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61 Comments
- Noctem, on 10/12/2007, -5/+31I've been using Opera exclusivley for a few months now. It's pretty damn good, totally customizable, feature complete without the need for extensions, and really fast when it comes to rendering websites. Not to mention there aren't a whole lot of exploits for it. All in a nice, neat, sub-4MB package.
- thealliedhacker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Actually opera is very extensible, but they don't allow changes to the base code, which can restrict some types of plugins. Still, Opera supports Netscape type-plugins (like FireFox), Widgets, and User JS (kinda like GreaseMonkey). I have yet to find a feature of FireFox that I want and cannot find it Opera.
I was once a FF user, but grew tired of the same crap that bothered me from IE. I looked at a few browser comparisons, and Opera shined above the rest (especially in speed, one of my biggest complaints). I tried it, and I've never gone back.
Also, I'd like to point out, I tried Opera a few years back, and it was slow, bulky, and useless (in addition to having ads). Opera 9 has no such problems and is, it fact, the best browser I have ever seen (and YES, I have use Konquerer, and a few other Linux browsers, and Safari). - aahpandasrun, on 10/12/2007, -13/+28Opera lacks the customizability of Firefox. If there's a niche feature that the browser doesn't have, it can be written as an extension. Although Opera has by default more features than Firefox, Firefox has significantly more potential for customization.
- Noctem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Browser war *2.0*? What, has this person been using the web since all of 2004?
- pbaehr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10What an exciting time we live in. Life 2.0 is so much better than Life 1.x.
- Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I'd like to digg you down for saying that because I don't like it...but sadly it's probably true... *sigh*
I'll just leave it alone. - taxonimous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Exactly, browser war 2 was, what, 1994?
- spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Sick to bloody death of everything being '2.0', it was never a good phrase in the first place
- Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I think the main thing against the MS in this browser war is that they are doing nothing but playing catch up. By the time they think they've caught up, the competitors are already a generation beyond them. As long as the competitors like Firefox and Opera keep the pedal to the metal...it's going to be very hard for Microsoft to keep up...
My biggest gripe about the latest attempt at writing a browser by MS is that they completely rewrote the decade old book on how user interfaces should function. They took a decade of engrained "file, edit" menu people and decided to turn the whole thing on its head. Same goes for Office 2007. The most aggravating thing about office 2007 is simply looking for how to do "something."
Things that people have known how to do for years can now be a major hassle to hunt down in the new UI's. - armbar, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9The article has somewhat flawed thinking, as people already have Google as their homepage, which I believe is not changed during the upgrade to IE7. A small minority of people will use that search bar rather than just searching from the homepage. Google is also the default search provider on most other browsers, such as Opera, Safari, (Camino, I think), et al.
It's really a matter of how education progresses. More and more people are learning that there are other browsers than Internet Exploder, and are switching. It's a slow process, of course, but eventually everyone will see the light and use Opera :) - Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Posh! Don't be so 1.0!
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@jejones
As a web developer myself, I take great pains to test on everything, including iCab(though lately I've said to hell with a few bugs on it and it only). Even though my boss tells me to ignore Konqueror, I test on that. Opera, Firefox, Safari.
No, more than that. I code for those first, and do my best to go back and make IE work after. There's no other way to work. Someone needs to find a way to break the damned stranglehold.
Does anyone here realize that implementing even a single CSS3 property like box-shadow or border-radius would save the internet terabytes in traffic per day? Someone pays for that. - turpenine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4opera has had undo tab close for a while
ctrl+z. if your last action was a tab close, it undose it. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If we could convince Dell or HP to include it as the default, that would change in a hurry. Even if they only did it for the retail market.
- marko25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@CandidateZero
If you go here http://www.opera.com/download/ you'll see there is a choice:
1. English version(windows msi) (4.7MB)
2. International version(windows msi) (6.3MB)
3. Classic installer(3.9MB) - akinder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@NoMoreNicksLeft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en
Research before looking like a moronic fanboy. - CandidateZero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Even if Microsoft overtakes Firefox, I'm gonna stick with Mozilla because MS is only working on IE again because their market share is being eaten away.
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@avalontor
Depends on which way the numbers are going, doesn't it? I'm never an optimist myself, but it damn well better not be over, or we're all doomed to an eternity of half-assedly-designed websites with flash everywhere and text stuck in images. - se2131, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You can make custom searches very easily in Opera, for wikipedia I have "wiki " and it works perfectly
- Noctem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@CandidateZero:
"After going to the Opera site, the download shows as 6.3 MB."
