takes up 38.82MB of RAM. Opera, 48.73MB of RAM.

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For me opera with 5 tabs open uses half of the ram that your firefox uses with 2.

http://www.shadow-illusions.co.uk/operaram.jpg

Now, the same 5 tabs in firefox

http://www.shadow-illusions.co.uk/firefoxram.jpg

Having only 384MB ram, that makes me quite a bit more comfortable using opera.

Only extension I sometimes use is Web Developer because it helps me to debug sites. Opera, internally, doesn't have the features the Web Developer toolbar gives to Firefox. I did hear Opera had an plug-in, but that would defeat the purpose of Opera, wouldn't it?

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Urm, why would it? Just because Opera comes with a lot of features, dosent mean it shouldnt have more.

[vcv]

I think in jadedEdge's eyes, Opera is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't.

I just opened the same 2 times in Opera and FF. Opera = 20mb, FF = 25mb.

And again, I fail to see how preferences is complicated. I like it better than how FF does it with extensions. With extensions I have to manually open options for each one. It gets tedious.

[Elliott]

R1ck13, the Mac ports of both Opera and Firefox aren't the best, but my comparison does show that Firefox ports better to other OS's than Opera.

Where did I say Opera should include the Web Developer toolbar? I said that using a plugin kinda defeats the purpose of Opera's little Swiss army knife design. Also, my statement shows that you don't need 10 billion Extensions in Firefox to have an awesome browser. I only use 1, and that's sometimes. Firefox by itself is a quality browser.

[vcv]

R1ck13, the Mac ports of both Opera and Firefox aren't the best, but my comparison does show that Firefox ports better to other OS's than Opera.

Where did I say Opera should include the Web Developer toolbar? I said that using a plugin kinda defeats the purpose of Opera's little Swiss army knife design. Also, my statement shows that you don't need 10 billion Extensions in Firefox to have an awesome browser. I only use 1, and that's sometimes. Firefox by itself is a quality browser.

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Of course firefox is a quality browser, and completely usable by itself. But not for most Opera users.

To match my experience with Opera, I need 20+ extensions, and even then it falls short.

It does not provide a rewind/fast forward feature which always saves me time.

It does not provide an indication of what zoom % the page is at.

It does not provide a Quick Preferences menu.

It does not provide the ability to add an "Enable proxy" checkbox or "Identify as" dropdown to any toolbar.

It does not provide the option to cache GDI objects for instant page reloading. (If Opera got rid of this, mem usage would go way down. But it is more than worth it in my eyes, as I have at least 512mb of memory on all my computers)

It does not provide the ability to Show no images/cached images/all images on a page.

It does not provide the ability to do mouse gestures on parts of the browser besides the browser window itself.

It does not provide the ability to easily add keyboard shortcuts for almost any combination mapped to any number of commands.

It does not provide the ability to attach notes to a website.

It does not provide a reload from cache option, that I saw.

It does not provide Author/User mode for CSS.

These things are important to me. These are only the features that I did not find available even in extensions.

Until Firefox can do little things like this to make my life easier, I don't see myself using it.

[vip]

Of course firefox is a quality browser, and completely usable by itself.  But not for most Opera users.

To match my experience with Opera, I need 20+ extensions, and even then it falls short. 

It does not provide a rewind/fast forward feature which always saves me time. 

It does not provide an indication of what zoom % the page is at.

It does not provide a Quick Preferences menu.

It does not provide the ability to add an "Enable proxy" checkbox or "Identify as" dropdown to any toolbar.

It does not provide the option to cache GDI objects for instant page reloading. (If Opera got rid of this, mem usage would go way down.  But it is more than worth it in my eyes, as I have at least 512mb of memory on all my computers)

It does not provide the ability to Show no images/cached images/all images on a page.

It does not provide the ability to do mouse gestures on parts of the browser besides the browser window itself.

It does not provide the ability to easily add keyboard shortcuts for almost any combination mapped to any number of commands.

It does not provide the ability to attach notes to a website.

It does not provide a reload from cache option, that I saw.

It does not provide Author/User mode for CSS.

These things are important to me.  These are only the features that I did not find available even in extensions.

Until Firefox can do little things like this to make my life easier, I don't see myself using it.

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I agree, I cant see myself going back to FX :l

[Rix]

R1ck13, the Mac ports of both Opera and Firefox aren't the best, but my comparison does show that Firefox ports better to other OS's than Opera.

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Argh rite, i miss understood you there, sorry.

Where did I say Opera should include the Web Developer toolbar? I said that using a plugin kinda defeats the purpose of Opera's little Swiss army knife design.

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Thats not what i meant, I read your post as if you were saying opera should'nt be allowed any plugins that add extra features (like firefox's extensions), which i'm sure you meant as you compared the toolbar it to that of the extension for firefox.

