I have to admit that I am an Opera fan; I started using it when a friend of mine came with version 6.0 and installed it to me. My first impression was not very good because the screen was crowded with toolbars, icons and things. But I spent a few minutes examining each one and removing all; I like the screen clean, not filled with toolbars and things that waste screen space, after all, 1024 x 768 is not enough.
I am a power user but I use Windows XP because I am working with .NET on a big project. So I’ve heard about mozilla a long time ago, tried it, and uninstalled it quickly. Huge piece of slow software (compared to whatever I was using back in that time –either opera or IE-). But then Firefox appeared and everybody started talking about it, and then Opera 7 and now 7.51, so I always stayed with Opera.
Last week I decided to try Firefox because I saw that version 0.9 was released; but I made a promise, I was not allowed to criticize feature X, just because it was different in Opera. To fulfil this I decided that I was going to use Firefox as my default browser for a whole week… or more.
I am not going to post boring screenshots of the install process and all that stuff. All I can say is that install package for Firefox version 0.9 is about 4.7MB vs. Opera 7.51 (without Java) 3.4MB. Not a huge difference. Install was a breeze, no weird questions and soon I had the default Firefox in front of me.
ExtensionsThe first thing I noticed is that Firefox is very limited in features. I mean the default install doesn’t include many things, no mail –I don’t use Opera Mail client either-, no chat, no bars, no nothing. It’s just a single window browser with security in mind which blocks pop-ups. Soon I discovered that many of the features I like about opera are available for Firefox under the name of Extensions. These “little” things are plug-ins you add to your browser to accomplish a specific feature.
There are about one hundred (more or less) available at Firefox Website. Many of them are the same but written by different authors. Anyway, I picked up these:
All-in-One Gestures 0.11.1 by Marc Boullet: the idea behind this is to have mouse gestures just like in Opera. Not that I use them a lot but the back and forward are very nice and if you get use to them, you just start doing stupid things with your mouse when you’re using I.E. and people may look strangely at you. The Firefox extension replicates Opera features perfectly and it’s even better; you have a control panel for the gestures and can customize a LOT of things. Believe me, a LOT. I really liked it.
Single Window 1.0 by Aaron Spuler: I think that one of the best features Opera has is the tabbed navigation; the first time I saw that (I think it was Netscape) I didn’t like the idea. Soon after I discovered that I was really wrong. Tab navigation is the best thing you can have if you open lots of documents at the same time. The opera tab bar has the ability to be placed on top, left, right or bottom, and you can reorder tabs (aka: move them), or close a tab with a middle-button click. This extension is Firefox response to tabbed navigation; since Firefox is a single document browser, every new page will be opened in a new browser window. This may sound nice, but if you happen to have 20 windows, your taskbar will be crowded. Even in 1024×768 I place my “tab-bar” on the right, it’s much more comfortable than on top, because you can read tab names easily.
Despite the fact that this extension does provide tabbed navigation, it does not work as well as it should. The first thing you notice is that you cannot move the tab-bar (that is not too important but I’d have loved to do it); then I noticed that sometimes even when you’re using this extension, some clicks or windows will open on a NEW window. This behaviour is really annoying because now you have a “new” Firefox window ready to be filled with tabbed documents, therefore having two instances. It didn’t happen many times, but when it did, I really had to close the new window, copy the url, create a new tab (control-t), paste and go. Problem solved but this demonstrates that at least with this version of the extension, tabbed navigation is not as integrated as it should be. Another proof is the fact that Control-N shortcut (to create a new window) will actually create a new window, not a new tab. You have to use ctrl-t to create a new Tab. I promised that I was not going to compare with Opera but I have to say that in my humble opinion, the user who’s using Tabbed navigation expects to create “new” windows directly. If you happen to create a new Window (as the shortcut says) you will actually get a new window. Not really big fuzz about it, but it was just something worth to mention. Beware if you’re an Opera fan who loves shortcuts.
Paste and Go 0.3.1 by Jens Bannmann: This is really a nice and sometimes unknown Opera feature. If you have an URL in the clipboard, you can actually paste it into the address box and press enter (or click “go”) or you can (in Opera) click control-d to paste and go. Nice if you get used to it, it will save you less than a sec and sometimes you forget about it, but it’s there. I have to admit that Paste and Go Extension is almost perfect, except for the fact that there is no such shortcut as far as I know. If there’s one I didn’t see it and I apologize; the thing is, what’s the point of having an new entry in the popup menu of the address text box which says “paste and go”. I mean it’s better than nothing but the idea is to have a shortcut. If you are using the mouse to paste an URL then you’ve already “wasted time”. I don’t want to spend more time with this, you get the idea. It’s a very small extension and it’s worth to have it just in case. Let’s hope the author finds a way to add a shortcut for it.
Close Tab on Double Click 0.1 by Twanno: I don’t know why I installed this; I was tired and thought it was something like Opera’s close tab with middle button click. Fortunately, that feature already exists, so this extension “close on double click” is just that, double click on a tab and it will close.
FLST 0.6 by Daniel Lindkvist: Focus Last Selected Tab: Brings focus to the last selected tab when closing the active tab. You can (via F9) enable or disable this feature for the current window.
Session Saver: This is strange because I remember installing session saver (more on this later) but I don’t have the extension; and I have the options: File -> Restore Session and Options -> Session Saver -> Preferences. And in fact it’s working! Anyway let me explain briefly what’s all about Session Saver. In Opera (yes again!) the best feature (in my opinion) is the ability to save your session automatically; I don’t know about you, but I tend to have 20 or more documents open at the same time; mainly because I start surfing and I open new tabs on background and I read them later when I have more time. If for some reason Opera closes, crashes or anything, I have my windows back the way they were when I reopen it. It’s mandatory and lovely; I was disappointed when I found out that Firefox didn’t come with this by default and happy when I found out the extension. No, it’s not the same, Opera’s more flexible (it can prompt you when you start what would you like to do), but Firefox’s version did work all the times I’ve tested it; I simply opened ten or fifteen documents, and simply closed it. When you reopen it, the tabs reload. Now some differences:
Opera’s version will reload your session the way it was, it won’t actually re-request the documents to the server; if you were reading a news paper last night and reopen your session now, you’ll still see the “old news” (this is not *entirely* true, but it works like that, possibly taking it from its cache, if somebody knows the truth about this, feel free to correct me). I’ve noticed that Firefox reloads the document directly from the server.
I’ve read that session saver has problems with tabbed navigation *AND* multiple windows at the same time but since I don’t do that I cannot tell; I’ve made a small test and opened three windows and populated them with some tabs. I killed the process tree from Task Manager and when I reopened everything was back the way it was; too easy, just as I thought. 😉
And this concludes the extensions I’ve installed, I’ve seen dozens more but with these I mimic more or less my lovely Opera behaviour (or at least I have what I consider a “must” for my browser experience). After all I’m trying to be fair with both products but if a program does not something I need, then I expect to find out an alternate way to do it. So far, Firefox is great; let’s now examine daily usage.
Using Firefox: Surfing the net
SpeedI may be crazy, but not only does Firefox parse the documents differently (very netscape/mozilla like obviously) but it *looks* a little bit faster. Maybe it is just perceived speed because of the way things get drawn on the screen. I don’t know, but speed is very fast; you won’t be disappointed here.Regarding application loading time, Firefox is slower than Opera by a few seconds during the first startup. People will complain about this and even start a flamewar, I don’t know, in *my computer* Firefox loading time is higher than Opera’s, with or without documents/tabs or whatever. I made some tests freshly booting before each attempt (to prevent dll caching or anything like that). Perhaps on *your computer* this doesn’t happen. I’ve got to say that this is not a *major* issue since loading a browser is not something you’re going to do all the time and having to wait one or two seconds more won’t kill you.
Memory UsageAt first this could be a problem; when my computer boots up the memory usage is about 64/66 MB (I have 512 MB ram). My services list is tweaked and I don’t have fancy stuff (apart from Winamp, Damon-tools and F-Prot) loading when the computer boots up.
What I have noticed is that Firefox uses a little bit (sometimes a lot) more of ram when it starts for the first time, but then you start opening tabs the ram usage will remain flat. On the other hand, Opera may use less ram when it starts but as soon as you start opening tabs, the ram usage will grow (sometimes beyond 80 MB).
Here are two screenshots of both browsers’ task manager; same amount of tabs and same documents on each page:
The result, far from official, it clearly shows that both use more or less the same amount of memory; after my testing week, I’ve noticed that Firefox tend to use a few more megabytes; but that’s just an impression.
ShortcutsI have to admit that I’m used to Opera’s shortcuts, therefore getting used to a new set of shortcuts is not easy; but I’ve tried hard and the experience has not been too bad. I’ve noticed that is not that Opera has more, but Firefox has fewer features out of the box. On the other hand some common functions like for example: “jump to the address box” in Opera is F8 but Firefox uses ALT-D. Differences apart both browsers have a set of shortcuts and if you like using them, all you have to do is read the fancy manual.
