What is Digg?147 Comments
- radu79, on 10/12/2007, -9/+55I use Opera since it became free (no ads), so that's almost 2 years now.
I couldn't be happier with it, and I have very few issues with Opera (one of them being the fact that eBay is very slow).
Previously I used Netscape 3.5, Netscape 4, IE 5, IE 6, and FF. Now I use Opera 95% of the time, and FF whenever I have some problems with sites in Opera. - puffinkiss, on 10/12/2007, -6/+35Tell your friend File>Export Bookmarks in Safari then File>Import in Firefox.
- lemmingscanfly, on 10/12/2007, -10/+34Its strange, I switched back to using Opera today. You just can't leave it even after using firefox for months. :)
- kvicksilver, on 10/12/2007, -22/+43I don't doubt this. Not weird at all. As the article says, Opera is a well-kept secret: A person that understands that Internet Explorer is a rather crappy and insecure browser, almost always switch to Mozilla Firefox. Either by personal recommendations or because they simply have heard of it or thinks it is "like IE but better"...
I was always using Opera when I was younger (back in 1999 or 2000) the Internet was something new, a bit scary and a huge place (56K modem, of course). Using something else than Opera felt strange, slow and well... Today: I'm a (full-time) Mac user, both private and professional use, and Opera just doesn't feel as right over here, on Mac OS X, as in for example Windows XP. However, it is occasionally running, on my MacBook Pro. :) - RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Based on your comment, I can assume two things about you:
1. You have never actually used Opera
2. You think being a Firefox fanboy is cool. - hockey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20link to the original source
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/115497.html - Hazardc, on 10/12/2007, -22/+39What a surprise, people who use a niche market item are more satisfied with their product
oh what breaking news. - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24"Well kept secret..."
Reminds me of "underground" music. Once the masses find about the cool "underground" band , the original fans become non-fans overnight.
Even if the music hasn't changed at all... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21I'm very satisfied with Opera.
After using Opera, I feel the way I feel after the Risotto. - gaervern, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Opera has shortcut keys. I have been using opera almost since the beginning. I started because Opera was way faster than netscape (ie abandoned for security reasons). Now I use FF with sage as a quick and easy feed-reader. Opera has buried the feed reader in the e-mail reader, which I don't use. However, Opera mini has a great feed reader for mobile phones. I believe opera will survive on various devices. I will install Opera on the PS3 once I get it going on linux.
- wabbiteh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13twoodge: shortcut key customizability is one of opera's strengths -- you can create a shortcut for pretty much anything. (Tools -> Preferences... -> Advanced -> Shortcuts)
I'm an opera user, and I still keep firefox around for the sites that don't work in opera. My only real gripes with opera are that there is some difficulty in customizing it (though if you learn how to edit the .ini file, you can do a *lot*), and I do occasionaly miss some firefox extensions (fortunately, nothing is a real deal-breaker, as Opera includes enough by default -- but I would still like to make some changes to the browser's functionality that can only be made through extensions.) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17So you're saying you use IE?
- Tarnum, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Opera is perfect for low-end machine. Everything is integrated - mail, download manager, torrent client, irc chat, ad blocker, etc.... It's like Norton Communicator, but done right.
/End of Preaching : ) - SteelFrog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14My only major beef with Opera is that when I click the middle mouse button to scroll, the arrow appears in the middle rather than the place I clicked. It annoys me to no end.
- geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I have used opera for at least 5 years and I use it because its javascript parser/compiler is faster than all other browsers, and with so many sites using javascript these days, browsing the internet is faster with Opera. Also its memory footprint is pretty low and it's fast overall since it is meant to scale down to phones. I use firefox for web development, otherwise I find firefox slow and memory hungry.
- squeevey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15I have been using Firefox...but it's slowed down a LOT! It used to be lean and fast...but not anymore. I use it to develop but Opera is my browser now.
- drdepoy, on 10/12/2007, -9/+20another satisfied opera user. I love the email client as well. The first thing i do when i get a new computer (after setting XP into "classic" display mode) is to download Opera.