I've been using the Opera 9.x weekly builds at http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/ - The 'Windows Classic' installer is 3.9MB. Probably should've mentioned that earlier. - emfb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This 2.0 sh*t needs to die.
1.0 - Mosaic ( gopher, usenet, finger, ftp)
2.0 - Netscape/IE (geocities, java, blink and marquee tags)
3.0 - Mozilla/IE (flash, sql, pop ups,css,png,CMS)
4.0 - Firefox/IE (ajax, svg, glossy everything) - se2131, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sorry, 'wiki keyword', first time commenting
- Iconwolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if IE manages to level the playing field on features, ease of use, and customization I still put Firefox on all my friends/family computers and encourage them to use it for the simple reason of security. It seem to take Mozilla about 3 weeks on average to patch holes in their system whereas it seems to take Microsoft 3 months on average. This translates is a much smaller likelihood of people getting on their computers that I need to devote my limited tech skills (I'm more computer literate than many of my friends but any real tech would eat me for lunch) to fixing their "bugs". I'd say that change alone, without even making use of any other recommendations or programs tends to reduce their computer "problems" by about about 30% or so.
- Gizza, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Hickeroar
I agree with you about the IE7 interface, its horrible. However at the same time I disagree with you on the Office 2007 interface, its brilliant.
Funny that MS could make 2 new interfaces with one so great and one so bad. - Wilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1lol@defaults
- rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And when Microsoft gains back that market share, where will we all be? Held back from another 6-8 years of progress just because it suits them to have a dominant browser that fails to support the most important non-proprietary standards.
By using IE when you know there is better software out there is screwing yourself and everyone else over. - cynicist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11) sure but it also doesn't have some very specialized features.
2) false, firefox developers are also looking into using the protected mode feature and have visited redmond to collaborate with microsoft in order to implement it.
3) word has spread, but don't think that everyone who uses a computer knows about firefox yet, the longer its out there the more it will grow.
(It may have better RSS feed support but I doubt its adblocker is nearly as good as adblock plus) - armbar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7Dido? http://www.didomusic.com/
Your a gud speler. - whereisian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Been an Opera user for years now. Once of the most innovative applications ever. It wins hands down on speed for the type of browsing I do. It popularised mouse gestures, which are now a 'must have'.
But Firefox is my number one browser right now. While Opera can be extended fairly easily, it just doesn't have the community support that Firefox has. I've managed to tweak my profile so that it is very Opera-like with things like mouse gestures, custom searches from the address bar, better context-menus, session saver. Firefox just has more tools and the browser is by far my most used application. - doodlebumm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2One of the interesting things that I have found as I work on other people's computers is how people just don't know how to do anything. That is what Microsoft has been counting on for years - non-knowledgeable users make great suckers. You supply a default browser and they don't look for another. You supply a default home page that is your own site and they never change it. You get manufacturers to load on an OS and they never think there is another alternative. People are too afraid of their computer. They think that if they make a change it will stop working (with Windows, you don't have to do anything for it to stop working, but that is a different thread), so they just do the minimum possible. When I show people things on their computer they love it. They are ready to use anything else if they think it will make it easier, more secure, etc. as long as it is a good alternative.
If people are shown good alternatives, they will use them. Firefox and Opera are great alternatives that people will use if given the opportunity. Now if they are really used to using IE, then you sometimes have to hide it from them, but they don't mind as long as they can still to the websites they want to visit. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what ***** moron decided to add 2.0 to BROWSERS now?
enough with the 2.0 fad already! - thanks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ronin2040
I can't believe you were able to incorporate two of my most hated phrases to ever grace the innanets in one swift comment, I hate you. - Archer1980, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Alright, NoMoreNicksLeft, first of all, i know where you are coming from because i develop a large number of websites as well. And although you put a valid point forward,, you are completely leaving out the fact that there are even a LOT of things that don't act the same between Opera and say FF or between FF and Safari. So, how is it fair to say you'll only use tags that work in ALL those browsers and forget the ones that don't, but you won't do the same for IE? Any tags that do not work across the board on ALL browsers i leave completely out of my design unless there is a quick and clean work around, but even then i don't like using work around because in the next few years as they get there act in gear those work arounds will be obsolite.
Not to mention the fact that IE has to stay backwards compatible so that sites can slowly start updating to the more solid standards? check out some older sites in FF or Opera or Safari and see how BADLY they break. Think of how pissed those companies will be if they turn around one day and IE updates and there site is dead and it's going to take them a full month of development to get a working site back up and running?