Search EnginesOne thing I got used to do with Opera is type a search query directly in the address box, instead of jumping to the “Search” box on the right –which is available in Firefox too-. In Opera you can type: “g OpenBSD PPPOE” (without quotes) and it will automatically search Google for pages containing OpenBSD PPPOE strings. Now I don’t know if this feature is used by a lot of people but I really got used to it and I have never used the Search box. There is no such feature in Firefox or an extension -as far as I can tell-; if you happen to use the Search Box, then I haven’t found major differences. In Opera you can use other characters for different search engines; for example “f” will search in the current page, “z” will seach amazon, and so on. I think that you can’t change those; on the contrary Firefox doesn’t have shortcuts you can use in the address box, but you can select other search engines directly from mozilla’s web site. I didn’t invest more time with this since I only use Google (default on both) and if for some reason I have to seach somewhere else, I normally do it manually (aka: I visit the website directly and then perform a seach there).
DownloadsFirefox has a download manager which can either prompt you with a save dialog or save it to a configurable path. A curious bug that I experienced is that when you download mp3’s, it automatically executes them, thus adding them to my Winamp’s playlist; apparently it executes the file before moving it to the configured directory (my custom download folder). The problem with that is that after it has been added to Winamp’s playlist, it cannot be moved to the customized path you’ve chosen, so it stays in the document and settings\user\bla bla bla temp folder; annoying!
I even selected prompt before downloading but Firefox kept saving my mp3s in the temp folder. When I realized that a new catalyst driver for my ATI was available I went to ATI’s web site and downloaded it, but this time it asked, so I guess it was a problem with mp3s and “auto execution” if you have Winamp with the auto-enqueue activated instead of replace playlist. I went to the options and found that “.mp3” extension is supposed to be opened in Winamp automatically, so that’s why it is being added to my playlist (I have enqueue in play list by default when I double click on an .MP3). Maybe this is a bug, maybe not, I didn’t investigate any further.
All in all, both download managers are ok, Opera’s one is integrated as “another tab” which, in my opinion, is more convenient since you don’t have to have “another” window floating around; if there’s a way to accomplish this in Firefox, I didn’t find it.
You can temporary pause any download and auto close the download manager when it finishes its pending downloads in Firefox. It just works and there’s nothing else you might need or ask from a download manager (it is, by far much better than Microsoft’s I.E. download box). A nice thing about Opera is that when a save dialog box appears, Opera is actually downloading the file in background. Sometimes when you finally find your desired path, the file is either finished or halfway there. I don’t know if this happens in Firefox because there’s no progress bar until you actually select your location and the Download Manager appears. I have tried with a couple of files and it looked as if it wasn’t happening, but I can’t be sure.
Finally, I’m satisfied with Firefox download mechanism and that’s what I consider important.
There’s little I can say about this, I don’t use skins, although I’ve used some Opera ones in the past. Firefox comes with a “Theme” selector. It only has one and if you want more you have to go to firefox website, just like Opera (Opera has one *and* a “windows standard” skin which looks like Win2k and below).
Page DisplayThis is one of the most important aspects. I have to confess that even with my precious Opera, some pages were either unusable or had problems; the solution was to use Internet Explorer for that site and problem solved. But we don’t like IE!
Well Firefox really rendered fine most of the pages I’ve worked with. One nice example of this is GameSpot. Opera has troubles with all those layers and renders the page really bad. Firefox, on the other hand did a fine job and the page was really usable. That said, Firefox is a great browser and even my Home Banking, the MS website, and some others worked fine. In summary, I have had a pleasant experience with Firefox during the last week.
Opera has rendered Gamespot badly…
Firefox did a great job with such complex piece of code
Other Features
It is a little bit unfair, because I am going to mention things I found in Opera that aren’t available in Firefox; of course there are many, because Opera is huge, but I’d like to mention only a few that I find useful.
The quick properties menu: In Opera you can enable/disable many options by pressing F12; the following popup menu will appear:
As you can see, you can easily identify as another browser when the website says that the page is “only for IE” or you can enable/disable a proxy server, and the most beautiful, block unwanted pop-ups. I haven’t found all these options or their equivalents in Firefox, with the exception of the Pop up blocker (which is per site in Firefox). As you can see all this could be added either as an extension or as a part of the original installer in Firefox. I can live without these, but they’d have been a nice thing to have.
A nice feature in Firefox is the “Page Info” thing (Control-J), it will display a window with some tabs and several information about the current page:
You can actually see all the images, the form query string (if any) and all the links. A nice interesting feature if you are debugging or inspecting an HTML document.
On the Zoom side, there’s no such feature in Firefox (so nice when it’s late and you can’t read anymore) but you have the usual Increase/Decrease font size.
Firefox bookmark handling is adequate, although not as user friendly as others when it is time to Import. I personally don’t use bookmarks a lot so I didn’t pay much attention; the usual ctrl-d works and it adds a page to the bookmarks, but it will prompt you before doing so.
Things I’d love to see in FirefoxWhere do I start? Here we go. I have to confess that I haven’t seen extensions for these but there *may* be somewhere. I’d be glad to hear about these. On the other hand be warned that these are features I use with Opera most of the time. I am not going to suggest that Firefox should include a Chat Client, because I think that’s the worst thing Opera has; after all it’s a web browser, not a multimedia centre. The features I post here are actually things I’ve missed when working with Firefox during this week.
– Window Menu: there’s no such and therefore you can’t minimize, maximize, tile, cascade all your “tabs” or windows, maybe because in Firefox the Tab thing is not 100% natural, it is an extension and the whole thing is Multiple Document. The tab is kind of a Cheat.
– The quick preferences I mentioned above, it’s a nice feature you won’t be using everyday, but when you get used to it, you miss it.
– Rewind – Fast Forward: When Opera introduced this feature it wasn’t clear what the whole idea about it was; until you started using it. Plain simple, suppose you search something on Google, and click on a link and start digging into it, but suddenly you realize that this is not what you were looking for; you’d have to click back many times to reach Google again –sometimes fighting with JavaScript scripts that will try to stop you-. If you click on Rewind, Opera will take you directly to Google. I think you got the point.
– Reload Every…: not a very useful feature but sometimes when you’re checking or waiting for a page to change, you can, under Opera, right click on any part of the document and select Reload Every: and a list of choices will appear, ranging from 5 seconds to 30 minutes; you also have a “custom”.
– Image Load: It would be nice if it were possible to disable the load of images for a specific website. That speeds up page load a lot and when you’re looking for text, you don’t need images. A single click can restore the images back. Just like in Opera.
– Tight integration with tabbed navigation; right now the extension is really nice, but it’s nothing compared to the native Opera’s implementation.
I remember people starting a flamewar because Firefox lovers said that Opera was too complex and needed a lot of tweaking before it was usable or comfortable (all those toolbars and ‘things’ that appear on a default install), therefore that behaviour was not suitable for newbie’s or people coming from I.E who were going to be confused by all the stuff.
On the other side, there were Opera lovers (I wasn’t there!), assuring that the Firefox approach was completely the opposite; the default install didn’t have anything and you needed to accomplish tasks by downloading and installing complex extensions; that alone was complex enough for a newbie who wouldn’t even know what an extension is. And if you didn’t download extensions the “browsing experience” was really poor.
And so the war begun, just like an epic Warcraft II battle, Humans vs. Orcs.
I’d like to add my opinion after trying both pieces of software. Your mileage may vary.
The Opera Way: It’s true that the first impression you get when you open Opera’s default install is a little bit shocking. Loads of things: toolbars, buttons, icons, etc. You will definitely have to spend some time (I do it in 2 minutes, but I know what to do) customizing your browser. The truth is I’ve seen newbie’s using Opera and they didn’t touch anything, they liked it the way it was. Perhaps it is just a matter of preference; to be honest if you don’t like a toolbar you’re likely going to be able to remove it in no time; even if you’re a newbie. That said I think that Opera Package is growing a little bit beyond what I’d like to see. The Mail client was ok (although I don’t use), but now the latest version has a Chat Client. If they’re going in *that* direction, perhaps in the future they may suffer the Netscape Syndrome; that is, a complete package, but too “heavy”. This is something that, in my opinion, mozilla suffers. Time will decide.
