FireFox or Opera ?

[Toxicfume Veteran]

From what I have gathered after reading the last few pages of this thread, Opera is less of a resource hog than Firefox, is that true? If the statement has the backing of solid evidence and the difference is significant, I am more than willing to switch over to join the Opera brigade since my computer has only a 1.8GHz processor and 256M RAM. :pinch: So does anyone has an answer to my doubt?

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Just as a reassurance, yes, opera runs definitely lighter than Firefox.

[iconboy]

Im not a super technical person, but heres my experience... I am a long time opera lover and have only recently (2 months) started using Firefox. Ive gotta tell you Opera was GREAT, it loaded faster and did a hell of a lot more than IE ever could. It was also secure- so why did i switch? i could not access my banking, hotmail, msn email, google email, my rogers email and a ton of sites that had embedded flash didnt work properly. Hell a few sites with no flash didnt display properly- but you know what i got over this for a while because i told myself "Ive still got the fastest browser out there" -yeah true if i did all my stuff in opera, problem with some sites not working and others working is that you have to stop what your doing, open up IE and copy and paste the URL or goto the site with bookmarks to get what you need done. And all this because Opera is much faster than IE.

Firefox does everything Opera does, you can customize it- I find that with a ton of tabs open it reacts (opens, closes and switches between windows) faster than opera. What does Opera have over Firefox, it is slightly faster...

SLIGHTLY

so is that slight speed worth it? To me, no. I could have continued to stumble along with a combination of Opera and IE, but i switched to Firefox (which opens everything from my banking to various email accounts and pages that just looked weird in Opera) and i havent looked back.

Im not going to promote using cracks to make opera free, but im sure everyone here doesnt use 100% legit stuff on their computers, so the price isnt a huge excuse. (if u have ONE mp3 on your comp you dont have a legal CD copy of your guilty of this). I guess if your not willing to go 100% firefox yet (oh and you will., trust me you willl :))- why not do a combination of Opera / Firefox?

Im not anti Microsoft but until ver 7 comes out with some MASSIVE changes I would advise everyone to stay away from IE ;)

[etempest]

Try Oprea for a week, then try Firefox for a week.. use which ever you like better.

My personally, I perfer firefox... but try both for yourself and see what you like, does it do the pages you visit.

[CarLBanks]

Full Features Overview in Opera

A list of Why to go Opera

New Features in Opera 8

Just a few links for more information on Opera.

[athlonforce]

Firefox :D

tested Opera 8 for 10 seconds and trashed it :ninja:

[russ0943]

man, thats easy...firefox all the way. Opera is (N)

[benz240]

FIREFOX PWNS

[arturogoga]

Firefox :D

tested Opera 8 for 10 seconds and trashed it  :ninja:

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Now, THAT'S a fair comparison. :pinch:

[vcv]

Firefox is a joke. Opera for life.

[chavo]

If Firefox and Opera were the only choices, I would quit the internet.

[Randolph]

I want to buy Opera 8 beta but my freind gave me a Reg crack for it..

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lmfao

[KTamas]

I've tried the new Opera 8.0, and, as an FX user, I'm impressed, but not at much to switch. The interface is clean, the browser is fast, even a slightly faster than my moox M2 firefox. But...no, the need to do more to make me switch, i still like FX.

[Valerus]

Firefox :D

tested Opera 8 for 10 seconds and trashed it  :ninja:

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Wow.

[gamerdan1]

The reason I use Opera over Firefox is because when I listen to music using the Rhapsody music service while using Firefox, the sound sputter's when I'm scrolling. I'm also able to scroll much faster with the arrow keys using Opera on my laptop.

[Chode]

Blogger input has worked for me since the first preview release of Opera 8. Weird that it doesn't work on you. Maybe you should try installing the final version, now that it is out.

As for the customization, yes, it is indeed kind of annoying there's no GUI to make things easier, but if you take a look at the Opera forums, it is not that hard. I've modded my search.ini in no time.

The other points are discussed in the attached image

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Why did you have to be a necrophile and go back TWO MONTHS to ressurect this thread :rolleyes:

[krmathis]

Firefox all the way!

I have not used Opera since version 6.0.3 early last year.

[Rix]

Firefox all the way!

I have not used Opera since version 6.0.3 early last year.

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Hasn't 7 been out for more then 2 years?

Maybe you should try 8, a lot has changed..

[howb21]

I have finally tested out opera for myself after assurances that it takes up less resources. I gave it more than a few hours of run out, including time to customize it to my needs and preference.

