![Software Software](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/software_64.png)
![IT IT](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/it_64.png)
Opera 8 Released 676
bonch writes "After a series of beta releases, Opera 8 final has now been released. Read the announcement complete with download links. The new Opera sports a streamlined interface and several rendering improvements."
The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but beware - one of them has mod points!
Oh dang, can't use it on this discussion now.
In all honesty (Score:4, Interesting)
v1.0.2
Anyone else out there, or am I just lucky?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:3)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:4, Funny)
Connection refused..
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:2)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:2, Insightful)
You're grossly misinformed.
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Interesting)
I paid for Opera 7.5 and can use the 8+ series without paying for an upgrade (it's considered an upgrade to 7.54 since there was no 7.6) but I am having a hard time living without a nice adblock utility and therefore use firefox 99% of the time. I am glad to see version 8 has nice XMLHTTP request support though which was my only other reason for not using opera.
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:2, Informative)
And yes, it is different from a popup blocker. Popups take over the UI and cause problems. Normal ads are embedded in the web page.
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:2)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't paid for Opera for Linux (bought version 7 for Windows before their 2 for 1 deal, or whatever they have been running recently). There is a small bar accross the top that displays Google ads, and the occasional plug for Opera software (all text only). I find it non-intrusive, and don't notice it most of the time. Older versi
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The question every firefox user is asking (Score:5, Informative)
- It renders Slashdot fast and correctly!
- The popup blocker *really* *works*!! Seriously. Firefox has been letting extra-evil ones through lately. Visit drudgereport.com for examples.
- I has something called "spatial browsing" that makes keyboard surfing possible. I hold down shift, and the arrow keys navigate through links based on their location on the screen. Firefox can't do this at all.
- Mouse gestures let me surf faster and with less effort. Firefox has a plugin, but Opera actually invented it.
- The rewind button doesn't just go back a page, it goes back the last significantly different place I was.The fast-forward button works even when you haven't gone back yet. It reads the page and detects where to go. Firefox has nothing like this. I'm not sure how I lived without it. If I press fast forward while I'm looking at an image, it goes to the next image in the directory! Weird.
- It lets you turn http referers off. Slashdot has absolutely no idea what page sent me here...
- It has IRC built in. That's cool, but I don't use it much.
- The mail client is the best I've ever seen. It's checks and sends from all 5 of my accounts, with Mailbox Oneness never before achieved by mortals.
- The download manager is excellent. Quick-download is handy.
- Literally every single part of the interface can be customized by editing the INI files. I've made mine look almost exactly like the KDE browser, Konqueror.
- Pressing F12 lets me change my settings rapidly. You have to see this one to really like it. No more messy settings boxes. Sometimes you just want to turn javascript off for a few seconds.
- Deleting cookies isn't a big deal. I click "Tools->Delete Private Data" and click okay. That clears history, cookies, etc all at once. Why can't Firefox do that?
- It uses a *huge* amount of RAM. Right now it's using 51MB! This sounds bad until you try it; the speed is amazing. Firefox worrys too much about memory and runs slower as a result. Firefox isn't slow, it just isn't this fast.
- I've tried lots of password-remembering thingies, but the Wand is the only one that's really appealed to me. I just press ctrl-enter and it fills forms in and submits them. It's great for things like forums, where I couldn't care less if my password is stored on my disk.
- It can do cool tricks, like let you move tabs between windows. I hate tabs anyway, though, so I never use this. ; )
- If you accidentally close a window, it keeps a list of recently closed windows, so you can reopen it! Very nice. What are the Firefox developers waiting for?
- If Opera or Windows crashes, when you reload Opera, it can restore all your windows just the way they were. This is unspeakably cool.
- One of my favorites is that it lets you associate letters with search engines. I type "g whatever I want" into the address bar, and it automatically searches Google. If I type "e something"' it searches eBay! Cool, eh? Who needs the Google bar? Actually, it has that too. It has search bars for 14 different engines.
- It has support for user stylesheets. This is very impressive. I can't do it justice trying to explain it here. It's cool.