The Firefox Way: Firefox, on the other hand, offers a very simple and extra-features limited experience in its default install. A newbie will likely appreciate the “looks like explorer” appearance and will go from that. The risk here is that a newbie may never ever discover what an extension is and if it does, chances are it’ll take much more time to get used to that. Is not that extensions are bad, but I spent more time browsing the net and looking for the ones I wanted (even when I didn’t know them, I knew what functionality I needed) than removing and touching a few toolbars in Opera. NOTE: I am not saying Opera’s better here; it’s just a matter of preference and opinion. I don’t think that neither browser is truly a super-newbie experience. A newbie won’t even know what Opera or Firefox is. A friend or an Ad may lead them to one or the other. From there, only time will decide. This flamewar is nonsense. My personal preference is still the Opera Way. I’d rather spend a few minutes removing stuff *I may use* than, looking for “third party” extensions that do not fulfil 100% my requirements. Maybe in the near future, extensions start being more powerful and that could be another history, because you could “build” your browser with those features you need and like. Firefox zealots here could argue: why do I need a Mail Client if I don’t use it. I agree. Opera Zealots will respond: If you need mail, you need to download another piece of software, nah, we’ve got one integrated!
As you can see, there’s no winning position, both are good. It just depends.
I’m back at my Opera, but the good thing is I haven’t uninstalled Firefox because now, instead of jumping straight to I.E., I’ll first give Firefox a try when there’s a problem with Opera.
I do recommend Firefox if you don’t like Opera (or can’t afford it to remove the banner); I understand that there are people out there that hate Opera (nobody is perfect) so Firefox is the natural way to go. If you prefer Opera, don’t be afraid to give Firefox a try, it’s worth the effort and you will find a very nice web browser package; we don’t want to run I.E. because its security flaws, now there’s another “layer” in the middle between your
I haven’t mentioned that both Opera and Firefox are Cross Platform, so you can have your Opera or Firefox for Mac or Unix/Linux. I don’t have a unix X box here but I imagine the experience is the same.
This is it, my week with Firefox is over and I’ve gained a new ally; the story is not over, because Firefox is at version 0.9, and it claims: “0.9 is a Technology Preview. While this software works well enough to be relied upon as your primary browser in most cases, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability. It is a pre-release product and should not be relied upon for mission-critical tasks.”
I don’t agree with them, it works fantastically.
About the author
I am a Chief Technology Officer and I live in Madrid, Spain. I read OSNews via RSS and tend to read Flamewars more often than I should. I don’t know why, I just love them. I work with *BSD/Linux Servers since 1997 and used DOS, Windows and OS/2. I also work with Databases (MS-SQL and MySQL) a lot; but in the end, we, as geeks, would love to have fancy Powerbooks to hang around… 😉
My desktop has Windows XP Professional because I need Visual Studio .NET and the ability to be defeated by some occasional co-worker in Starcraft BroodWar.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
For Firefox I suggest that you try the Tabbrowser extension, which has many, many features, including placing the tabs bar left, right, top or bottom, auto-reload pages every x seconds, etc.
This is the first extension I install when switching to a new Firefox version, I couldn’t do without it.
Maybe I read that incorrectly, but the author seems to imply that tabbed browsing is ONLY available with the installation of an extension.
This is incorrect, tabbed browsing is a part of the base install of Firefox.
As for the content, good comparison, I’m going to agree with the standard “Opera puts in too much junk” argument that he cites as being favored of Firefox lovers.
Yeah, generally an OK review (or whatever you want to call it), but the author made a huge mistake by not noticing that tabs are integrated in Firefox, and are actually one of it’s selling points (he would have known if he had read the Firefox website). I don’t really understand his complaints about missing tab integration – the ‘missing’ features (such as opening new tabs instead of opening new windows) are available as extensions.
His list of things that he found “missing” from Opera would be a bit strange to implement in Firefox, for the following reasons:
1) Nobody but Opera-fans use them (as he mentions himself with one of them), and in my opinion they are not really necessary.
2) It shouldn’t be too hard to implement them as extensions (as he also notes), and that is what should probably done if anybody wants this functionality since Firefox attempts to be a lightweight and streamlined browser without all the junk.
[inflammatory]
Opera vs. Firefox is a bit like Gnome vs. KDE, except KDE’s features are useful. 😉
[/inflammatory]
– Simon
I too am confused. I’ve been using firefox longer than I can remember and mozilla before that. It has always had tabbed-browsing built in. Did the author do a bad job of explaining this or did he misunderstand the feature is already there?
Which also brings the question, why are there extensions for a feature that already exists?
Opera does multiple documents in the same way that most Windows 3.x programs did it: One big window acts as a desktop for smaller document windows. Even Microsoft has abandoned this kind of MDI. Opera lets users switch document windows using a toolbar instead of the Window-menu found in many old programs.
Mozilla on the other hand has all the documents fill the whole page. They do not act as small windows inside a big one (at least to the user, I don’t know how it’s done on the inside). The Mozilla solution is IMNSHO simple, intuitive and better.
Firefox tabs, out of the box (no extensions), are very primitive compared to Opera. You can’t move tabs around, you can’t minimize tabs (opera has a command to close inactive tabs), you can’t move the tab toolbar to another edge of the window, various random stuff (e.g. download manager) can’t be opened in a tab, etc.
The #1 problem I see with attempting to use Firefox as an Opera replacement is integration between extensions. With Opera, features such as Fast Forward/Rewind and gestures/hotclicks easily integrate. Opera intelligently will use fast forward/rewind in place of any forward/back action (i.e. gestures, hotclicks) if there isn’t currently an applicable forward/back element associated with the page.
I attempted to duplicate the fast forward/rewind experience in Firefox by downloading the page bar, which, while quite powerful, didn’t integrate with anything. I was unable to make it work with gestures period (I’m using the All-in-One gestures extension)
Really, the only way to woo Opera users to Firefox, in my opinion, would be to make a single extension which incorporates the entire Opera feature set. Until then, extensions are no replacement with Opera’s cohesive interface and feature experience. Extensions just don’t integrate into each other very well, and you’re left with most of the Opera feature set but so disjointed as to be useless.
Firefox does have the feature of searching in the toolbar. YOu just ahve to set the keymarks. It comes with a couple, and you can change the text. I hhave “gg” set for google search, “dd” for dictionary and a few others. Just look in the “Quicksearch” bookmarks, and in their propoerties in the keyword.
I really miss this feature in IE every time I have to use it. As well as tabs and gestures. The gestures also work well with the tabs. I agree with prvious posters, the tabs have been around for a long time, and seem realy solid.
I too found Opera too cluttered, but it might be ok if I spent a week with it. I think firefox would do well to add the most popular extensions to a short list of available ones that are listed when you start the extensions manager or something.
I also love the “middle click” a bookmark to open in new tab feature. That’s why I stopped using Mozilla and went to firefox(it had it in 0.3 I think).
Firefox also had “type ahead find” that lets you search pages or links by just typing, no boxes required.
Generally a good article form a first time user, However, he did not really check Firefox tips and features well while using.
author is wrong that he says Firefox has tabs only by extensions, just “middle click” to the mouse -for windows-, or Ctrl-Click to link, or CTRL+T. This also works in bookmarks. for moving from one tab to another , use CTRL-Tab, or CTRL+Pgup-down.
There is no need for “closing tab double click” extension, because middle click on tab already closes the tab.
author unfortunately did not use the most useful extensions, Adblocker and WebDeveloper.
Honestly overuse of extensions makes firefox sometimes sluggish or slow to open.
And no mention of opennig a group of bookmarks as tabs, find as you type..
Maybe he should give another try after uninstalling all the extensions he tried..
Mozilla on the other hand has all the documents fill the whole page. They do not act as small windows inside a big one (at least to the user, I don’t know how it’s done on the inside). The Mozilla solution is IMNSHO simple, intuitive and better.
Actually, the child window MDI is one of Opera’s greatest strengths, IMHO. If I want to compare two documents side by side, all I need to do is hit shift-F6. This is impossible with Mozilla/Firefox without a lot of nasty hand resizing of parent windows.
I don’t see how Opera’s MDI implementation is the least bit obtrusive unless you happen to hit a wrong key. Opera pioneered the whole concept after all, and other browsers just blatently copied it. Being a copy, I don’t see how the Mozilla/Firefox experience should be any different from the Opera one unless you intend to leverage the extra power afforded by child windows.
That said, do Mozilla/Firefox have a counterpart to Opera’s ^Z? Opera stores closed pages/child windows as a stack, and hitting ^Z pops the top of the stack and reopens the window associated with that entry. Hitting ^Z repeatedly will continue popping entries from the closed page stack until it is empty.
Time to insert the obligatory plug for Adblock. I notice that it is gone from the “Get new Extensions” page (the version they had there was somewhat buggy), but the version available at http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html works very well indeed. It transforms Web browsing.
Second, like the others, I wonder how the author could miss that Firefox supports tabs out of the box. Indeed, the entire Mozilla series has done so since before version 1.0.
Another missed feature in this “review”.
I haven’t found all these options or their equivalents in Firefox, with the exception of the Pop up blocker (which is per site in Firefox).