- LouisC, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13You realize it's just IE with a prettier interface and features taken from non-IE browsers, right?
- DooM, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'm a self-confessed Opera fanboy - I paid for their original version, although, the free one is MUCH better. There used to be sites that wouldn't work in Opera - that never happens anymore.
Three main reasons for my love:
1) Mouse Gestures - if you start using them you'll never be able to use another browser. Ever. Forward, back, and close tab are indispensible to me now - have to be able to do that without pressing buttons or keys or I go nuts.
2) Speed - it leaves everyone in the dust.
3) Tabs that work - I hate hate hate a new site opening in a new instance of the browser instead of in a new tab. Opera never does this to me. - DooM, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I used to have that problem - it doesn't do that much anymore. Try the newest version.
- worbd, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14It's easier to customize Opera than Firefox in general. You can have extensions for Firefox, but in Opera it's easier to change the UI itself.
- MadOgre, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14"Research finds Opera users are most satisfied"
.... in bed.
/Fortune Cookie - TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"People who feel a sense of superiority based on the software they use. It's the same kind of people who listen to records still because they "just sound better to the expert ear.""
So the entire linux community? Sorry, but you just described the fanboys (a lot of Digg) in detail. - kag9000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Firefox is great, I just prefer Opera. It's the little functions such as hitting the numpad plus and minus keys to zoom in or out of a web page. The sidebar to access email, transfers and notes. The way you can comprehensively custom-set the toolbars, the way you can view pages in certain modes, and finally the way you can block just about every ad server out there in one swoop.
- TenebrousX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9You really need to debug CSS for non-compliant browsers; Opera is best when it comes to supporting CSS.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/#css
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html - msr911, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Opera is great, can't go without the back and forward mouse feature(I know there is a firefox extention with this feature but it's just not the same) I always find myself doing this in Safari or IE(sometimes you are just forced to use it) and ending up with a rightmouseclick menu and needing to click back.
- Dumbledorito, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14The satisfaction with Safari seems odd. I just visited a friend of mine who uses Safari and Firefox. He says he only keeps Safari around because he used it from day one on his mac, and he can't find a way to port his favorites over to a different browser.
- mcspectrum, on 10/12/2007, -26/+32Which niche? People who browse the web?
- renegadeafk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Firefox is a great browser which I've used for years, but it takes forever to start up and you have to install extentions to get alot of features. Opera has a better "Out of the box" experiance, it comes with mosue gestures, IRC ect... Overall I've been more satisfied with opera, it's been faster and more stable, the only annoying thing is that there are more websites that do not work in opera than in IE or firefox. I love the new "speeddial" feature in the latest opera beta.
- ElwoodHerring, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14I'm also a long-time Opera fan, but let's face it, ANYTHING is better than Insecure Explorer!
- abid786, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The new Speed Dial thing they have in version 9.20 is awesome. Although it is really nothing special (it's possible to write a FF extension that does the same thing in 15 minutes), it's still pretty cool :-).
- davidadam, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I guess no one believe me if I said that that's actually something I miss when I have to use another browser.
Happy Opera user here, btw. - Alisic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6*high fives all Opera users*
Woo! Speed, standards compatibility and great out-of-the box features rock, I somehow detest having to install extensions for things like mouse gestures etc.
But Firefox is great too, imo, I just feel uneasy having lots of extensions taking up my memory. - canyadigit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I switched from FF to Opera about 2 months ago. I was quite content with FF until it started eating my 2GB of memory pretty deeply and causing my laptop fan to sound like it was getting ready for a moon launch. I tried to correct the problem unsuccessfully. So I switched to Opera and it has been faster, no load on memory to speak of and the fan life expectancy must have increased by 400%
One minor gripe I have with Opera; when waking the laptop up it shows an error console from being disconnected to the net, which is fine, but the browser tends to lock up and has to be closed and relaunched. With FF one simply had to click 'reload all tabs'. Obviously Opera is not compatible with some sites, but it's a minor inconvenience for the most part.
