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It's your choice at the end of the day. People wanting a simple browser will choose Firefox. (It looks like IE6 so will be a natural replacement for many.) People wanting an advanced browser capable of some remarkable things, and very fast, with a small download, with a great support forum and regular new versions, will choose Opera.
All browsers have bugs, all of them have features that others don't, all of them manage to find a niche for themselves if reasonably well done. Opera 7 is the best opera yet, it's small, it's lightweight, and now that I can get rid of most of the advertising, great... Firefox isn't a simple browser that looks like IE, it's another pretty slick choice out there, which offers a range of options, including having all of its source code available to any developer who wants to work on it. For example, Mozilla was/is the first browser I know of that will actually run mimetype xml.
However, Opera 7.5 does in fact have a very large display error which eventually somebody is going to spot if they start running complex enough css, and I'm going to have to implement, again, a browser version specific fix to get that working, something I'm getting pretty sick of doing when my HTML and CSS are both error free, and have been for a long time.
Making an advanced CSS rendering engine is obviously extremely difficult, or there would have been a bug free one by now, and obviously when the initial rendering engine architecture decisions are made, certain features are made possible, and others are made problematic, then when fixes are put into place, something else breaks. I've seen this now on IE 5.5 to 6, Firebird 0.7 to firefox 0.8, and Opera 7.2 to 7.5, where certain advanced CSS features that worked perfectly in the older version broke in the newer one.
Just found this. Open 2 or more tabs, then press CTRL + TAB. A vertical version of Windows' ALT + TAB!
CTRL + TAB is cool, but I mostly use the 1 (next tab on the left) and the 2 (next tab on the right).
I find the right click + scroll wheel works well for me.
HTML needs to be extended. Development just stopped happening one day when IE beat Netscape. How about new tags?
Opera lets you click a link to open in a background window. How about a tag so a developer can say "href=url.com target=_background". How about combo drop down boxes in forms? Maybe Opera and Moz would start to pick up more steam if they offered support for unofficial tags the way Netscape and Microsoft did when the Internet was new?
Anyways, I digress. I don't know if it's css or not, but there is some drop down navigation that doesn't work properly on Opera when you have a google ad in the way (due to iframe?). It works fine on IE.
All I ever do is press back(history), forward(history), refresh, home, bookmarks and view source.
I don't even understand yet why everyone (still) raves about tabbed browsing... (I've got a selection of programs running along the bar at the bottom of windoze - I can see when I've got more than one webpage open, I don't need tabs to show me... what's the big deal?)
It's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things (it's low on my list of reasons to switch). But if it's something you like, you'll like it. :)
[edited by: photon at 5:42 pm (utc) on May 14, 2004]
Mouseup, new tab, control + k, in search bar, type in search term, opens on page, etc... I usually have between 3 and 10 tabs open, all of which I am using at once, it's pretty convenient once you configure the tab settings to suite your preferences.
Options like return to previously viewed tab when closing a tab make a big difference on long complicated searches.
To me tabbed browsing and mousegestures, whether the mozilla, safari, or Opera flavors, make browsing with IE feel like you're using netscape 4, every time I use IE I always try to move back a page by mousegesture before I remember I'm on IE, though you can download software to make IE have some of these features, that's an extra layer ontop of it though.
I amazed that you people do so many things with browsers!
that might have something to do with working with the internet for a living, since the browser is the main GUI interface we have to do that work, so you tend to get into how it performs and its features, even to the degree where you'll get passionate about your particular gui interface to the www, an emotion almost no normal user will ever experience.
I can open page after page after page in the background while I am doing something else.
Opera completely changed my browsing experience after having been a Netscape user since 1995.
Now the features it offers, in one package (nothing else to download, ie. extensions), are things I simply cannot live without.
When I use a computer at a library and have to use IE, I have to actually look for the Back button since I'm so used to using Mouse Gestures, or my customized Right Click Menu.
My two favorite things about Opera that have really cut down on time I've spent typing and dragging the mouse up to the menu are the mouse gestures and the "g keyword" things (what are those called?). The keyword thing has definitely saved me a lot of time... instead of going to imdb.com and waiting for it to load, then typing in something, then hit submit, then waiting for that page to load, I can just type in "imdb Nicolas Cage" and I'm set (hey, I don't want to wait that long to hear about what Nic's been up to :p).
Oh, another great feature is Window -> Closed. I don't know how many times I close the wrong window on accident or I decide that I didn't get enough info from a site and have to go back to it. Very useful, especially when it's a site that I don't regularly go to and remember the url.
Jennifer
Oh, another great feature is Window -> Closed
Ever close a browser window accidentally and couldn't remember the URL? CTRL+ALT+Z will reopen it in Opera. Or you can go to the menu Jennifer mentioned and see the last ten windows you closed.
<edited to add>
Wow, apparently it will show you more than ten. Wonder what the limit is?