- You can save "sessions" and open them up later...windows, settings, everything...perfectly intact.
- Loading PDFs doesn't lock up Opera. Firefox literally becomes unresponsive.
I could go on all day, but I won't. I just love really love this browser!
That said, it takes some effort to get it configured so it doesn't suck, and is probably way beyond the masses. Firefox is halfway decent (but buggy...), and most people (read: "lusers") should be using that.
Oh, and don't whine about gmail support. Opera supports Ajax fully, and there is no reason why gmail shouldn't work, and it used to. Blame google for forcing Opera users to use the crappy basic HTML interface. That's not Opera's fault.
Mac version 8.0b1 also released recently (Score:5, Informative)
Two comments:
1. It is very fast.
2. Keychain integration, so all the web site passwords from your other keychain-enabled browsers (firefox, safari, etc.) on your Mac will be remembered.
But OS/2 version still at 5.12 (Score:2)
Re:Mac version 8.0b1 also released recently (Score:2)
Any clues on how to get Firefox to use the Apple Keychain?
Re:Mac version 8.0b1 also released recently (Score:2)
The missing links (Score:3, Informative)
screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:screenshots (Score:4, Funny)
Re:screenshots (Score:2)
So far, so good (Score:3, Interesting)
Opera 8 works really well. I haven't had any issues so far. The speed seems on par with Firefox.
One impressive point is that Opera stays up on their security patches [secunia.com]. Version 7.0 only had 35 issues since 2002 and they were all patched relatively quickly.
Better links. (Score:5, Informative)
Product page [opera.com] with download links etc.
The Register [theregister.co.uk]
The Google [google.com]
OperaMan can't fly... (Score:2)
all-nine-users-cheer dept ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that Firefox is all the rage these days, but Opera has a pretty faithful user base....or did I miss a slash-think programming update, the one where we're supposed to badmouth and laugh at Opera?
News for nerds, editors opinions that don't matter
Re:all-nine-users-cheer dept ?? (Score:2)
As one of the "faithful base" (this message is being posted with Opera), I am becoming disenchanted with the direction that Opera Software is taking. Opera is becoming more bloated and more buggy with each release. Instead of fixing bugs, new features are being added, new features that themselves contain additional bugs. Why do I need yet another mail reader in my browser?
On the other hand, I can get FireFox to have similar functionality to Opera only by
Re:all-nine-users-cheer dept ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Opera 8 is even faster [howtocreate.co.uk] than previous versions as well. I have no idea how you can be talking about "bloat" and "more buggy", when clearly, they are fixing stuff like mad, and with three betas and countless previews in addition to that, Opera 8.0 is an extremely solid release.
Instead of fixing bugs? What are you talking about? Loads of bugs have been fixed during the beta tests. It is nothing but a blatant lie to claim that Opera has been fixing bugs instead of adding new features.But so what if they add new features? It's a good thing! Opera is expanding. They can afford to hire more devs, both to add new features, and to fix bugs.
Opera has always had a built-in e-mail client, so the point is moot. Except Firefox has lots of bugs of its own. Just recently, 1.0.3 was released with critical security fixes, whereas Opera is the only browser of the "big three" with no unpatched vulnerabilities.Re:all-nine-users-cheer dept ?? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the hospital that I work in, Opera users are 'faithful', they are 'fanatical'. I had to experience this first-hand when a request came in to set one of our in-house web forms up so that the user could add to a field, but not delete anything. Guess what, you cannot override the backspace functionality in
Great... (Score:2, Informative)
But does it pass the ACID2 Test? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/ [webstandards.org]
Re:But does it pass the ACID2 Test? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But does it pass the ACID2 Test? (Score:3, Informative)
It's supposed to trip up browsers that don't follow the spec by giving them invalid but potentially parsable rules which they shouldn't apply.