So basically, all i said is the opposite of what i'm thinking you said.

[megamanXplosion]

As you seen in this thread, there are reports on some people's systems that Firefox truly is leaner and faster. On my PowerBook, Firefox with two tabs takes up 38.82MB of RAM. Opera, 48.73MB of RAM.

RAM is there to be used, not protected. Opera stores a lot of things in memory which it doesn't need to but it speeds up the program a LOT. For example, Opera keeps browsing history and cache in memory so it has instant access to any of the files needed by the user. Opera's caching technique doesn't influence how lean the program is and it makes the program heck of a lot faster, so pointing out lower memory usage doesn't prove that it's leaner or faster, it could mean the exact opposite.

R1ck13, the Mac ports of both Opera and Firefox aren't the best, but my comparison does show that Firefox ports better to other OS's than Opera.

For Mac, probably true because the Mac has always been the trailing-behind project at Opera because Mac users are their smallest user-base. Firefox's own Mac builds used to suck when they still had a small user-base. I am having a hard-time understanding how your Mac comparison is supposed to relate to other operating systems though, while Mac might be Unix-based it is almost entirely different than many Unix/Linux distributions.

If Opera scares them off immediately with its jumbled up mess of preferences, that's not a good thing.

I fail to see what is so scary about Opera's preferences.

Start and Exit -> Start With Homepage.

Personal Information -> First Name.

Skin -> Choose.

Windows -> Prefer Pages Inside Window.

History and Cache -> Empty Now.

I see nothing hard at all about any of it and I fail to see how it's a "jumbled up mess of preferences." I don't see how it could be made any simpler without reducing functionality, and that's something which all Opera users hate to see. What do you suggest, move all of the options to a practically unusable list hidden by some obscure URL like Firefox does with about:config and then ask developers to create an extension to make that part of the application usable and then have the extension developers spread their configuration options all around the interface? No thanks, I like the way Opera does it better.

Because having them mostly turned off means I need to trek into customizing them to see what I want.

Rightclick on toolbar -> customize -> show hidden toolbars while customizing. It's simple. I don't know why I bothered replying to this because if they did show those toolbars by default then you would complain about it being bloated, and I'll bet on that.

I did hear Opera had an plug-in, but that would defeat the purpose of Opera, wouldn't it?

How so? Opera's purpose is to let users check their email (m2), stay updated with news (rss), talk with friends (irc), browse the web, and offer control over the interface for customizations to be made so each person can browse how they want. Opera delivers on it's promise and it's purpose remains intact because Opera was not created as a web developer's tool or a "swiss army knife tool" but allows the users to customize Opera so that it is what they want it to be.

[gigapixels Veteran]

Honestly, we shouldn't even be comparing the two. Firefox is ONLY a browser, whilst Opera is more than that. If anything, you guys should be debating over whether Mozilla or Opera is better. That would make more sense.

And I hope you know that all of this debating is leading nowhere. Unless of course winning fights on teh interweb makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, it makes no difference.

I think this thread has gone on long enough. Everybody's said his/her piece numerous times, and it's gotten nobody anywhere. Just drop it...

[vcv]

Honestly, we shouldn't even be comparing the two. Firefox is ONLY a browser, whilst Opera is more than that. If anything, you guys should be debating over whether Mozilla or Opera is better. That would make more sense.

And I hope you know that all of this debating is leading nowhere. Unless of course winning fights on teh interweb makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, it makes no difference.

I think this thread has gone on long enough. Everybody's said his/her piece numerous times, and it's gotten nobody anywhere. Just drop it...

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If you don't like it, then stay out of the thread. It's pretty simple.

And there is nothing wrong with comparing the browser aspect of Opera with Firefox.

Edited January 23, 2005 by vcv

[Xtreme $niper]

I'll just slip in here for a minute.. First off, firefox with 30 tabs open does not slow down one bit for me (1gig ram i guess).

Also, I run firefox with extensions that have features that opera does not have. Such as weather in the bottom right hand corner, and the yahoo toolbar. I cant do that with opera.

Also, in my opinion (this whole thing is about opinion anyways) the toolbars in opera are much too fat compared to FF. Firefox is nice and slim, therefore me adding the yahoo toolbar didnt do much. In fact, it made it equal to the size of the default opera toolbars.

The sidebar in opera is annoying, I dont use mouse gestures, the multi-engine search bar in the top corner of FF is nice and small and clean. Opera has to have one bar for each search engine you want. I can also add my own engines like the CDDB database.

and frankly, I dont like how I have to config opera to make the site think im using some other browser in order to make some sites work properly. All I have to do for firefox is install it and surf.