It’s there without installing an extension.
Tools -> Options -> Web Features
A little check box [] Block PopUp Windows
I thought you had to use a piece of software before you review it and bash it against a commercial and bloated package.
2 problems with firefox.
1. Bookmarks on the left side don’t show tooltip URL.Why does it just show the name of the link. DUH. Every other browser does this. No problem with selecting bookmarks from the top though but it can block url location.
2. Its alot slower than Opera when going back/back button.
The mozilla guys will NOT change their DOM code so it’s fast and snappy like Opera.
Opera is the best browser right now until firefox makes some more user interface improvements.
They’re close though
Use opera and get rid of alot of crap at the top of screen.
Here’s a screen shot of my Opera configuration. I don’t really see how you could provide a more condensed one that still includes a page bar:
http://fails.org/shoebox.jpg
Just to clarify – the Search Engines section is very wrong. Firefox has what it calls “Internet Keywords” whereby you can bookmark a URL and add “%s” within it somewhere. Then by assigning a keyword you can go to that URL with the %s replaced by your keyword.
eg. Bookmark http://site.com/%s , keyword: blah
then type in the URLbar “blah omg” and you will be taken to http://site.com/omg
Firefox comes with Internet keywords for Google and Amazon and a few others and you can set up your own at any time. Firefox’s address bar will also do a Google I’m Feeling Lucky Search on anything you type that doesn’t look like a URL.
eg. Typing “osnews” into the URLbar will automatically bring you to http://www.osnews.com.
I saw an extension for “Reaload every n time units”, and I saw an extension for Rewind and Fast Forward. You should search more before you say that extension x doensn’t exist. You have installed a lot of extensions for tabs and session related features. All you had to do is install the Tabbrowser extensions, which has everything you need.
i stopped using internet explorer a while back except for the windows update site which won’t work with anything else.
I am currently using firefox 0.9 on my libranet linux box at work and on my windows xp system at home that I use to play games I have firefox 0.9.1 and quite simply it rocks. I rarely hit a website anymore that doesn’t render right with it. and for the ones that refuse to work the agent switcher normally takes care of the problem without any fuss or muss.
Firefox is awesome and hopefully it will dethrone the defacto web browser king.
I saw an extension for Rewind and Fast Forward. You should search more before you say that extension x doensn’t exist.
There are two problems with this. The first is that since Firefox extensions are so numerous, you have to spend a considerable amount of time trying them out before you find the ones that fit your taste. Frankly, I don’t have that much time to spend on a web browser.
Second, while extensions do exist for fast forward/rewind (the Page Bar, as I mentioned), they don’t integrate. I can’t get the gestures extension to use the page bar’s fast forward/rewind like features as a fallback if back/forward don’t work.
Extensions are a far too granular approach to satisfying people’s feature requests. Couldn’t someone just put together a universal “power user” extension which includes all the basic Opera features?
“Second, while extensions do exist for fast forward/rewind”
use update.mozilla.org where its organised well. install the linky extenstion
When I look around Opera boards, I see a real call for “Opera Lite” to counter Mozilla. I would prefer Opera by far if they jsut released a version cleansed of the silly mail and chat clients and what not. All the goodies, none of the rarely used toys. At least I think so. I use both however, and I’m just happy to have a good popup blocker anyway.
I have found Firefox to be too buggy on Mac OS X and have therefor kicked it out and happely replaced it with the latest version of Opera.
Sometimes when I opened Firefox there was no Bookmarks there, but after a restart the reapperad, very annoying. The only thing I miss is the good site render of Firefox, it’s awesome today! I like the fact that Firefox is OSS and is hoping that version 1 will be less buggy.
But you should all check out Opera 7.5 and remove lots of annoying icons like the e-mail part and so on. Opera is a bloody awesome webbrowser!
“Actually, the child window MDI is one of Opera’s greatest strengths, IMHO. If I want to compare two documents side by side, all I need to do is hit shift-F6. This is impossible with Mozilla/Firefox without a lot of nasty hand resizing of parent windows. ”
That’s the wm job. Using ion2, no resize needed. Strange to expect this from the application.
When will someone put them in a battle ?
I would love to see Safari battle against Firefox or Camino (other Mozilla browser for Mac, much cleaner imo than firefox), which is becoming extremely popular (and for obvious reasons, including MS’ drop of support for IE Mac) on the Mac OS.
I think what annoys me the most about FireFox on mac is the obvious use of “hack” code that was required for the Windows GUI to look good. An example would be the customize toolbar panel… which is really an incarnation of Aqua’s standard sheet for customizing toolbars. However, the sheet animation and drag and drop functions had to be hand coded for the windows version. It was then ported (or recompiled… whatever) to the mac. So we have this funky code when we don’t really need it (and OS X’s native sheets are far superior in terms of animation and usability…). Get rid of that code, and use native, and more elegant OS X solutions
Anyway… I’m guessing the Firefox team isn’t too concerned about our platform for the moment. But still
Which version did you last try? I’ve been using it since 0.8 and never had problems with bookmarks or anything.
Between Safari, IE, Opera and FireFox the latter seems to be the only one which can render nearly all pages without any problems. I have yet to see a page which does not render correctly. Even though Apple claims that Safari is the most standards compliant and fastest browser, there are still problems on many sites. Same goes for Konqueror on KDE (which Safari seems to be based on due to the fact that it uses the khtml engine).
What a complete idiot! If your going to review somthing, at least try to find out some things about it!
Tabbed browsing is built in.
All the One Window extension does is try to force new windows to open in tabs instead. Also, any link or bookmark can be opened in a new tab with a middle-click, CTRL-click, or right click and choose “Open in new tab”, so he never had to open a new tab manually and past in the address bar.
Also, the extension that lets you make the downloads window be a tab instead is called somthing like “Download Manager Tweak”. I use it myself.
Now for your list:
– Window Menu: there’s no such and therefore you can’t minimize, maximize, tile, cascade all your “tabs” or windows, maybe because in Firefox the Tab thing is not 100% natural, it is an extension and the whole thing is Multiple Document. The tab is kind of a Cheat.
Yes theres no window menu, but tabbed browsing is integrated as far into the core of firefox as possible. It was already 100% active and ready with your original default install, you just didn’t open any new tabs.
– The quick preferences I mentioned above, it’s a nice feature you won’t be using everyday, but when you get used to it, you miss it.
The user agent switching is an extension. Its a sub menu right in the Tools menu. The Web Developer extension does pretty much everything else, plus more (enable/disable nearly anything, and even edit CSS, on the fly), also right in the Tools menu.
– Rewind – Fast Forward: When Opera introduced this feature it wasn’t clear what the whole idea about it was; until you started using it. Plain simple, suppose you search something on Google, and click on a link and start digging into it, but suddenly you realize that this is not what you were looking for; you’d have to click back many times to reach Google again –sometimes fighting with JavaScript scripts that will try to stop you-. If you click on Rewind, Opera will take you directly to Google. I think you got the point.
What do you think the dropdown menus for the back and forward buttons are for? You go back and forth as many pages at a time as you want. No need for seperate buttons.
– Reload Every…: not a very useful feature but sometimes when you’re checking or waiting for a page to change, you can, under Opera, right click on any part of the document and select Reload Every: and a list of choices will appear, ranging from 5 seconds to 30 minutes; you also have a “custom”.
There is an extension actually called “Reload Every”. Do the math.
– Image Load: It would be nice if it were possible to disable the load of images for a specific website. That speeds up page load a lot and when you’re looking for text, you don’t need images. A single click can restore the images back. Just like in Opera.
Right-click on any image in a page and choose “block images from foo.com” and you can block those images. More advanced image loading permissions are available from extensions.
– Tight integration with tabbed navigation; right now the extension is really nice, but it’s nothing compared to the native Opera’s implementation.
Did you even see the web page where you downloaded firefox? Did you even bother to do ANY preperation for this pathetic article?
With Opera, you are constantly having to open another browser because there are pages it simply will not handle.
I have never had to do that with Firefox. I wasn’t really 100% IE free until I started with Firefox.
Of course, now that I’m pure Linux at home, Firefox is more convenient for me than ever.
In fact, there is a shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-V (derived from Ctrl-V for regular paste). The letter part of the shortcut can be changed, as described on my page.
Another feature you missed: Ctrl-Shift-S or via the search bar’s context menu allows you to activate ‘Paste and Search’, which works similarly to Paste and Go.
There are lots of “hidden” features in Firefox or any Mozilla-based browser at url ‘about:config’
“In fact, there is a shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-V (derived from Ctrl-V for regular paste). The letter part of the shortcut can be changed, as described on my page.”
since you develop extensions could you explain how easy or hard it was. just curious
I’ve left Mozilla and Firefox since the beginning of the year when they launched Opera 7.5. It’s just excellent for my needs, and it has all I use in one program, devided by tabs: email, usenet, irc, and www.