How to (legally) get a free Opera license (Score:5, Informative)
(This is a partial repost from my own blog entry on Opera 8 [virtuelvis.com]
Opera is giving away free licenses to people who help spread Opera [opera.com]. That's right, you can get a free license for an ad-free Opera, provided you do the following:
[1] It's actually getting them to visit my.opera.com, but: People should really, really try Opera 8. It's quite brilliant, and in many ways sets the standard for what a web browser should and should not do.
Re:Here is a MUCH easier way to get Opera for Free (Score:5, Informative)
The license key you recieve when you do that is not valid for Opera 8 .
That is a limited offer for Opera 7.x that ran in a german computer magazine.
I Loved Opera... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Use proxomitron... (Score:4, Informative)
There is a clone being developed called Proximodo, search sourceforge for more info.
The filtersets are still being developed, as indicated by the date of the filterset.
Does is have SVG support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does is have SVG support? (Score:5, Informative)
Press release (Score:3, Informative)
Mmmm... fresh Opera (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, I can't get anything more than a headline or two. What an excellent release, thanks
extremely fast (Score:2)
Also the implemention of SVG is pretty cool. It's not very good. Rendering is sometimes a bit weird and SVG objects are not scriptable.
Opera is a great product. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to have (Score:3, Interesting)
Fast but buggy (Score:2, Insightful)
The bad thing about Opera is that it has bugs. It probably has less bugs than FF or IE, but it does have them, and they are different from the FF and IE ones. As a "real world" web developer you're going to put some effort into avoiding the IE bugs, and probably the FF bugs too, but are you really going to work around Opera bugs? The problem is that 20 lines of standards-compliant c
it's not just about the user experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, don't forget that the desktop user experience is only _one_ dimension to the problem - remember that Opera aims its business at the embedded/mobile market by producing a light and fast browser. Don't forget that supporting embedded and mobile devices is more than just "porting to a new platform", so if Opera is well engineered from the bottom up to support this area, then it's leagues ahead of Firefox in that game.
There are many, many, many other markets for webbrowsers other than your desktop - phones, kiosks, consumer products, set top boxes, etc, etc, etc. This is a pretty big market, and probably has a greater revenue stream. Sure, firefox may quote user/download statistics: but just how many of them have resulted in cash back into the business? In addition, remember that someone like Opera may not be able to quote (or even know) its total user base because of commercial confidentiality issues.
If you're a business looking to integrate web browser, I think the nit-picky user issues may be traded off against cost and technical issues, and that's where Opera may have an advantage over Firefox (and over IE/CE).
A case study of why software patents are needed. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's so simple. Opera comes up with the conceptual innovations (say, mouse gestures or tabbed browsing), and then someone can hack up an extension in XUL to duplicate the functionality. Why would someone cough up the bucks to support Opera's R&D? I know I don't.
Granted, futile software patents are granted everyday, sp. when there is significant prior art already, but incentives are really being distorted here. Why would a company even invest in R&D? They can always just begin a company [slashdot.org] with no significant investment.
This is a schumpeterian collapse [newschool.edu] scenario, and it's dangerous for the future of technology as a whole.
It's pretty scary. Tell me, what open-source app has come up with a really new concept, if as minor as mouse gestures?
Re:A case study of why software patents are needed (Score:3, Interesting)
I might switch back (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Smaller menu bar at the top
2) I felt like a change
To be honest, though, Firefox was a bitch to set up with my three favorite features from Opera:
1)Mouse gestures - the Firefox extension's all-in-one gestures default to different gestures than the opera ones, which was annoying to fix, but not a big deal. Opera's defaults are more intuitive, too.
2) Save session. It took me awhile to find a good working version of this for Firefox, but I loved resuming my session when I closed Opera.
3) Quickly turn on and off pop-ups with F12. Still no good solution in Firefox, as far as I've found.
The fact that Firefox needs an extension for single-window mode is also kind of stupid and annoying. Other people have said this above, but good grief, people, Firefox owes a LOT to Opera. In fact, in a comparison I like Opera more. It's not IE. Firefox is NOT the end all of browsers; it's on par with Opera. Once I get bored with Firefox, I'll probably switch back. And the ad is a small price to pay for promoting a good product. It's a small bar, and if you hate it that much the inevitable crack takes maybe 1 minute of Googling to find.