Thats just my two cents.

[Xtreme $niper]

If you don't like it, then stay out of the thread.  It's pretty simple.

And there is nothing wrong with comparing the browser aspect of Opera with Firefox.

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I think he has a right to his opinion on the matter. Dont tell him to stay out of the thread. This is an open community board for a reason.

[vcv]

I think he has a right to his opinion on the matter. Dont tell him to stay out of the thread. This is an open community board for a reason.

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Why complain about it? If he thinks it's a waste of time, he doesn't have to read it.

Also, in my opinion (this whole thing is about opinion anyways) the toolbars in opera are much too fat compared to FF.

Opinion? But that's not opinion. It's something measurable. They are NOT fat compared to Firefox, in fact. If you still insist they are, I will prove you wrong with screen-shots.

The sidebar in opera is annoying,

You can disable it easily.

I dont use mouse gestures,

Point being... ?

the multi-engine search bar in the top corner of FF is nice and small and clean. Opera has to have one bar for each search engine you want. I can also add my own engines like the CDDB database.

Huh? See attachments. You can add search engines in Opera too.

and frankly, I dont like how I have to config opera to make the site think im using some other browser in order to make some sites work properly.

Well I sure hope you don't blame Opera for that.

[Xtreme $niper]

Point being... ?

Well I sure hope you don't blame Opera for that.

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1. My point is why use one or the other, when the other has more features that I dont care about and is just wasting space?

2. I can blame Opera for that, because once again. Why use a browser that wont view some sites correctly, when the other one views them just fine?

Its all a matter of how many of the features you will actually USE. I will not use anything that Opera has simply because I dont want nor need to. FF comes completely empty of features (for the most part) and lets you add what YOU want to add, instead of having the company decide for you.

And also, I'd rather not have an ad in my browser.

[vcv]

2. I can blame Opera for that, because once again. Why use a browser that wont view some sites correctly, when the other one views them just fine?

Look at what you yourself said:

and frankly, I dont like how I have to config opera to make the site think im using some other browser in order to make some sites work properly.

You have to trick the site into thinking you're using another browser.. meaning, opera CAN display the page fine if the page wouldn't send opera different code!

So please tell me HOW that is Opera's fault? THAT alone, what YOU said. I'm not talking about pages that Opera simply messes up a little bit.

Its all a matter of how many of the features you will actually USE. I will not use anything that Opera has simply because I dont want nor need to. FF comes completely empty of features (for the most part) and lets you add what YOU want to add, instead of having the company decide for you.

All products have features you probably won't use. THAT is not the issue. The issue is performance and usability.

It sounds to me like you're looking for reasons to put down Opera.

[Xtreme $niper]

"You have to trick the site into thinking you're using another browser.. meaning, opera CAN display the page fine if the page wouldn't send opera different code!"

Its operas fault in a way and its the site authors fault in a way. My point is, you COULD config opera to view it right, but which is easier. Configuring or just surfing right away? THATS my point.

I'm not looking for reasons to put down Opera. If I was I wouldnt have tried installing 2 different versions of it as to make SURE that it sucked and it wasnt just a fluke. I gave it a chance, I didnt like it. And these are my reasons as to WHY i didnt like it.

All products have features that I probably wont use, but my point is firefox doesnt. TADA, hellooooo do you see what im saying now? Firefox has what I need and doesnt have what I dont want. Simple as that. I cant remove those useless features from Opera. But I can with FF.

[gigapixels Veteran]

And there is nothing wrong with comparing the browser aspect of Opera with Firefox.

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Neither do I. But I've read countless posts comparing the fact that Opera has a mail feature, an IRC feature, and a load of other stuff.

[vcv]

Its operas fault in a way and its the site authors fault in a way. My point is, you COULD config opera to view it right, but which is easier. Configuring or just surfing right away? THATS my point.

Opera identifies as IE by default. So what you are suggesting is what it does. You can't blame Opera for something that it not it's fault.

TADA, hellooooo do you see what im saying now? Firefox has what I need and doesnt have what I dont want. Simple as that. I cant remove those useless features from Opera. But I can with FF.

Of course I see what you're saying. But you're just tricking your minding. It's perception. Having those features has little to no effect on performance and usability. But your mind thinks having less features is better.

Do you use proxies? Maybe they should remove it and make it an extension.

[Xtreme $niper]

Maybe they should! I dont use em.

How do you know it has no effect on performance? I'm sure that takes up a few MB of hard disk space and RAM as well.

[McoreD]

yeah firefox, your fanboy here forgot to mention the barrage of webpages opera doesnt load properly

and youd be suprised how many things it doenst load properly you dontnotice but will screw you upi was an opera user for years until i discovered the web with firefox, will NEVER go back

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That's so very true! I was an Opera fan until I failed to enrol in one of university courses before the due date.