If Opera ever becomes as popular as FF, it will probably change and lose it's current appeal. The price of progress I suppose. - soopafly, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Same could be said with IE
- Alisic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Especially the mouse gestures imo. I can do mouse gestures in freaking miliseconds and without moving my mouse more than a few pixels in Opera. In Firefox, you have to take it more slow and explicitly indicate which gesture you're doing (to close a tab, you really have to do DOWN, RIGHT, in Opera it understands even if you do a more circular motion)
- ramunas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I'm happy with my Opera, sure it has its own bugs just like all others, but I still love it.
- DeucesWild, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I've been using opera as my main browser since 2001 when they still had adds (which was patched easily enough before it became completely free). I have the new IE and Fire fox also but they just don't compare to me. I'm too used to my mouse gestures and having the browser automatically load up with every page I was last looking at. Google is the biggest anti-Opera offender that I know of. At first Gmail wouldn't work with Opera and now there new page creator service won't either. In those rare cases where Opera won't work I have to use one of the lesser browsers. Fire fox can keep their extensions, Opera gives me everything I want (and then some) out of the box.
- Lain1k, on 10/12/2007, -9/+13I think what he means by niche is the fact that Opera is not as know as Firefox and IE. So the people who are using do so because they went out to find something that accommodated their needs. When they found it they stuck with it. So now that you poll the people who are users of it, the ones that stuck with it because they like it despite other options, it's not surprising people are gonna be satisfied.
I am a little more surprised Firefox was second. I would think IE would be. Maybe this is a misconception but my idea of an IE user is someone that doesn't know there are better alternatives out there and is satisfied with what they have.
Plus the more customers you have the more chances there are people who are not as satisfied with what they are using.
Just my 2 cents
Oh BTW I used Opera about a year or so ago and didn't care for it. - Synne, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Well i'm very satisfied. Fast secure and all the features i need.
- ninetimes, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I don't doubt the research, but it seems like you could go too far in interpreting these results. It doesn't follow that Opera is necessarily the browser we should all be using, or that we would all be most satisfied with Opera, but only that the people who use Opera are more satisfied with Opera than the people who use other browsers are satisfied with their browser.
It occurs to me that there's basically no reason to use Opera if you're dissatisfied with it. You might be dissatisfied with IE, Safari, or Konquerer/Firefox, but those browsers come with your OS if you're using Windows, OSX, or Linux respectively. Therefore, there will probably be a lot of people who aren't satisfied, but aren't dissatisfied enough to download something else. Also, lots of IT departments these days are standardizing either on Firefox or IE.
Opera, OTOH, has to be purposefully downloaded and installed. If you don't find it to be the most satisfying browser around, why would you bother getting it when you could get a different one? - spanner, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Opera's great, used it for years. IE is still trying to play catchup on it.
- qrro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I started using Opera over a year ago. Prior to that, I used to go back and forth IE and FF. Ever since I tried Opera, I never went back. I don't need to clutter my browser with a bunch of extensions because Opera does out-of-the-box everything I need. It has done it before and better than IE or FF, and I am not going to say that older versions were stable because I don't know, but I can tell you than in little more than a year that I've been using Opera, it hasn't crashed once.
Thanks, - TenebrousX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6You might be interested in these:
http://dev.opera.com/tools/
http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar/ - ThePict, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I used to use Firefox but a few websites didn't render properly on it.
So now I'm back to Opera - thecosmicpope, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I am a happy Opera user. Mine is heavily modified (something i love about Opera!) to maximize the browser viewing area (hey, I'm surfing the net, I want to see as much as possible thanks!). Mine feels very compact and runs much much faster than Firefox ever did for me. However I do have Firefox installed in case i stumble upon one of those rare badly coded sites that doesn't display correctly. I found that Firefox copes with these much better than Opera. Firefox also has better extensions than Operas addons, and IMO, Firefoxs Ad Block is the single best browser advancement ever, and I wish Operas content blocker was at least half as good.