A very polished product (Score:3, Interesting)
Other smaller things I also liked, like how link addresses pop up in a tooltip on mouseover. This allowed me to cut out the statusbar without travelling blind. It can still show during page loads, but doesn't take up space during viewing. A nice touch too was the way tab favicons shrink as more tabs open up, allowing more room on the row.
I've been a diehard Firefox fanboy because of the customizability (and full Gmail support), but I'd like to see some of these features in upcoming releases.
www.opera.com down.. ?Download if from a mirror.. (Score:3, Informative)
Ad Block (Score:3, Informative)
As has been noted by others in this thread once you have Opera installed your pretty much done save for configuring it the way you like it. With Firefox you have to install a number of plugins to get that same level of functionality and hope that they will run with the current version of Firefox.
But the real point I want to make here is that while Opera does not have a native ad blocker in place I have always simply used my hosts file as a universal ad blocking mechanism. Dan Pollock maintains a great one [someonewhocares.org] on his site and I've yet to find a false positive in it.
The best part about going this route is that all programs on your machine get the benefit of blocking these ad servers or whatever else you care to put in the file. So if you ever have to, , use IE on a website that refuses to work with anything else you are still protected.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
As for Opera having functionality built-in, it's really just a difference of approach. Opera gives you everything and you can shut off what you don't want. Firefox gives you the basics and a simple extension system to add any extras. I prefer the Firefox approach because I already spend enough time minimizing systems. I can easily see how one could prefer the Opera approach, however.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you didn't actually try Opera 8. The UI has been simplified, the default install now has less buttons and menu items than Firefox....
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Informative)
I use mouse gestures all the time... in Firefox.
Yes, and so do I. However, I suggest trying them in Opera, the whole feeling and responsiveness is like from another planet. On firefox they're sluggish and lag, Opera responds now.
There's also bunch of other little things that matter. Like going back/forward in history with Z/X, fast tab-switching with 1/2. The whole F12 menu with possibility to turn plug-ins off.
And then there's 'space' which is 'smart-forward' and is a real life-saver with those image-d
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Opera needs an ad campaign featuring a giant viking woman in a horned helm and bullet-proof brassiere, surfing that internet cloud from slide #17 on a winged horse.
The mist parts. Below, a large herd of "e" creatures on a hillside.
She swoops down, and waves her axe. A large black rectangle appears on the ground adjacent the herd of "e"s. The upper left corner of the box has a grey "c:\welcome\to\troll\tuesday" printed. She waves the axe in a sweeping backhand, and the "e" creatures are flung into the black abyss. She hurls the axe at the X in the upper right corner of the grey rectangle. She smiles.
(can anyone identify the powdery residue at the bottom of my coffee cup?)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I realize it's not a fixed price, but I donate annually to the Mozilla foundation for the same reason. Honestly my donation to MoFo is more than Opera would cost me, but I consider it a genuinely usefull charity and a little extra tax writeoff is fine by me. Hell, even my parents donate to MoFo because I suggested they do so if they find the soft
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Having tried Firefox, and having used Opera for a long time, I can honestly say that yes, it is worth it to pay for a nice bundled browser package, even if you could jerry-rig a free browser to have most of the same functionality. I'm willing to bet that a few years from now, Opera will still be around. I have my
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Last I checked, Opera had about 1/23rd of FF's users. I dunno, maybe that's off... but I think Firefox has passed the flash-in-the-pan stage.
As for the rest, I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but what does Opera have that I would really want in my Firefox? I mean, from your experience, what does Firefox really lack that makes a browser worth paying cash for?
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tiny download size, yet filled up with useful features that are actually smoothly integrated and work together in a coherent manner, rather than being tacked onto the browser. When upgrading, everything keeps working, and I know that the whole thing is thoroughly tested, whereas Firef
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
So none of these features are optional? That would be a turn-off for me, I think.
