shoust Posted October 22, 2007 Share Posted October 22, 2007 [*]Opera has been know to "cheat" on some Javascript benchmarking tests so that it gives lower benchmarks. Proof or it didn't happen. You might be mistaken with Safari on that one. http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/safaribenchmarks.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james.faction Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 I use Opera because it's faster and safer, and I really like the built-in mail client, simple but so effective. Also the way it handles newsfeeds, mailing lists, news lists and mail all on one panel. It's astounding that it packs so many useful features into such a small download. If you don't like the way Opera looks, get a new skin! http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/ - my favourite is emil_rsd - and emil_rsd_black. I only have one gripe about Opera I wish they could improve - it might help for new Opera users too. All the amazing features and customizability is not immediately obvious - although you kick yourself when you figure them out! I think the introduction page could list ALL the features, and perhaps you could call the page up again say with an "opera features" listing under help. I use Firefox occasionally because of the odd site that doesn't work with Opera - that list of sites which don't work with Opera shrinks with every new version though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadgeek9 Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 I tried Opera about a year ago, and it didn't have an Adobe Reader plug-in, so I went back to Firefox. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1759 Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 Maybe people like the constant update reminders and high RAM usage... I use FF on my Vista desktop, but Opera 9.5 on my Mac and Vista laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NienorGT Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 I tried Opera. I don't hate it, but I prefer having my super modded GUI on FX. Also, I hate that Opera as a Bittorrent, IRC and an useless widget engine integrated by DEFAULT... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 I tried Opera.I don't hate it, but I prefer having my super modded GUI on FX. Also, I hate that Opera as a Bittorrent, IRC and an useless widget engine integrated by DEFAULT... You can turn BT off in opera:config (I hate the bt too) and the features like widgets and the mail client don't use any resources at all unless you are using them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NienorGT Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 One thing where Opera OWNs. To apply skins you don't need to restart the browser, and Skins on Opera look nicer. You can turn BT off in opera:config (I hate the bt too) and the features like widgets and the mail client don't use any resources at all unless you are using them.Still... who use all of that?I remember when I tested the widgets... I had a clock on the desktop Opera-Powered :o Right... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 The only thing I dont like about Opera is when you close a tab it goes back to the tab that opened it, not the one next to it. The content blocker isnt as flexible as AdBlock Plus but I can live without that.Once they fix the tab thing or give us an option to choose then I will prpbably use Opera. Yeah, unlike other tabed browsers who started using tabs long after opera, Opera uses tabs correctly, and cycles them in the order they where last used, so if I was on Neowin, quickly open or check another tab to check something, I can click on the tab to minimize or close it again and be right back on Neowin instead of manuaclly clicking neowin or cycling all the way back. Anyway, there's a option right there in the Opera settings to make Opera tabs cycle to the right tabs instead of the last used tab, if you want to be primitive about it :p I really don't get how people claim opera has a weird interface or is hard to customize. sinc I7 changed the way you could arrange the IE interface Opera has by far the easiest to reconfigure interface and you can change it to whatever you like through simple drag and drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted December 12, 2007 Veteran Share Posted December 12, 2007 Personnaly I despise the idea of investing any sort of time customizing my web browser, I just want it to work right out of the box, and in my experience Opera has been closer to that than Firefox. I also love the psychological feeling of using a lightweight, fast program vs Firefox which seems sluggish every time I try it (and I do use it at school from time to time). For people who like to build their own custom super-functional web browser or to design web pages, Firefox is the way to go I suppose. manually clickingThat's a very funny thing to say, if you think about it. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 One thing where Opera OWNs. To apply skins you don't need to restart the browser, and Skins on Opera look nicer.Still... who use all of that? I remember when I tested the widgets... I had a clock on the desktop Opera-Powered :o Right... Seeign as most people pretty mcuh allways have their browser up, Opera is extrmely effiient as far as resources go. so if people want to use widgets, why not use Opea ones, they're html powered afterall. They sure as hell eat all the resource hungry widget systems out there that runs separate process for every widgets, and even the smallest and leats resource itnensive of these widgets use more resource than the single opera process !?! As a Vista users, yeah I don't use it, but if I was on XP, and I wanted widgets why not. it's not like inluding these features and the mail and torrent client have blaoted the download size or made opera use more resources. It's just clever to use an app that is allready running to do multiple stuff. Afterall if you don't do heavy torrent download, then the built in torrent client i great, again people llways have their browser up, and it's just another protocol to download files. This just makes torrets a lot more accessible and legitimate as a download protocol. And the mail client is a pretty damn good mail reader as well. thoguh personally I use outlook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 One thing where Opera OWNs. To apply skins you don't need to restart the browser, and Skins on Opera look nicer.Still... who use all of that? I remember when I tested the widgets... I had a clock on the desktop Opera-Powered :o Right... opera uses MUCH less resources than firefox and includes all these features that don't bother you when you're not using them and is a smaller download. I don't see the point in complaining about this imaginary bloat. I am actually using the firefox 3 beta right now and it is ALOT faster than ff2 and almost on par with opera (Although still uses more memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NienorGT Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 opera uses MUCH less resources than firefox and includes all these features that don't bother you when you're not using them and is a smaller download. I don't see the point in complaining about this imaginary bloat. I am actually using the firefox 3 beta right now and it is ALOT faster than ff2 and almost on par with opera (Although still uses more memory.I don't see things like that :)For me, 100mb in RAM for FX is not important when all features are used by me :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PermaSt0ne Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 it all depends on your preferences i use firefox because i found an absolute perfect theme for me and it has 5 addons i absolutely can not live without and it's very fast for me (using the 64-bit version) oh and it has a large community support base that can help me with any problems i need now, opera probibly has the same exact stuff but at the time when i went looking for an alternative to IE, firefox seemed alot better than opera Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rablet Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 Opera Uses the same amount of Virtual Memory, and nearly the same amount of handles and GDI Objects as Firefox when it comes to rendering pages, but it's "Mem usage" column in the Task manager reads lower so that it "looks lighter on resources". Now this is something I've seen time and time again. I actually considered switching, until I downloaded opera, started it with the same tabs as I had open in Firefox, and saw the result: Note: Everyone might not get the same result, all I'm saying is this is what I saw when I opened the two browsers with identical tabs open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BinaryFragger Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 I'm a Firefox user but I don't hate Opera. In fact, I have Opera installed on my old Celeron-powered Dell laptop (I find that Opera perform much better than Firefox on slower/older computers). But I mainly prefer Firefox simply because I'm very used to it. I've been using Gecko browsers for many years, starting with the Mozilla Suite, then switching to Firefox back when it was known as Phoenix. Whenever I use another browser, I miss my favourite extensions (CustomizeGoogle, Forecastfox, PermaTabs and Sage). I like how Opera packs more features while using less harddrive space and less RAM than Firefox, but since Firefox works very well for me, I don't see any need to switch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xDayan Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 Im just used to firefox, i adopted towards it first and never really looked elsewhere. Same here I might try it tho :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cropcircles Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 I've been an Opera browser user for several years now. Firefox is clean and works well. I've said it a ton of times that I love the tab browsing in Opera, the magic wand, and the atlantek skin. Allot of sites still don't like Opera so I have to use Firefox, such as my internet provider offers ESPN360 free for its customers and it won't play for Opera so I have to use Firefox. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Star Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 Becuase Opera does not have all the extensions like Yahoo! toolber, etc. that I need. I don't hate Opera though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jexel Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 i use opera at home with Windows, Firefox under Linux and Firefox running IE engine at work. Different situations asks for different browsers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theyarecomingforyou Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 The only reason I don't use Opera is because last time I tried I couldn't block ads like I can with Adblock Plus and the Filterset.G updater. Apart from that Opera seems pretty decent and most of the issues I used to have with it have been addressed. If someone could tell me how to auto block ads, particularly the annoying Googe Sense ones, then I'd give it a try again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theresiststance2003 Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 I don't hate Opera, but I use Firefox because of one specific addon. I won't mention its name however, because the mods here will get their panties in a bunch and start crying. Edit: Well, the previous post describes it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFiberOptics Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 I like Opera, but it seems to work slower on Google sites (Blogger, Gmail, Google Reader) This is most likely Google's fault, though. For now I'm using Firefox, but not afraid to try alternatives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane2 Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 I liked Opera too but I decided to stay with Firefox because of all those extensions, you can find one that let you do pretty much anything You can also find a million and one that add up to nothing more than useless bloat. A web browser is for browsing the internet it does not need to be an OS in its own right, and that is where Opera excells, it is fantastic out of the box and doesnt need you to install rubbish to make it faster. Take fasterfox as an example, all the functionality in fasterfox opera does out of the box I'm not going to participate in another "browser war" conversation so this will be my last post in this thread. Someone asked and I gave my reasons. But since you've asked:here: http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/83279 but not it's not just that, other things as well: Opera scrolls faster than window's standard setting so that it "feels faster" Opera renders pages before downloading an external stylesheet so that it "seems faster" Opera will execute close tab on mouse-click down rather than the windows standard "mouse release" so that it "feels faster" Opera has been know to "cheat" on some Javascript benchmarking tests so that it gives lower benchmarks. Opera Uses the same amount of Virtual Memory, and nearly the same amount of handles and GDI Objects as Firefox when it comes to rendering pages, but it's "Mem usage" column in the Task manager reads lower so that it "looks lighter on resources". And virtually all security holes listed in securnia are from sources inside the company. Since opera is a private company we have no way of knowing that there aren't some known bugs right now. Where as both of those bugs you've listed for Firefox has been publically disclosed with suggested workarounds until it is patched: http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2...fsa2007-29.html http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2...fsa2007-28.html You tell me what's a more up front and honest way fo dealing with security. You clearly don't have a clue what you are talking about. Secunia is a third party company and is pretty much the accepted standard in the web browser industry when it comes to security, Secunia publish their own reports anonymously going on a mixture of what vulnerabilties are disclosed by users, and what are disclosed by the company. The simple fact is that the most dishonest company for fixing flaws is Microsoft, they knew about the ANI flaw for 2 years before it got disclosed and patched and it took a third party to discover it before they patch it. Opera's track record is proven and despite all the spiel that is spewn from Mozilla (leading some people to believe Firefox will stop spyware, viruses, and hackers all in a fell swoop) Opera is the safest browser available on the windows platform. Now this is something I've seen time and time again. I actually considered switching, until I downloaded opera, started it with the same tabs as I had open in Firefox, and saw the result: Note: Everyone might not get the same result, all I'm saying is this is what I saw when I opened the two browsers with identical tabs open. 2 things to note: Firstly: Opera's usage in that screenshot is only about 200k higher than that of firefox Secondly: Opera's usage may appear high but it doesn't leak memory like firefox. Open a few more tabs, and leave both browsers running for an hour and you will see a different result, you see the main difference is not that Firefox uses less memory than Opera, it is that Firefox has well documented issues with memory leakage whereas Opera doesn't. At the end of the day browser usage is down to personal choice, but it helps if people use factual information to put their arguments across ;) I have introduced a few people to Opera and they have all loved it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diffstyle Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 Mozilla? Opera? What's that? Its all about Safari 3 on XP =). Why faster than any of those browsers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane2 Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 I have used Safari 3 and it sucks. The UI feels sluggish and slow, and I personally found that Apple tweaked Safari to make it run faster in tests, because in real world usage it felt slower than both Firefox and Opera on windows in general usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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