When building PCs for friends I tend to install Opera and Firefox on them and tell them to chose which they prefer and to avoid IE at all costs. It seems the more technical the person, they tend to prefer Opera, whilst the more casual users preferred Firefox. I'm not saying that Firefox is for simpler people of course, but it seems to be more "n00b friendly" whilst keeping its advanced settings there for you, whilst Opera just throws all the advanced stuff at you and expects you to cope.
Perhaps one of the primary reasons why Opera isn't as big as it really should be is it is less n00b friendly than Firefox manages to be, whilst keeping the advanced stuff avalible for people who wish to use it. - TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Don't forget, those extensions are a large part of the Firefox "memory leak".
And Opera comes with the extras default. In all actuality, many Extensions come from Opera's features. - neodorian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The gestures are something I've been interested in but haven't tried. I can see how it would become second nature very quickly. My mouse has 2 little side thumb buttons that are mapped to forward and back one page and since I got used to that I start going nuts when I don't have them on another mouse. It's crazy how used to the little things you can get.
- kahrn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's funny how many of you are saying Opera is bloated. Because if you're saying that, then you've probably never even used it, and you're probably a total dick that's never even had to work to get things working with a computer.
Opera is perhaps one of the only browsers which isn't bloated on the market today (aside from uhh lynx and IE - but IE isn't an option due to bad rendering). Firefox you ask? Well, It takes around 2 minutes to START FIREFOX on some systems running at around 150MHz. That clearly shows that firefox isn't even an option on low-spec machines.
If you're a total ***** *****, you'll come out with something stupid like "PEOPLE DONT USE MACHINES THAT SLOW ANYMORE". Well, in the real world, they do. Infact, literally MILLIONS of machines still run at under 400MHz. Why should people get faster computers if the computer they have does the job? They shouldn't. They should just go with something like a basic Linux distro (Slackware with IceWM or something) and run Opera or something. If people just want to look at email and browse to basic sites - then we shouldn't force them to go out and buy a brand new machine with stupidly high specs. The USER should define what they want, and the applications should not make the user turn round and say "well, I guess I can't use this PII, because firefox needs around 256MB RAM to work well, and I'll need XP". Instead, it should be "Great! A browser which I can define, and an operating system I can define!". We've yet to reach that stage.
The idea of firefox is great. I use firefox myself, but this is a 3GHz machine with 1024MB of RAM. There's no way I'd use it on a pre-400MHz machine, because it'd be totally ***** *****. Now I look back on things, the IDEA of firefox was great. A barebones browser that you could build yourself, and if you had a real slow machine you'd still get the web, but if you had the resources you could go out and go get some extensions.
But when it comes to implementation, it just doesn't work that way. Firefox is a bloaty piece of ***** that's useless on older machines. That's why we all need to start working on our OWN browser. Iv'e been thinking alot about building a browser that has very very basic functionality (rather like Miranda IM) and then the USER can decide which features they want, and thus they'll know how much more resources will be needed. This will allow EVERYONE to run the browser, and not just people with high spec machines.
At the moment, firefox seems to be heading in the wrong direction. The user's are not getting the decision of what they want - the developers are deciding FOR THEM. They've decided to add more bloat, and features which none of us really give a ***** about, and if we do we'll get flock or some extensions. That's not the way it should work.
That said, I'm still running firefox - but only because I can afford too. If I was on an older machine, Firefox would be an option. Whether or not I'll use firefox when it reaches 3.0, is down to whether the developers start heading in the direction of which they should be - and not adding features which most of us don't want. I used to think firefox would be the answer - a free (as in speach) browser that the USER could DEFINE, and be able to run it on any machine they want - regardless of specifications or architecture. That's far from what is happening now. It's time we start a REAL browser, and work towards the benefits of the people and not the developers and the "social networking" companies. - jcholewa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@wabbiteh
> My only real gripes with opera are that there is some difficulty in customizing it
> (though if you learn how to edit the .ini file, you can do a *lot*)
Just a note in case you didn't know: A lot of the configuratio that you can do by editing the ini file can also be done by surfing to opera:config while in Opera. -
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