I've never had a problem with upgrading firefox, but quite possibly I can thank package maintainers for that.
As for the dependancy hell, I have to say, I've never hunted down a dependancy for anything in firefox. Perhaps that has to do with which ext
Ad-blocking doesn't have to be in the browser (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want ad/malware-blocking you can install a local web-proxy like Proxomitron to add this to whatever browser you like. To speak in "Firefox language" consider it an ad-blocking extension to Opera, or IE or Mozilla, or Lynx or telnet for that matter. No need to put something as basic & genericly useful as ad-blocking in a browser is there?
Plus, if this isn't enough, you can always install a custom hosts ad-blocking file or a custom ad-blocking user-css file. After all all modern browsers support user-css. I'm using Firefox as we speak, but I've used Opera for a long time and I never had a problem with ads.
As for the rest of your post. Opera comes as big bundle, but noone is forcing you to use anything you dont want. It's not like we are talking Realplayer here!
Incidently I've never had any troubles upgrading Opera either. Why should you have troubles upgrading a browser anyway?
And Opera is faster & more responsive than Firefox has ever been. Using Firefox I still feel impatient every now and then knowing how fast Opera did respond in similar situastions.
So why did I switch from Opera to Firefox? Gmail and my online-banking didn't work in Opera, and I refused to use IE. In the end I got too fed up having to switch browsers. And I needed to get my mail checked and bills paid.
However Im not so narrow-minded I can't see the market for Opera. In fact if there is one thing I hate about Firefox: it's the lousy cache. Loisy crappy only to IE cache. When I press back in Opera, Im back when the mousebutton is released. When I do that in Firefox on my 1GB 2.4GHz P4 I still have to wait several seconds. Which is totally unacceptable.
And for all you Firefox fans out there. Remember all these features like tabed-browsing, popup-stoppers, user-agent switcher, plugin-control and stuff like that which you use to promotote Firefox? Remember how Firefox copied those from Opera? Nothing wrong with reusing a good idea, Im not saying that! But dissing Opera while getting your main attractions from it at the same time... Well, it just smells bad.
Yours sincerely, a less zealous Firefox user.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of more compelling features. That was just one
I could go on a lot longer, but these are some of the features that Firefox doesn't do properly, even with extensions that attempt to do (some of) the same.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
i've used firefox but it just feels sluggish, even with the tuning programs (why is that even needed?)
and it crashes
and just feels like.. a beta
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
Someone once described Opera to me as "Firefox, but will all the extensions you'd want bundled in so you don't have to faff around with installing them ... and with a smaller
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
But assuming that Closed-Sourced Products have a more longevity is something you got to explain to me. OSS will continue to evolve as long as *someone* is wiling to pick it up and programm some more on it.
Updates to Closed-Sourced Software will vanish as soon as the business holding the IP sees no more need make them.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
> while almost everyone I know uses Firefox
Hmm. I know of very few people who use X while almost everyone I know uses Y...if this is logically valid, shouldn't we all still be using IE?
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
they're installed by default in opera, easy to add on [mozdev.org] in ff.
very few people use
only because they haven't tried them. mouse gestures is one of the best features to come along in the last several years.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other features I use all the time are the "disable CSS", "disable Java", "disable plug-ins" and "disable Javascript" options in the quick-access menu (F12). Stupid websites java menus (when simple CSS could do the job), or Flash all over the place, or javascript that messes with the status line (or, god forbid, have crap following my cursor) almost force me to use Opera.
Give me the same features that Opera has in the F12 menu and the same mouse gestures in Firefox, and then *MAYBE* I'd switch.
As for the ads, well... The browser HAS to get them somewhere... If you follow my drift.
And Opera changed a LOT since version 5. You comment about "the last time you tried Opera" is akin to me telling your that "Linux still doesn't have a GUI"...
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Informative)
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ext e nsions/morei nfo.php?application=firefox&category=Developer%20T ools&numpg=10
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
I think you may want to give another try. The is a substantial difference between 5 and 8.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ridiculous! (Score:3, Insightful)
Opera 6 was very different to Opera 5. Opera 7 was very different again. And the minor releases weren't just bug fixes - they often introduced new features.