I don’t have to switch from one app to another all the time. The Opera GUI is also excellent. Not to mention one has to customize it quite a bit to remove the junk on the toolbars, but then it’s worth it.
Two extensions to FireFox that IMHO make it a killer app: adblock and “flash click to play”. Adblock effectively cleanses a browsing experience of the mindless visual noise and restores a good measure of sanity. Granted, you have to “teach” adblock by right clicking on flashy animated gifs and add the originating URL to your “block” list, but this little bit of work is well worth the payoff. I am always surprised when I happen to browse to a site with konqueror how visually noisy and cluttered it is. In firefox all the ad serving farms have been blocked out.
Likewise for “flash click to play” – since flash seems to have found its niche in advertising, it’s wonderful to have them overlayed with a simple “play” button. If I want to waste time and be distracted by flash animations I can “click to play”. Priceless.
These extensions ensure that for my purposes firefox (mozilla) are much better suited than opera / konqueror.
firefox and opera seem to have 2 very different philosophies. Opera gives you a ton of features, options, menu items, toolbars-everything right in front of you whether you need them or not. While firefox moved away from the suite approach, Opera moved towards it incorporating email and irc. The home page gives me several popups. It also gives me a whole list of bookmarks. To me that’s a lot of clutter I have to remove just to browse without getting a nervous breakdown! That’s why I use firefox and build my way up. On the other hand the whole extensions thing is quite a bit messy. I see it as a chaotic lab testing every possible browser feature you can imagine. Lots of extensions don’t make sense but the best ones should be incorporated into firefox such as session saver, the ability to create a shortcut or move tabs around -but not some monstrosity such as TBE. We need some balance here.
I am overall impressed with Firefox 0.9x series.
a) Smaller size
b) Faster rendering
c) better cacheing (pressing the backspace key renders the previous page faster)
compared to 0.8.
But Opera 7.5 is
a) Still smaller inspite of more features
b) More feature rich
c) Richer out of the box experience
d) Rendering is faster (though buggier in case of complex web pages)
e) Excellent mouse gestures
f) Better tab browing.
g) Easier access for preferences thru mouseclicks
Don’t get me wrong. Firefox .9x is a huge improvement over Firefox .8, but it needs a lot of work to reach the feature set-seamless feeling that opera does provide.
In my case All in One gestures never worked. Optimoz-mouse gestures work fine in my home PC (WinXP home) but don’t work in my Win2K Laptop.
After installing Single Window(tab tool), when if I want another instance/window of Firefox, I HAVE TO USE Ctl+N. If I click say, the Firefox Icon in my taskbar, a new window opens but does not respond to anyaction.
Onething I love about FF is the adblock extension. Further it has a better compatilbility across webpages compared to Opera. Try http://www.msnbc.com to find out exactly what I mean. (I also know Microsoft was caught sending a different stylesheet to Opera compared to other browsers, on purpose, making Opera render MSN websites improperly)
I can hope that there will be a Flash block extension soon as FF is done by developers with little commercial consideration in mind.
The WebDeveloper extension is really good when developing pages & I strongly urge users to test/analyze webpages in Firefox/Mozilla.
Hate to just post a “me-too”, but honestly, I quit reading the article after the section about how tabbed browsing in Firefox requires an extension. As built-in tabbed browsing and popup-blocking have been the most advertised features of Firefox since, IIRC, its first public beta (it was called Phoenix back in those days), you clearly went into this review not knowing anything about the browser and left it the same way.
In short, I read as far as your assertion that Firefox does not natively support tabs, decided you had absolutely nothing to tell me about the browser, and quit reading. Frankly I would be embarrassed to have my name on an article like this.
But hey, you seem to know a lot about Opera. Maybe you can write an article about it and keep your dignity.
I don’t see how the author can successfully compare the two browsers if he doesn’t know even know the full extent of both browsers. Opera is more customizable than people give it credit for. If you don’t use the extra features on Opera (like Mouse Gestures, for example) then the two browsers look the same.
As to why Firefox renders some pages better than Opera. Opera supports _standards_. Not saying that Firefox doesn’t, but some things like XMLHttpRequest (Invented by M$, allows for JavaScript to request files from a server) sneak into Firefox’s code. This is a mere example, but Firefox let’s a lot of IE-proprietary code into the rendering engine, this is why some pages look better in Firefox.
As said before, Firefox is still VERY buggy. Extensions still require restart of the browser to be installed and sometimes they don’t install/work properly. Changing themes is also a little buggy as well. Here are some screenshots of the faulty skinning engine in Firefox 0.9 and 0.9.1: http://www.uranther.com/roflmfao.png http://www.uranther.com/fluxbox.png
Firefox is not ready for primetime just yet. I’d atleast like to see more cohesive integration like in Opera.
Ive been using firefox since 0.7 and have to say, its the best brower PERIOD.
MY problems with Opera are:
1.) The fonts look shit.
2.) The UI is too cluttered
3.) Flash/Java plugins dont work properly
-the picture/sound would be off-sync
-the java plugin isnt reconginzed
4.) I cant use mplayer/xine/real plugins.
”
Firefox is not ready for primetime just yet.”
its a technology preview. says so very clearly
“As to why Firefox renders some pages better than Opera. Opera supports _standards_. Not saying that Firefox doesn’t, but some things like XMLHttpRequest (Invented by M$, allows for JavaScript to request files from a server) sneak into Firefox’s code. This is a mere example, but Firefox let’s a lot of IE-proprietary code into the rendering engine, this is why some pages look better in Firefox. ”
really?. mozilla has a standards mode and quirks mode. if standards support is better in opera and it sucks at rendering pages then that means it sucks for the majority. got that?
Did I read that first bit right? Firefox was never meant to handle mail was it? I thought that’s why they split Mozilla down the middle: to offer Thunderbird to handle the mail, and Firefox as the browser.
I have used both Thunderbird and Firefox for months now and have found them both to be excellent. I don’t see any appreciable performance difference between them and IE. And I’ve never met a website that seemed incompatible with Firefox, except of course the windoze updates site.
Mmm.
Man, James… You really do have a chip on your shoulder, eh?
As to why Firefox renders some pages better than Opera. Opera supports _standards_. Not saying that Firefox doesn’t, but some things like XMLHttpRequest (Invented by M$, allows for JavaScript to request files from a server) sneak into Firefox’s code. This is a mere example, but Firefox let’s a lot of IE-proprietary code into the rendering engine, this is why some pages look better in Firefox.
Look… The honest truth is, we can fly this ‘standards flag’ to our graves, and not make one dent in MS domiantion of the browser market. I wish we could just adhere to agreed upon standards, and beat IE based upon that. But we can’t. Most people don’t understand the difference between a standards compliant browser and a non-compliant browser (heck, a fair percentage of people probably couldn’t even tell you what a browser is). All they’d see is: “Whatever.com looks fine in IE, but dosen’t look good in Firefox/Opera”.
And believe it or not, MS does occasionaly produce a good idea or two (god, I hate to admit that
). If an IE specific JS call enhances the browsing experiance, then other browsers should incorporate that (I just MS would recommened it as a standard FIRST).
Maybe the other browsers need to create their own ‘killer calls’. Do really cool stuff that IE can’t duplicate. Maybe then we’d start seeing pages that say: “Best Viewed in Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and greater”.
But that’s not what we want.
What we should want is a browsing experiance that is equal on ALL browsers. For one, so content providers don’t have to spend so much time make sure their render well in all browsers. And two, so users of alternative platforms are not punished for their choice of OS/browser.
But that’s not what MS wants, is it?
I see a lot of complaints about the fact that in his review he claims a lot of things must be added as extensions, when if fact they are present. Here’s my thought. If a competent user can’t locate these things in a week of use and trying things out, then maybe the real problem could be difficulty in locating the features themselves. Maybe they are just too buried in the menus and hard to use manuals for people to really use them.
” Maybe they are just too buried in the menus and hard to use manuals for people to really use them.”
or maybe the guy was incompetent. finding an extensions in update.mozilla.org is very easy and the menu option is at tools-> extensions and help is at help menu
MY problems with Opera are:
1.) The fonts look shit.
This problem is more like on your local machine. Opera uses Xft and Xft2, so current I am using Opera w/ Xft2 and the fonts look very nice as Mozilla, Firefox, GNOME and etc.
2.) The UI is too cluttered
Opera’s UI is way very customize than what Firefox can do.
3.) Flash/Java plugins dont work properly
-the picture/sound would be off-sync
-the java plugin isnt reconginzed
They do work perfect here on FreeBSD, Linux and Windows.
4.) I cant use mplayer/xine/real plugins.
