Paradigm^
17-06-2008, 07:55 PM
I've been a Firefox user since the 1.5 days, but I've heard good things about Opera and I've been tempted to jump ship for quite a while now. Given the very close release dates of the latest versions of Opera and Firefox, I thought I'd try the two head-to-head and see which comes out on top.
Opera 9.5
Bashing the Mozilla download site at 6pm on the world record download day wasn't getting me anywhere, so I thought I'd grab Opera until the Mozilla servers recovered.
Rummaging through the settings (I'm really anal about customising my UI), I couldn't find out how to get the address bar above the tab bar. And it took me ages to work out how to find speed dial - I had to watch a flash demo on the Opera website to find out. And it's kind of annoying that I can't use Speed Dial as my homepage - I tend to bash Home a lot to take me to whatever I consider my 'home' for that browser. I'd like it to be Speed Dial, but unfortunately I don't seem to be able to do that. I ended up removing the Home button in order to teach myself not to use it.
But it's somewhat unfair for me to judge Opera on the fact that I'm not used to it, so I won't - I'll try not to let my longtime Firefox use impair my judgement. What I will be on the lookout for is functionality I've come to expect from a Web browser having used Firefox. I'll come to this in a moment.
Ad Blocking
Much like everything else in the universe, ad blocking is built in to Opera. I found it intuitive and easy to use, although it didn't seem to offer the same functionality as Adblock Plus does in Firefox - namely, being able to block an iframe specifically reserved for ads on a certain site. This means lots of tediously blocking the same ad banner over and over again, simply because the ad is being served by a different company each time. Having said that, it works reasonably well (although it's more prone to leaving big white holes in the web page where an ad used to be).
Incremental Search
One of my favourite features of Firefox, mysteriously bound to the forward slash key in Opera by default (that got fixed pretty quick). Works really nicely in Opera, highlighting all occurrences of whatever you type in rather than just the first.
Loading times
This was one of my main gripes with Firefox 2. Opera however was really snappy in loading - a couple of seconds at most, compared to around five for Firefox. Definite win for Opera there.
Opera also comes with...well, about a billion things. I didn't try the BitTorrent client, but I tried a couple of the others:
Mail client
Bit rubbish really. Didn't seem to understand my IMAP folders, and decided to inform me every time I got a junk mail. Never mind.
Chat client
Quite sweet actually - a bit like ChatZilla for Firefox. Couldn't find an auto-rejoin on kick command though.
Firefox 3
All my extensions seem to be working fine. But there are a fair few features of FF3 that...well, I just don't like.
Awesome Bar
I just don't get this. I try to use it as a normal address bar and type in "for" to get to the forums, expecting the autocomplete popup to put the forums as the first result. It doesn't. It gives me Slashdot instead (because the page title is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". If I carry on typing long enough to actually get to the forums, it starts showing me individual threads as opposed to the main page.
Seriously, what the hell?
Thankfully, it can be trained, and works out which site you're after based on your frequency and how long ago you last visited. So bashing in "for" and then selecting the forums a few times fixed the problem. I can see how it could useful, but it's initially a PITA.
Loading times
Oh my jolly hooray. How lovely - pretty much as fast as opera.
Memory Usage
I tried a quick test - opening the fourms, Slashdot, and The Register. It was a bit biased, as I was also running the Opera IRC client.
Firefox 3: 73MB
Opera 9.5: 40MB (including the IRC client)
What the hell is Firefox doing with that extra 30MB? Is it my extensions?
This is a pretty half-baked review, I'll admit. My feeling at the moment is that I prefer Opera to FF3: the small memory footprint has really swung me, and I'm still not a huge fan of the Awesome Bar. I'd encourage people to at least give Opera a try and see if they like it. I do.
Feel free to argue your respective cases in this thread :p
Opera 9.5
Bashing the Mozilla download site at 6pm on the world record download day wasn't getting me anywhere, so I thought I'd grab Opera until the Mozilla servers recovered.
Rummaging through the settings (I'm really anal about customising my UI), I couldn't find out how to get the address bar above the tab bar. And it took me ages to work out how to find speed dial - I had to watch a flash demo on the Opera website to find out. And it's kind of annoying that I can't use Speed Dial as my homepage - I tend to bash Home a lot to take me to whatever I consider my 'home' for that browser. I'd like it to be Speed Dial, but unfortunately I don't seem to be able to do that. I ended up removing the Home button in order to teach myself not to use it.
But it's somewhat unfair for me to judge Opera on the fact that I'm not used to it, so I won't - I'll try not to let my longtime Firefox use impair my judgement. What I will be on the lookout for is functionality I've come to expect from a Web browser having used Firefox. I'll come to this in a moment.
Ad Blocking
Much like everything else in the universe, ad blocking is built in to Opera. I found it intuitive and easy to use, although it didn't seem to offer the same functionality as Adblock Plus does in Firefox - namely, being able to block an iframe specifically reserved for ads on a certain site. This means lots of tediously blocking the same ad banner over and over again, simply because the ad is being served by a different company each time. Having said that, it works reasonably well (although it's more prone to leaving big white holes in the web page where an ad used to be).
Incremental Search
One of my favourite features of Firefox, mysteriously bound to the forward slash key in Opera by default (that got fixed pretty quick). Works really nicely in Opera, highlighting all occurrences of whatever you type in rather than just the first.
Loading times
This was one of my main gripes with Firefox 2. Opera however was really snappy in loading - a couple of seconds at most, compared to around five for Firefox. Definite win for Opera there.
Opera also comes with...well, about a billion things. I didn't try the BitTorrent client, but I tried a couple of the others:
Mail client
Bit rubbish really. Didn't seem to understand my IMAP folders, and decided to inform me every time I got a junk mail. Never mind.
Chat client
Quite sweet actually - a bit like ChatZilla for Firefox. Couldn't find an auto-rejoin on kick command though.
Firefox 3
All my extensions seem to be working fine. But there are a fair few features of FF3 that...well, I just don't like.
Awesome Bar
I just don't get this. I try to use it as a normal address bar and type in "for" to get to the forums, expecting the autocomplete popup to put the forums as the first result. It doesn't. It gives me Slashdot instead (because the page title is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". If I carry on typing long enough to actually get to the forums, it starts showing me individual threads as opposed to the main page.
Seriously, what the hell?
Thankfully, it can be trained, and works out which site you're after based on your frequency and how long ago you last visited. So bashing in "for" and then selecting the forums a few times fixed the problem. I can see how it could useful, but it's initially a PITA.
Loading times
Oh my jolly hooray. How lovely - pretty much as fast as opera.
Memory Usage
I tried a quick test - opening the fourms, Slashdot, and The Register. It was a bit biased, as I was also running the Opera IRC client.
Firefox 3: 73MB
Opera 9.5: 40MB (including the IRC client)
What the hell is Firefox doing with that extra 30MB? Is it my extensions?
This is a pretty half-baked review, I'll admit. My feeling at the moment is that I prefer Opera to FF3: the small memory footprint has really swung me, and I'm still not a huge fan of the Awesome Bar. I'd encourage people to at least give Opera a try and see if they like it. I do.
Feel free to argue your respective cases in this thread :p