![Coals [2] Newcastle](http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/3562/21346596076295/1600/z/839315/gse_multipart37953.png)
I can't help it, I love Opera. I have paid $60 to the opera foundation (to register Opera 6 and 7) and felt the money was well worth it at the time. After all, Firefox didn't quite exist yet (I discovered Opera 6 when Firebird 0.something was the Mozilla offering) and IE was, is, and will be crap. (I should probably look at the number of IE users I have coming to this site before I say things like this. Naaaaah.) Anyway, even in Opera 6 I saw amazing speed, standards compliance, and innovation (tabs were an Opera thing, remember?) and I was duly impressed.
And now we come to 2008. Firefox 3 is out and Opera is on version 9.5. And I gotta say, I'm impressed on both counts. Here's my first impressions.
Opera has added a few features, like Opera Link, which does a .Mac style sync of your bookmarks, notes, and other little browser customizations. I have to say that one of the only reasons I've been using Safari on the Mac is that I know that I'll have my bookmarks on all my computers. Opera getting this ability is a definite step in the right direction, and being able to do it without $99/year is a nice thing as well. I realize that there are add-ons for Firefox that will do the same thing, but built-in is always nice. Opera has had a face lift on both the Mac and Windows, but to my mind the Windows theme is far nicer than the Mac one. Again. The new Dragonfly feature is nice, but looks suspiciously like firebug, to my eyes. I can't do any really accurate speed tests right now, but it moves right along, and does a good job rendering HTML and JavaScript as usual. Speed Dial is a feature that I wouldn't install as an extension, but I have to admit that I like it when I have it in Opera.
Opera also has the best kiosk feature I've ever come across in my puff. I've put it to use a number of times with great success.
And then there's Firefox, the jewel of the open source community. It's fast, light (even lighter now that they've fixed some of the memory leaks that plagued version 2) and infinitely extensible, it's the browser that does what you want. The vanilla install has some nice new features, like the super-easy bookmarks, bookmark tagging, smart bookmarks that allow you to move back and forth over your history easily, and (finally!) full cocoa compliance on the Mac. Firefox has looked (and occasionally performed) like crap on the Mac for a while now, so it's nice to get some real widgets. No, it's not important, but it is nice. Contrary to Opera, the default Firefox skin is far nicer (in my opinion) than the Windows default. I kinda like that. But at the end of the day the reason we all keep using Firefox is the lovely extensions. I'm writing this in ScribeFire, with AdBlock Plus and ScriptBlock both keeping me safe from web nasties.
Overall, I have to give the nod to Firefox.
And now we come to 2008. Firefox 3 is out and Opera is on version 9.5. And I gotta say, I'm impressed on both counts. Here's my first impressions.
Opera
Opera has added a few features, like Opera Link, which does a .Mac style sync of your bookmarks, notes, and other little browser customizations. I have to say that one of the only reasons I've been using Safari on the Mac is that I know that I'll have my bookmarks on all my computers. Opera getting this ability is a definite step in the right direction, and being able to do it without $99/year is a nice thing as well. I realize that there are add-ons for Firefox that will do the same thing, but built-in is always nice. Opera has had a face lift on both the Mac and Windows, but to my mind the Windows theme is far nicer than the Mac one. Again. The new Dragonfly feature is nice, but looks suspiciously like firebug, to my eyes. I can't do any really accurate speed tests right now, but it moves right along, and does a good job rendering HTML and JavaScript as usual. Speed Dial is a feature that I wouldn't install as an extension, but I have to admit that I like it when I have it in Opera.
Opera also has the best kiosk feature I've ever come across in my puff. I've put it to use a number of times with great success.
Firefox
And then there's Firefox, the jewel of the open source community. It's fast, light (even lighter now that they've fixed some of the memory leaks that plagued version 2) and infinitely extensible, it's the browser that does what you want. The vanilla install has some nice new features, like the super-easy bookmarks, bookmark tagging, smart bookmarks that allow you to move back and forth over your history easily, and (finally!) full cocoa compliance on the Mac. Firefox has looked (and occasionally performed) like crap on the Mac for a while now, so it's nice to get some real widgets. No, it's not important, but it is nice. Contrary to Opera, the default Firefox skin is far nicer (in my opinion) than the Windows default. I kinda like that. But at the end of the day the reason we all keep using Firefox is the lovely extensions. I'm writing this in ScribeFire, with AdBlock Plus and ScriptBlock both keeping me safe from web nasties.
Overall
Overall, I have to give the nod to Firefox.
0 comments:
Post a Comment