No comment, I never have tried to get one of those plugins with Opera yet.
As I said that almost all of your problems are in your system; not Opera.
The main extension I use is the WebDeveloper one, which is simply fantastic for web developers (i.e. me). After that I usually add the Live HTTP Headers plugin for doing some debugging. I don’t bother with the others as I simply don’t use them.
Damien
“Opera’s UI is way very customize than what Firefox can do. ”
thats wrong. look at update.mozilla.org and xul can define things on the fly. anything is customizable in firefox. its a whole new platform
Maybe they are just too buried in the menus
File-> New Tab
It’s so so so dificult…
There are many many toolbars in the default Opera, just like HomeSite. I hope Opera can come out simple interface as the default. I do feel Opera speed. Opera can split window. I hope Firebox can catch up this one.
“Opera’s UI is way very customize than what Firefox can do. ”
thats wrong. look at update.mozilla.org and xul can define things on the fly. anything is customizable in firefox. its a whole new platform
How can I take the search out? Or, move it to the bottom under the address? As far from what I have tried and it’s not possible. It can be done with Opera too easy without have to hack or whatever. There are more things that can be done in Opera way too easy by drag-n-drop.
Dear readers,
I’m sorry about the Tabbed Error. I really didn’t see it, nor a friend of mine who was also using it. Perhaps we’ve been using Opera for too much time :p
The truth is that firefox DOES handle tabbed navigation (as mozilla) without an extension. So it was mea culpa. Honestly, after trying it out and playing with it, I found out that it’s not as good as Opera’s, but that’s my opinion as an Opera user. Perhpaps I’m too used to Opera. I have to admit that I didn’t notice that Tabs were integrated in Firefox (but I know they are in Mozilla as they were in Netscape too).
Thanks for the good, bad and ugly comments, they’re all welcomed
Some users suggested a few extensions and i’ve got to admit that they were right. Tabbed browsing is still a little bit primitive compared to Opera, it just doesn’t feel the same way. Perhaps because of the MDI vs. SDI approach. Some other extensions, as Rewind/Forward are there as well.
I have to say that it’s not that I didn’t make my homework, in fact I’ve been seeking Firefox (and google) website for extensions and at one point I got bored; I had more or less the features I wanted.
I nice thing is the feature of searching in the toolbar, something I didn’t realize. And no, I didn’t read Firefox’s manual, nor Opera’s for the matter. Since I consider myself a “poweruser” I only read manuals from time to time. Destroy Me!
Anyway, after investigating about them, I don’t think they are too “easy” for a newbie. (Are opera’s easy? you tell me)
Regarding the pop up blocker, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t available in FIrefox, on the contrary, I’ve mentioned that it’s there. I didn’t have to install an extension for it.
For those who call me incompetent/idiot/etc. thanks. Anyway, the whole idea was/is to see if these browsers are easy to use for a newbie, not for you *kind of powerusers*. Of course you will find it, i could have asked and I would have found it (whatever feature it is). If Opera closed the curtain and I had to use firefox, I’d surely find much more stuff about it. But my “experiment” is based upon the fact that I may need to install a huge amount of I.E. replacements for “newbie/office” users. That’s all about it. These users won’t even notice extensions, when in Opera they will already have “some of these feats”. No need to flamewar.
Anyways, thanks a lot!
“How can I take the search out? Or, move it to the bottom under the address? As far from what I have tried and it’s not possible. It can be done with Opera too easy without have to hack or whatever. There are more things that can be done in Opera way too easy by drag-n-drop.”
ya all those infinite customisability wont be enabled and will never be enabled in firefox. thats not the target audience. opera users can stick with opera.
“That’s all about it. These users won’t even notice extensions, when in Opera they will already have “some of these feats”. No need to flamewar. ”
only power users need them and use them. if they are in extensions they install it.
Ever tried to read blue text on black background – awg, my eyes still heart on that one. Hit CTRL-G (or the equivalent icon), and no more website fonts/colours/webstyle and CSS, hello black text on white background with normal sized fonts (that is, Opera’s custom CSS). This one feature alone makes Opera my preferred browser.
http://student.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~therzog/smallfox.png
About the most screen real estate you can get in Firefox, while still having access to all useful features.
“Ever tried to read blue text on black background – awg, my eyes still heart on that one. Hit CTRL-G (or the equivalent icon), and no more website fonts/colours/webstyle and CSS, hello black text on white background with normal sized fonts (that is, Opera’s custom CSS). This one feature alone makes Opera my preferred browser”
can do the same. simple use the plain stylesheet in ff
Well, this may sound shocking for all you %s fans, but Internet Explorer DO HAVE addressbar search feature that works exactly as mentioned above for Opera and Firefox browsers: “g %s” will search google for %s.
The bad news are, you have to do advanced customization (either via Regedit or TweakXP Powertoy, both are Microsoft products) to bring the feature to life.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys….
And BTW, how can you Firebird fan claim Feature/Extension %1 do the same thing as Opera’s %2 feature? Have you worked with it long enough? Have you tested it in production, not just ‘click-once-then-blame’? Have you ever tried it?
I mean, a brief feature description provided in any post can’t tell you how actually the feature works unless you try it long enough to understand it — or not to understand it. Or to understand why this is no good for you. Then, and only then, you are welcome to share your opinion, because this time it will be your opinion, not a ‘just-let-me-post-something’.
The article authors’s idea was to test software in production environment, not just install-view-and-review. This is definitely a good idea.
End call.
i always thought be bellyed up at least in part b/c why go with be when linux is free?
what-if there was no linux, and the only alternative desktop OS to winDOZE was Be? i would suggest be would have done better.
i like opera, and it runs well, even with those annoying ads but i like firefox just as well and it’s free, no annoying ads.
i know opera wants to go IPO i wish them well but why buy opera when firefox is free?
i know opera wants to go IPO i wish them well but why buy opera when firefox is free?
Well, maybe because of everything that has been told here. You may find that Firefox super granularity (i.e.: extensions) are not exactly what you’re looking for. People who complain here do not take into account that there are some very nice features in firefox (and in Opera), but there are ugly things too. No piece of software is perfect; both have room for improvement. Honestly after this week (and now it has been two), I still prefer Opera; and I’m sure that I use 50% of all the options it has. As I’ve said in my little article, firefox is constantly updating (0.9.1 has just been released) so are the extensions, and things may change… in the meantime, I suggest you have both. When you’re really used to one, set the other as your default browser and try it for a week (not for two hours). When you find something you don’t like, try to find alternatives; if there are none, stick with it, try to get used, try to find out *why* the author did it like that. In the end, both are excellent but take different approaches.
Just my opinion.
The guy didn’t even bother to learn the in’s and out’s of FireFox. All he did was just write up a glowing review of Opera which he admits to having a bias to and trust me it shows in this article. Next maybe the author should actually use FireFox for longer then a few minutes instead.
P.S. I hate the windows within windows concept, that is not tab browsing! As someone else stated that concept has been around since windows 3.1 era if not earlier.
I used to do that, but I’ve taken to putting my bookmarks toolbar to the right of the file/edit/etc menubar, which allows me to have my bookmarklets within clicking range.
To ALL:
It is possible to set up keymarks and queries in IE. Get TweakUI and poke around under the IE settings. I have to do the on every computer I get on otherwise I go crazy typing “gg search” and getting nothing
Also, if you’re not using bookmarklets in mozilla, you’re missing out. http://squarefree.com/bookmarklets/
Not a bad review, some things completely wrong, some things right, but I don’t expect someone to become an expert in a week.
Opera supports _standards_. Not saying that Firefox doesn’t, but some things like XMLHttpRequest (Invented by M$, allows for JavaScript to request files from a server) sneak into Firefox’s code.
Microsoft’s XMLHttpRequest is an ActiveX control. Mozilla’s XMLHttpRequest is not. It’s actually more powerful. Go and read the docs first.
This is a mere example, but Firefox let’s a lot of IE-proprietary code into the rendering engine
Nice to hear such bullsh*t from an Opera-zealot
Opera has the whole obsolete document.all[] stuff implemented, and even reproduces IE bugs for some CSS properties.
Is this what you call “standards”?
I just launched 1 firefox window, no tab, running the default theme, extension etc… that come with version 0.91 – when I go to Task Manager, WinXP is reporting that FireFox is using 49MB of memory! WHY? 1 Window, no tabs, no installation of any extensions etc .. just running what the default install has and it is reporting 49MB of memory usage. What gives
Well, i agree Firefox needs some heavy adjustments. It isn’t there yet. If the 1.0 milestone is reached, i expect the extensions to be compatible with other 1.x or at least 1.0.x versions. The same counts for config files.
You cannot honestly declare a program “prime-time ready” while in the same time you incorporate “new important improvements” together with “incompatibility with earlier versions”. Therefore i declare Firefox in development (alpha) stage; the same as the actual developers do. And, that means rules which apply development stage software are ready to apply. Some do.
