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[opera.com...]
IE/Firefox look and feel includes:
* Skin
* Toolbar
* Menu
* Keyboard shortcuts
Jennifer
This is not Opera bashing, it's a very fine browser, but it's adoption percentage is unfortunately the lowest of the three largest, perhaps 4th if you include Safari on the Mac platform.
If that universal plugin format comes out, that might change everything though. Especially if Microsoft doesn't get on board and everyone else converts all the great FireFox extensions.
This is not Opera bashing, it's a very fine browser, but it's adoption percentage is unfortunately the lowest of the three largest, perhaps 4th if you include Safari on the Mac platform
It's because of the ads, I think. Out of all of the free browsers out there, Opera is the only one that shows advertisements. It's also the only browser with a price tag. That's why I don't use it personally and I expect that's the reason a lot of people don't.
Actually, though, I switched from IE straight to FireFox (okay, Mozilla was in there for a week or two). I didn't try Opera until I'd been with FireFox for a month or so. By that time, I was so used to "The Fox" (probably "The Bird" at that time) that Opera seemed big and kludgy like IE. I know it can be scaled and customized, but it still maintained that same awkward feel. It just seemed too much like IE - but that might turn into a very big advantage to Opera if they ever hope to grab a lot of IE users. Let's face it, Mozilla and FireFox are both so different from IE that it's a pretty big adjustment to go directly to them from IE.
Jennifer
Regardless of which browser is more like IE, I do believe we're on the verge of a massive switch to "alternative" browsers by general Internet users. I don't say the majority of users will switch, but I think the coming months will show both FireFox and Opera gaining more and more significant market shares. It will be interesting to see what happens. The results should show, among other things, which of the two browsers bears most resemblence to IE in the minds of the general populace.
Jennifer
This is not Opera bashing, it's a very fine browser, but it's adoption percentage is unfortunately the lowest of the three largest, perhaps 4th if you include Safari on the Mac platform.
Opera generally has a higher market share than Safari in browser stats, even if many stat sites fail to detect Opera properly when identified as MSIE (default).
Browser stats are a bit unreliable anyway, aren't they? When large statistics site can't even detect Opera properly it kind of makes one think.