(Long story: Opera kept said the server was unavailable or something similar and I couldn't access the required page. I was so much an Opera fan that I didn't try other browser. It took a month to realize that the website perfectly loaded in other browsers IE, Firefox but not in Opera.)

It can be the webmaster's fault for not having standard html whatever code to render in Opera properly. But Opera should have at least warned the user the page would not display propery (like in IE) so that the user will be tempted to try the URL in another browser.

I warn you guys: not rendering webpages properly in Opera is a serious issue. It can affect your life! So make sure you browser critical websites using several browsers.

[y0sh]

This VCV guy.. haha. Oh man. He sounds like he's got a something up his backside.

I'm not dissing Opera. I just downloaded it. Seems very nice - a lot of useful features (fastforward) but I don't need all that. I'm happy with Firefox. Does it's job - It browses in the internet. I'm happy it does that because IE could barely do it. So I'm really not looking the gift-horse in the mouth and cribbing about features it DOESNT have.. because look what it DOES have. At the end of the day, it gets you from page A to page B and that's all that matters. Well, that's just me personally.

VCV though.. calm down man. Stop telling people to leave the thread. People aren't out to put down Opera. Put it this way. Opera and Firefox are a team against Internet Explorer. You both are the alternate.

[oneone]

The sidebar in opera is annoying, I dont use mouse gestures, the multi-engine search bar in the top corner of FF is nice and small and clean. Opera has to have one bar for each search engine you want. I can also add my own engines like the CDDB database.

1. My point is why use one or the other, when the other has more features that I dont care about and is just wasting space?

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So your point is that because of the space wasted by its many features Opera is too large compared to Firefox. So you wish Opera's size were smaller so that it could be compared to Firefox. Guess what, it is already smaller. So either I don't understand your point or it's just dumb.

Anyway, you can add your own search engines in Opera too.

[oneone]

This VCV guy.. haha. Oh man. He sounds like he's got a something up his backside.

I'm not dissing Opera. I just downloaded it. Seems very nice - a lot of useful features (fastforward) but I don't need all that. I'm happy with Firefox. Does it's job - It browses in the internet. I'm happy it does that because IE could barely do it. So I'm really not looking the gift-horse in the mouth and cribbing about features it DOESNT have.. because look what it DOES have. At the end of the day, it gets you from page A to page B and that's all that matters. Well, that's just me personally.

VCV though.. calm down man. Stop telling people to leave the thread. People aren't out to put down Opera. Put it this way. Opera and Firefox are a team against Internet Explorer. You both are the alternate.

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I don't think he has any issue whatsoever if you or anyone prefer to use Firefox over Opera. It's just the misinformed, biased and invalid reasons others argued about how Firefox is better than Opera that made him and many others pi**ed.

[Slipdisc210]

Who cares, as long as it's not IE

[Chode]

Who cares, as long as it's not IE

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Amen brother :cool:

We all have to group together to confront our common enemy!

The Judean People's Front!"

No, no, Microsoft!

[vcv]

Maybe they should! I dont use em.

How do you know it has no effect on performance? I'm sure that takes up a few MB of hard disk space and RAM as well.

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Because Opera is still smaller than Firefox in download size and disk space, and is still faster for me on 6 different machines.

This VCV guy.. haha. Oh man. He sounds like he's got a something up his backside.

I'm not dissing Opera. I just downloaded it. Seems very nice - a lot of useful features (fastforward) but I don't need all that. I'm happy with Firefox. Does it's job - It browses in the internet. I'm happy it does that because IE could barely do it. So I'm really not looking the gift-horse in the mouth and cribbing about features it DOESNT have.. because look what it DOES have. At the end of the day, it gets you from page A to page B and that's all that matters. Well, that's just me personally.

VCV though.. calm down man. Stop telling people to leave the thread. People aren't out to put down Opera. Put it this way. Opera and Firefox are a team against Internet Explorer. You both are the alternate.

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Of course Firefox does it's job and does it well. Opera can do it more efficiently for some people when you learn to use it though.

Getting from Page A to Page B.. well.. every browser does that :)

I am completely calm. I also suggested if this thread bothered him, he could leave it. I did NOT tell him to.

And you seem to be forgetting that I DO use Firefox. I also recommend to other people, depending on their needs and the type of user they are.

oneone hit the head on the nail. My only reason for posting in this thread is to try and tame the misinformation being spread about Opera. I could care less if you use Opera or FF, but don't come in here and tell me "Opera is bloated!" or some other crap. That spreads a bad and false image for Opera. Users should try Opera AND Firefox without having to have other people tell them bad information about either.