Here's what I came up with

And to speak from a neutral angle, I think opera really rules when it comes to customizing, although I think the process would have been more enjoyable if i could actually shift the all-in-one search bar(bottom right, besides the glasses image) up to the top where I want it to be. I only succeeded in creating a search engine specifically for eg. google, but I never managed to duplicate the all-in-one seach bar. Maybe I am dumb and there's actually a way to do it, but the fact that I could not manoeuvr the buttons with ease demonstrates Opera's need to lower the difficulty of customizing one's browsing experience. I would also love to be able choose what which are engines I would like to have in my all-in-1 search engine. Not all is gloom though, I love Opera's optional ability to delete cookies and history each time I shut it down. I don't remember have such a feature in firefox, but oh well, my memory could be failing me. Still, I love this feature nonetheless.

There were claims that Opera loads pages much faster than Firefox. I was excited then, but now that I have used Opera for myself, I realized the statement does not stand true on all occasions. In fact, some pages loaded much slower than Firefox. That judgement of course, is based only on my naked eye, it could be wrong, but I can't help but feel Firefox could have performed much better for certain webpages. In terms of webpage compatibility, one is right to say that Firefox is definitely a winner in this area. Hell, Opera doesn't even load my online school account correctly. In fact, it always hanged in the process of accessing my own school account. But of course, Opera cannot take the entire blame for this, since its also webmaster's responsibility to ensure his/her webpage is compatible with all browsers.

I read somewhere that one of Opera's main advantages over Firefox is its focus on mails. So happily, I gave all my mail account details to Opera, hoping to able to read all of my mails in 1 centralized locations, but I was left disappointed. For, it never got beyond this:

I don't know, maybe I am just a cursed noob who can never get anything done right, but still, maybe someone but help me out here.

Overall, my impression so far is that Firefox is still a better browser for its simplicity. I will still continue to use Opera though, so I can be more familiar with it and see if there will be any changes in my conclusion.

EDIT: I forgot to mentioned how much I loved the mouse gestures of Opera. I was able to hold down the click and move it down to open a new document. Fantastic feature.

Edited April 24, 2005 by howb21

[42n81]

I have finally tested out opera for myself after assurances that it takes up less resources. I gave it more than a few hours of run out, including time to customize it to my needs and preference.

I think the process would have been more enjoyable if i could actually shift the all-in-one search bar(bottom right, besides the glasses image) up to the top where I want it to be.

Yeah you probly should've just stuck with it a bit longer, you would've got that bar up there where it belongs.

The new and the unfamiliar seem strange.

I'm enjoying FF a lot more now, but can anyone tell me is there a way to save your open pages on shutdown like you can in Opera, and then re-open where you were before?

[STNG]

I'm enjoying FF a lot more now, but can anyone tell me is there a way to save your open pages on shutdown like you can in Opera, and then re-open where you were before?

You can use Session Saver extension or TBE extension for firefox. BUT... Opera save your opened pages(session) after shutdown MORE BETTER than any firefox extension. Because Opera saving settings for each(!) page individual: current position of page, image show setting in page, selected encoding, selected CSS mode, selected search engine, handheld mode, FULL(!) HISTORY of navigation for each page.... and many other settings (Y).

Also Opera after it shutdown save all pages in cache, so if you launch Opera again you get all pages quickly loaded from cache... You can browse visited pages in offline mode without internet connection (Y). If you want to reload(refresh) all pages from Web just switch to Online mode and press Ctrl+F5.

Session saving problems with FireFox:

- TBE extension for FF is really sucks because it bloated and it can slow down FireFox. (N)

- Session Saver is very primitive extension. Absolutely not usable. (N)

- FireFox kill cache every time when it shutdown. If you launch FF again, all you saved tabs will load again from Web not from cache, because it ignore cache. It's really sucks. (N)

Edited April 25, 2005 by STNG

[YBG]

I use both actually.

[42n81]

Thanks STNG !

[grueeue]

I prefer Firefox and am shocked to find out that my family excluding my sister and dad prefer Explorer!!! :no: :no: :no: :angry: :angry: :angry: :no: :angry: :no: :angry: :no: :angry: :no:

[drshdw]

I prefer Firefox and am shocked to find out that my family excluding my sister and dad prefer Explorer!!! :no:  :no:  :no:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:

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Maybe cause FF is slow? =P. FF is horrible when I have more than 3 or 4 tabs open, it drags. Opera on the other hand deals with multiple tabs pretty well. IE doesn't do "tabs", but opening multiple windows doesn't slow my computer down like multiple tabs in FF do. Plus, FF's memory leak is extremely annoying.

[YBG]

I prefer Firefox and am shocked to find out that my family excluding my sister and dad prefer Explorer!!! :no:  :no:  :no:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:  :angry:  :no:

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Probably because IE suits their needs just fine..