One extremely awesome feature of Opera is the way it it crash-proof. Your OS or Opera crashes? Standard, you have all the URL’s you were browsing at from max 5 minutes back. Firefox nor it’s extensions do not have this feature. There are plugins which do this for you when you close the application; that’s not the same.
Epiphany however, has a decent crash-proof recovery mode. This rocks, but Epiphany also depends GNOME libraries.
One other thing. New in 0.9 is the ability to setup keyword searches from the context menu. Right click on a form text box and choose “Add Keyword for the Search…”. It rules.
“WinXP is reporting that FireFox is using 49MB of memory! WHY? 1 Window, no tabs, no installation of any extensions etc .. just running what the default install has and it is reporting 49MB of memory usage. What gives’
where is the screenshot
“I am a power user but I use Windows XP because I am working with .NET on a big project”
i hate the way people need to justify why they are a power user on Windows… different tool for a different job
Oh I didn’t mean that. I like winXP over other choices. It’s quite stable and a very nice gaming platform. I’d fully switch to linux/MacOSX if I could use Visual Studio decently. But not because of windows security problems, i have several firewall layers around here, i don’t even care about win update (Trillian + Opera [or firefox]) and a decent A Virus is all I need.
But you may be right. It sounds like some kind of justification… it’s not.
Don’t hate me
Cheers,
Martín.
opera still bites the wax tadpole for not having any sort of XmlHttpRequest support, or something to mimic it. Their support for DOM is moderately flakey itself, but the complete inability to load data once your page is loaded is a big ole sack of wheat to break the camels back.
just ask google (evidently gmail and opera dont get alone)
if webapp ever gains respect, its going to need working DOM.
i tried to love opera. it was the fastest sleakest browser i’d found. but damn there are some silly silly “features”.
Myren
bsdrocks asked:
“How can I take the search out? Or, move it to the bottom under the address? As far from what I have tried and it’s not possible. It can be done with Opera too easy without have to hack or whatever. There are more things that can be done in Opera way too easy by drag-n-drop.”
Right-click the Firefox toolbar, select ‘customize’, and then drag-n-drop items to add, remove or move them.
You can remove the search box, or move it to the status-bar at the bottom or whatever you want to do….
Surprised noone else remarked this. This easy toolbar customization was one of the main things that impressed me the first time I used (the browser formerly known as) Phoenix…
The Close Tab on Double Click feature is useful if you are using linux. The middle click button doesn’t work as X uses it for copy and paste stuff, so in order to close a tab fast, you use the Close Tab on Double Click extension.
I used to be an opera fan, but I never wanted to flip down $40 for it and I got too accustomed to smaller browser windows so that banner became a killer. I have a great deal of respect for Opera, it’s QT and not KDE, it’s sorta W3C compliant (like Moz), it’s made for speed and efficiency (obviously the UI isn’t but the rendering/parsing is).
In the end though, I like my cut down firefox with the couple of extensions I use. I despised 0.8 and switched over to epiphany and galeon, but 0.9 is definitely awesome.
For the people who think Opera’s UI is too cluttered, here’s a nice little tutorial showing how quickly you can customise it and clean it up:
http://nontroppo.org/test/Op7/tuts/customize1.htm
Notice how you can turn off the main menu and instead have it displayed as a drop down menu when you click a toolbar button. Opera’s defaults may look cluttered, but it can be the most minimalist browser around if that’s what you want.
For me Opera’s best feature is it’s MDI window management, IMO it’s far more efficient than the tabs in other browsers. With a tabbed browser every page has to be the same size since each page fills the main browser window. If you want to view two pages side by side, or have pages in differently sized windows, you have to mess around opening new browser windows and moving the tabs between them.
With Opera you can make the main MDI window full screen, then have the individual pages whatever size you want. This also allows you to quickly tile and cascade windows to efficiently manage multiple web pages. There’s a single menubar, toolbar and statusbar for all the open pages so it doesn’t waste screen space.
Here’s a quick screenshot of my simple Opera setup:
http://img32.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img32&image=Opera.png
I’d much rather have seperate page windows contained in one main window than a row of tabs. It lets me see all the pages I’m currently viewing and switch between them more quickly than using tabs. Pages I’m not going to read for a while can be minimised to reduce clutter, then accessed from the Window Panel. I’ve tried other browsers, but features like this keep me using Opera.
The review stated up front the person is an Opera user, they gave comparative points to various aspects FROM that perspective. They missed the one biggie; that Firefox has tabbed browsing built in (even tho it is painfully rubbish by default imo) and fair enough.
It tried to give room for someone familiar with Opera to move to it and because it found Firefox lacking in that respect (but only marginally!) I don’t see why so many Firefox users are being so out there with the comments.
C’mon, there was a heap of features missed all round, but so what? It’s not about listing every single feature and counting them up to see who has the bigger pile of inbuild/extension features.
For instance, this guy uses Opera and talked how you can use the f <blah> to search for <blah> on the current page. Someone countered that you can just type-ahead-find in Firefox. Well you can too in Opera which the article author didn’t put. Hit ‘,’ and type to find links, or ‘.’ and type to find text. Doubly convenient. So does that mean we can remove some of the angst towards him? There are features coming out of Opera’s butt. I’ve been using it for about 3 years now and STILL keep finding out about new things I didn’t know. Firefox can be extended to your hearts extent so the same applies there.
Personally I think the Opera package is better partially *because* it is a package, and also because it is smaller even with the load of features and because the features mesh and interact properly and because you’re never at the mercy of third parties who might have questionable programming skills (and because of other reasons that are entirely irrelevant). But that is ME.
So ease up on the flames a bit guys. You’re accusing the author of speaking out of ignorance but doing worse than that yourselves.
Adblock – ‘nuf said. Nothing in Opera can touch it.
I’d agree with you, but slightly rephrase it. From my perspective the only thing that Firefox has that I wish Opera had is Adblock.
Sure you can go and add filters for sites in Opera so that the ads won’t get loaded but there is no UI process for adding them. So while the base level functionality is there, there is no – within Opera – way of doing it nicely.
Well detailed and extends the effort to be balanced.
I also slightly prefer the Opera way, but firefox being open-source makes it harder to resist.
http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?s=767fa5cff2e0a368107007e…
Adblock – ‘nuf said. Nothing in Opera can touch it.
No, not quite enough said: Opera not only doesn’t have adblock, it installs adware on your system. I was an Opera fan before they decided to go the adware route, but will never use their software while that is their policy. (and no, I will not pay them to remove their ads – I am against adware and no adware comany will ever receive my money if I have any say in the matter).
You can’t easily reorder them, drag and drop them or anything. In Opera, tabs are fully supported for any action you can imagine and the e-mail program etc. are also perfectly integrated and use tabs.
Firefox does not support tabs if you compare it to Opera.
Umm I smell cow poo. You were an Opera fan before they put in “adware”. You won’t pay them to remove ads. Yet until they provided the banner version it wasn’t free. So if you wouldn’t pay them, how could you have been a fan?
If you’re going to try and be righteously indignant… try not to trip up on the basics.
As to it being adware. It shows ads. You can click on them or not. If you do, the company knows you did (and hopes you buy something). If you don’t… then you don’t.
Unlike the majority of adware there aren’t hidden aspects. You don’t install Opera innocently and suddenly find ads coming at you that you weren’t told about. They show it, they say it, they tell you how to remove them if you want. All up front, nothing sinister.
An Opera fan indeed…
“Firefox does not support tabs if you compare it to Opera.”
firefox very well supports tabs. if you want all the reordering and stuff just install the tab extension. hardly takes a min
“The Close Tab on Double Click feature is useful if you are using linux. The middle click button doesn’t work as X uses it for copy and paste stuff, so in order to close a tab fast, you use the Close Tab on Double Click extension.”
True, but I change the value “middlemouse.contentLoadURL” to “false” via about:config and can now use the middle mouse button to close tabs (too used to the windows way of doing things).
This also brings up another of the points on why about:config is a great resource. Filter for “background” and you’ll find “browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground” and “browser.tabs.loadInBackground” (false and true by default, respectively). Middle clicking on a bookmark usually opens a new tab and gives it focus (because of the first pref), while middle clicking on a link will open a new tab in the background. Change the first one to false and you can have bookmarks open in the background (obviously you can go the other way, having links open with focus).
Just one of the examples of about:config’s usefulness. Just a note: I’ve briefly tried Opera, but never gave it a chance. The ad is what turned me away (YES, I am too cheap to buy it!) and I surely could have tried harder to customize it. I am perfectly happy with Firefox though
Oh, finally I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Compact Menu extension. It is the first (sometimes only) extension I install. Also, the user* files allow for some nice customization.