</edit>
Jennifer
>css stripingTry G and shift G and Control-G - then figure out what that does (total control of page graphics and css - run **** number of custom CSS files if you wish. Sure slices through the garabage).
That is very cool. It took me awhile to find the G button, but once I did it brought me a lot of pleasure. Nice for email because you can quickly turn off images so the spammers don't validate your email account.
I find it a bit uncanny at times to see Opera releasin a new build and learnin that it's dropped in a new feature or two that MyIE2 implemented just a few builds earlier.
I'm not suggestin it's all one way; the minority browsers do tend to chase each other in certain respects and My IE2 is amongst them But as it's a free browser built on the IE engine, I find it all the more surprising, especially given that MyIE2 has seemingly been ahead of the feature-game of late.
Of course, MyIE2 doesn't have the compliancy benefit but that's it AFAIC.
The mail option sucks. completely sucks. In comparison with outlook and outlook express (just the email function), primitive and barren of features.
Every page I go to, has messed up fonts. I'm using Auther Mode for style sheeting, so shouldn't Opera pull the font from the site's stylesheet, and use Verdana, Arial, etc for the font? I've got some crazy thin, cramped default font it's showing me. I had to go back to IE just to post this message, because I can barely read the text in Opera.
It's probably something simple, but I'm missing it.
If you need a screenshot, sticky me.
-Matt
The actual font on the page is not Verdana, Arial, or whatever else the author chose it to be. I have the zoom at 100%, and the font is whacked.
For a screen shot, use my profile site "/opera.gif"
-Matt
Jennifer
The other weird thing was that when I installed it, it didn't put a styles/user.css file in my Opera directory. Not sure if that has to do with anything.
-Matt
Goto prefs ->page style...play.
-Matt
-Matt
Check Tools --> Preferences --> Page style --> Configure mode..., and make sure that the first two--and only the first two--boxes are checked under "Author mode". I overlooked that "Configure" button the first few times I was fooling with things. If that's not it, the only other thing I can suggest is a clean install.
And just "+" (no CTRL required) on the keypad will enlarge the page. Not surprisingly, "-" with reduce it. But the piece de resistance in my opinion is "*"--it will return you to 100% instantly, no guessing involved.
Dev: "there is a known bug with that many fonts"
Matt: "do you have an idea of how many is "too many""
Dev: "1024.. the bug is really silly.. because of how opera core rendering engine is made to use as little memory etc on mobile devices it use various packed bit structures to save space, and some guy thought 10 bits would be enough to specify the font number.. which amounts to max 1024 fonts.. "
Me: "so... if this is a known bug, is there a reason why it wasn't addressed in v7.5? too much of a pain to fix?"
Dev: "yes.. I looked into the bug just the day before release actually and we didn't dare to touch the packed bit structures to fix it because of fear of overlooked regressions.."
So, I'm about to go sift through my fonts, and try not to remove any important ones. I'll report back with progress.
Thanks for everyone's replies.
-Matt
-Matt
what would it take for WebmasterWorld to support Opera "next" functionality: e.g., using the space bar to page down AND go to the next page in a thread?
IMHO: not much ;). All it takes is a link to the next page with anchor text 'next'. See how it already works on the forum index pages, on Google SER pages, and probably many others.
Another way to achieve that would be to use the HTML link element, like:
<link rel="next" href="next_page_here.html">
<link rel="prev" href="previous_page_here.html">
I know it's fairly simple. I was just trying to nudge outspoken Opera fan Brett into implementing it. :)
Of course with a site this size, I'm sure there are added complications to consider.
Clark:
I love Opera but for the CSS debate I think css is broken.
What do you mean? Opera's CSS handling is broken? Or the W3C specs?
Clark:
HTML needs to be extended. Development just stopped happening one day when IE beat Netscape. How about new tags?
HTML is dead. Sorry to break the news. There will be no new tags. Instead, you can use XHTML. It allows you (with a unique doctype) to add new tags. (It's HTML repackaged as valid XML.)
Clark:
Maybe Opera and Moz would start to pick up more steam if they offered support for unofficial tags the way Netscape and Microsoft did when the Internet was new?
Why should they? Unofficial means different tags for each browser. What a mess! However, Opera does cater for some unofficial tags (for backwards compatibility) such as <marquee> and <blink>.
richlowe:
The mail option sucks. completely sucks. In comparison with outlook and outlook express (just the email function), primitive and barren of features.
I think you'll find that is far from true. Speak to anyone who has used it for a while. They are full of praise. It has a great many features, some of which leave the competition standing.
Did I mention the built-in RSS newsreader?
Did I mention the built-in RSS newsreader
Very nice indeed. Unfortunately it does not support the Atom format, which some publishers [webmasterworld.com] prefer. I read in opera.general that Opera does not plan to integrate Atom support until its development has settled down.