There isn't really much of a difference between Opera and Firefox, especially when you use the plugins with Firefox. But Opera had a lot of these first. Most users of Opera are old users, using it since before Mozilla and Firefox.
I like Opera. It does ev
Re:Ridiculous! (Score:3, Informative)
The terms have since changed, likely due to the changing market conditions. One license is now good for an entire household's computers, on any OS.
Re:Ridiculous! (Score:3, Informative)
That's not the case anymore, recently Opera switched to a single license system. You can use the license on all your household computers, whatever the OS you are using.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
I can give you one good reason: resource usage. Opera uses considerably less memory and CPU than firefox. I still tend to use firefox on any machine that can handle it but i am incredibly thankful to have Opera on some of my slower boxes; it really makes a huge difference.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone know of a Firefox extension that can do this? I've tried Imagezoom, but it doesn't really work too well (particularly scrolling on large images), and anyways, it only zooms up the images seperately
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Opera is an innovative company that puts out an outstanding and lightweight product. Google and the Firefox team have a lot to thank Opera for.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
At 100Mhz, the Mozilla series of browsers lags when simply typing in a text box, because of the non native widgets I suppose. Obviously, this is unacceptable when I can type as fast as I want in other browsers without issue. Firefox also gets a bit tight running more than one tab in 32MB.
On the other hand, Opera 8 is amazingly fast. It easily makes a 300Mhz PII feel like a 500Mhz+ runni
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
The three main reasons I use Opera rather than Firefox are
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
o Firefox is a dog on my machine, whereas Opera is *really* fast
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:3, Informative)
If you want adblocking, use a custom style sheet, not as good as adblock, but it can be done.
Re:Not being trollish, but... (Score:2)
Try "Identify as Opera" instead of IE, and it won't complain about ActiveX.
Re:Opera 8 (Score:2, Funny)
Anonymous poster. Someone who is blind to anything not open source. Lame.
Re:Browser Comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
The main thing about Firefox that bugs me is the plugins. Features such as tabbed browsing, and mouse gestures come standard with Opera, where with Firefox (at least when I tried it), you're required to track down and choose what plugin you want. These appear to be third-party plugins. God knows what code's in them, or if they'll break if you update Firefox.
My second main complaint with Firefox is the horrendously huge Thunderbird. Again, Opera has it's own built-in mail client.
The things that keep me using Opera are:
That's about all I can think of right now. These things, to me anyway, make it worth the purchase price.
Re:Browser Comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a minor correction. Firefox comes out of the box with tabbed browsing. The plugin is just for more options in controlling the behaivor of it.
I think the thing that Opera is better than Firefox in is speed and polish. It's very fast and the UI has been well thought out. Things in the browser work in ways you
Re:Browser Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're looking for a fully integrated browser then you're looking for the suite. Firefox doesn't include those features because that's the reason it exists in the first place: to provide a stand-alone browser without the fluff with a standard, simple interface.
Re:Underdog? (Score:2, Insightful)
The rise in Firefox usage has three major reasons:
1. security reasons
2. Seamonkey's perceived bloat
3. trend
Security is never a guarantee. Trends don't last. And Seamonkey, especially 1.8x, is as fast as Firefox, while providing more.
Opera, like Seamonkey, has a stron
Re:I guess I'm he only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
"We've cleaned up our front yard. The Opera 8 interface is designed to make the advanced functions easy and effective to use. Menus, toolbars and other elements have undergone our "slim and clean"-routine. The licensed version has the largest browsing area in the industry."
Admittedly I haven't had a chance to try Opera 8 yet (still waiting for the server to settle down), however if they can get the screen real estate you can achieve with the Firefox-based K-Meleon [sourceforge.net] (in which you can have every single item, including menus, on the one line), then I'll be impressed, and probably switch back. I doubt that they'll be able to back the above claim up, however...