>As to why Firefox renders some pages better than Opera.
>Opera supports _standards_. Not saying that Firefox doesn’t,
you do realize that gecko supports the largest amount of w3c recommendations/standards, right?
>As said before, Firefox is still VERY buggy. Extensions
>still require restart of the browser to be installed and
>sometimes they don’t install/work properly. Changing themes
don’t install -> haven’t upgraded to the new 0.9 spec
>is also a little buggy as well. Here are some screenshots of
>the faulty skinning engine in Firefox 0.9 and 0.9.1:
>www.uranther.com/roflmfao.png http://www.uranther.com/fluxbox.png
i fail to see the problem with the second shot…the first shot is bad, true, but it was probably a problem between the chair and the keyboard (ie somebody trying to use a theme not made for 0.9)
>Firefox is not ready for primetime just yet. I’d atleast
>like to see more cohesive integration like in Opera.
integration of what? other tools? that’s exactly what firefox /isn’t/ (except for the excellent dev tools, of course)
“>is also a little buggy as well. Here are some screenshots of
>the faulty skinning engine in Firefox 0.9 and 0.9.1:
>www.uranther.com/roflmfao.png http://www.uranther.com/fluxbox.png
i fail to see the problem with the second shot…the first shot is bad, true, but it was probably a problem between the chair and the keyboard (ie somebody trying to use a theme not made for 0.9)”
I don’t see a problem with the second shot either (one of the favicons looks ugly, but thats site specific, not theme dependent)–Maybe the titlebar?
Either way, I’ve yet to see a problem with themes after Fx is restarted (unless its a problem with the theme itself…). Dynamic theme switching is http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=226791
That brings me to another advantage, Firefox is open source. If you don’t find a bug, you can fix it, submit it as a patch and get it fixed. If you just don’t like something but don’t feel it is worth sending back to mozilla, then you can fix it locally (or say you want to put your name in the titlebar, something like that).
Also, just making sure the previous posters that mentioned Epiphany and Galeon–you are aware that both of these browsers use the same rendering engine as Mozilla, right? Of course, the feature sets are different.
Has i see everybody forget the best feature that include the 2 browser, and i know, that everybody knows but nobody saying in the post (has i read i don’t see). Either Opera an Firefox, don’t get virus of anykind by now, and i hope this feature stay for a wild!!!.
Thank
…they don’t know that tabs are out and dibs are in. Puh-lease. What century are they living in?
I don’t like banners shown in opera window, i used the browser time ago, and i liked it very much, until i discovered firefox. Right now i can’t leave firefox, i prefer it to most of the browser i’ve seen. The Mozilla team made a wonderful job and i’m hoping to see version 1.0 soon.
I am not a Firefox or Opera expert, but use opera most of the time. Two firefox extensions that I like though:
BugMeNot which retrieves usernames and passwords for those pesky sites that require registration
Linky which allows you to select a group of links and open all or some of them in new tabs
Just to point out that there are mods out there for IE that allow u to do a lot of the stuff that Opera and Firefox can
case in point http://www.myie2.com/html_en/home.htm
One thing that I have noticed that is a major difference between Opera and Mozilla Firefox (which is also the main reason I started using Firefox) is that Opera, while it does have my favorite interface of any web browser, the implementation of JavaScript was horrible.
Admittedly I haven’t tried Opera since Sept. of 2003, but after switching to firefox, I almost never have to switch into IE to get a webpage to load.
Forgive me if the Opera team has fixed this issue since, but at the time it seemed an unforgivable flaw.
…isn’t cluttered at all. you get the menus, a couple of buttons, the address bar, and the tabs. that’s it! the 7.5 release has deliberately had almost all of the previous clutter taken outr of the default install now, precisely because new users felt somewhat overloaded. so, not an issue any more.
You just need to type to search google
google your_search_term here
Also if you use dictionary.com try
dict your_word_here
It is a bit hard to believe that you missed this!!!
Believe what you want, smell how you will. I write the truth.
I was an Opera fan. I happened to have been a broke Opera fan, so I only used it for a month or so, but I’m pretty sure I generated sales for them during the time when I was a fan. I used to carry a floppy around with the installer on it so I could easily get friends to try it.
I remember the two changes they made that I didn’t like: the first made me sad, just because it was stupid and not what they should have been focusing on – they added a mail client (when they should have been fixing the browser’s javascript problems). The second changed my mind about the whole browser: they made it an adware-based product. I did my time with Aureate, Gator, Eudora, AIM and the like. I don’t even let web ads on my computer anymore. I definitely will not allow adware on my computer, and I will not pay a company that produces the junk.
actually, showing web ads has **nothing** to do with adware of the type you describe (aureate, etc). they’re no worse than google text ads… no surreptitious software was installed that sent back details of your porn-browsing habits to the US government and doubleclick. this rumour is/was straight-up FUD, and i thought it had been well-disposed of by now:
http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=453
* Opera is adware, not spyware.
* The Opera browser does _not_ monitor your surfing habits
* it does _not_ gather information about you or your system
* You can _voluntarily_ use Opera’s ad preferences to receive targeted ads
* This information _cannot_ be traced back to you.
* The ad module was written by Opera’s developers, and contains _no_ code from Advertising.com
“move along people, nothing to see here…”
subject “there was never any adware…” meant to say ” there was never any SPYware…”
In case the author, or other people, get to read this, I hope it will help them to get some of the mentioned missing features.
1. To improve the download manager, use Download Manager Tweak extension. In addition to several improvements, it
offers the choice of showing downloads in a window, tab or
the sidebar.
http://dmextension.mozdev.org/
2. To prevent the opening of links in new windows (basically, it supresses the target=”_new” attribute, there’s an option in about:config, called browser.block.target_new_window. Tip: type “about:config” as an URL.
3. For quick disabling of various stuff (like images) there’s the Web Developer extension. True, its name may put some casual users off, but it’s very useful to them too.
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/
4. I’m not sure what that thing about zoom is in Opera, haven’t used it that much. FWIW, there’s the Text Zoom extension for Firefox which can enforce a certain level of zoom (other than 100%) at all times. Great IMHO for improving usability. The minimum font size still has priority, so you can do interesting stuff such as setting the default zoom to 80% but have a minimum size of 12, effectively toning down sites with too large fonts.
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=55
5. As little as I used Opera, I did notice the “reload every” trick and thought it was great. Apparently so did others:
http://reloadevery.mozdev.org/
6. For advanced searching issues, see Mycroft and SearchBar. I think SearchURL is the closest to the thing Opera has.
http://searchsidebar.mozdev.org/
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/
http://searchurl.mozdev.org/
7. I can’t believe there wasn’t a word about ad blocking. Adblock is one sweet extension for many reasons.
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Quickie, do the latest versions of either of these browsers support integrated NT security so I can use them on the corporate Intranet to access sites where access is restricted by NT group memberships?
I have Opera 7.51 but can’t find any option to turn it on, if it’s there!
There’s also an extesion which stores your current tabs should firefox ever crash and reload them on next start. So it’s there as well.
The best thing about Opera is the ability to zoom all of the page content, not just the text, but also pictures and flash.
I use it to spawn a separate opera window that reloads satellite and weather maps every 15 minutes over the course of the day. I can put it on a second display and put it in fullscreen and zoom up the maps to fill the display. I am glad to hear about the reload.mozdev.org, but I haven’t seen anything that zooms other page content…
I think you have not mentioned the Mozilla/Firefox find-as-you-type feature which is indeed very useful (at least for me). It helps me forget the clumsy ctrl-f dialogs. All I need is just to press a slash and write a keyword and the cursor jupms immediately at the first instance of the word in document. Maybe Opera has similar feature, but I’ve never been an Opera-user.
“* The Opera browser does _not_ monitor your surfing habits”
Google does. It uses it to determine for its banner material. The browser enables the banner. Whatever other ad machines have for policy differs and is NOT guaranteed by your message. There are some hostile ad companies.
“* it does _not_ gather information about you or your system”
The Internet does. The Internet is one giant database of information, including logs done by websites which host ads.
“* This information _cannot_ be traced back to you.”
Ofcourse the people who run the ads can trace back to you. They have an IP address and a HTTP request to a specific URL in their log.
Now, i’m picky here, yes. Point is though, that the browser’s feature includes caveats which aren’t mentioned. Why not be precise and honest on the issue?
Opera is great browser (hell fast, feature rich) but last build i’v tried *didnt* follow the standards.
(For example element <button> behaviour, its better then IE but still not standard)
As a coder i cant support a non standard browser because as a coder i can see that without standards all progress in web development goes to hell.
So i still stay with Gecko (Epiphany@work, firefox@home).
The other downfall of Opera is that its not opensource and i really dont like the banner
, but if you feel like wasting $$$, you can pay for your browser.