There is a perfectly good reason why IE is taking it's time, and unfortunately there are a LOT of people that just don't understand that. With the web really taking off now more then ever, sites will be updating, and thus IE can really start kicking it into higher gear now, and i believe that with the release of IE8 you will see a lot more CSS compliance as they seem to have been more focused on the visual appeal of a web browser since MOST of there clients don't know jack about web design so don't care about standards as long as it works. if they didn't add tabbed browsing and a few other visual things, there market share would be going down a LOT faster then is already is. To me, that constitues a smart move - Rain-X, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Buried for crappy heading.
- Rosco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Another one to keep an eye on is SeaMonkey, the devs on that are working on merging the FF/TB backbone into SeaMonkey. Keep an eye out for SeaMonkey 1.5 in 2007, I used to love the Mozilla Suite, and the development sounds very interesting!
- tapo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Quicksearches is the one reason I can't use opera. Typing 'wp articlename' to look up a wikipedia article is damn useful.
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Archer1980:
Adding in the tag, or implementing border-radius wouldn't have broken websites in IE7. Even if they put an -ie- prefix in front of the filter css value, they could have grandfathered in prefixless css properties/values. They chose not to. Lame.
I've found differences between Opera and Firefox, of course. Minor things. Minor bugs. Nothing at all like the differences between IE and [anything else]. There might not be any selector/conditional comment hacks for the other browsers, but you almost never need them.
@akinder:
Oh, yes. How much do you want to bet that that has all the WGA inanity? I wonder if it has a dom inspector, or firebug-like features? I doubt it's half as good as Venkman, or Web Developer Toolbar, or even JS Console. And do I even have to ask whether or not it requires a reboot? - ronin2040, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2yeah, 2.01b FTW!
- erdizz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It has began :) seems like joke - http://browserswar.com
- Archer1980, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Seriously, there are a few things that have to be considered:
1) if you are a web developer, then for testing you shouldn't be exclusive to 1 browser unless your aim is to limit the number of clients you have and eventually go out of business.
2) Each browser, and those that have used all the browsers will agree, has there own little features and attributes which make them unique and better then the others in that one area. Some have more then others that's all.
3) If you decide to choose a browser based soly on Standard support, then you are a fool. A large number of standards are written so poorly that they are open to a wide range of interpretation. thats why we see say 4 different outcomes on 4 different browsers. So who can really say who is right or wrong?
The only thing the browser wars are doing is helping kick start these standards jokers into actually writting CLEAR and SPECIFIC standards for everything, so that they aren't open to interpretation!!!
I personally have no favorite browser, i use 4 browsers, primarily yes i stick to IE 7 and right now FF3a1, I am designing pages left right and center. I am still in the boat that the only reason browsers like Opera and some of the other smaller ones have such high download rates is because of the millions of web developpers that have to download the browser in order to test there pages. if you want real world States, check out http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats/ i last heard Opera 9 had 25million downloads, yet according to them, have a 1% market share across 3584 sites. Do the math.
PS Congrats FF for having a 23% market share :-) - ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think they're very wrong. I believe the web browser war will, for the most part, end in 2007... and the winner will be IE 7.
That's not saying that IE 7 is better than [insert your favorite browser here], but it will win for several reasons.
1.) It has most of the features that people have traditionally switched to Firefox for. (Tabbed browsing being the big one.)
2.) When run on Vista, it is more secure than any other browser on the market can be. This is thank to the protected mode feature on Vista. Virtually all possible exploits will, at worst, crash the browser.
3.) Most people who are likely to switch already have. Firefox's growth has slowed considerably in recent months.
Personally, I switched to Firefox several years ago because of the security risk involved in using IE. It was simply too big a target, and had too many well known holes.
Since I started using Vista, I've switched to using IE7 for about 95% of my browsing. After installing a few add-ons like inline search (GREAT firefox feature) and inline spellcheck, it works just as well as Firefox, plus it has much better RSS support.
My only complaints are related to the keyboard shortcuts. I would love to change them to be more like Firefox. It's hard to break years of habitual CTRL+L / CTRL+K usage. - vemerge, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I don't see why that's so unrealistic. Firefox is just starting to get into the hands of those that aren't overly web savvy. By way of all of the web savvy people making the switch and pretty much forcing it on those that they know. It is slowly gaining market share, but I don't see it slowing down.
- Loath, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2If you press Alt you will get all those old menus. They just hide by default.
- teunit48, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2My brother switched from Opera to IE7 because of the tabs and the search box. With IE he knows every single site will work as it was intended to. I use a Mac but when I'm using Boot Camp I'm with IE7 too. The whole thing with the Firefox/Opera/... religion (and Mac religion for that matter) is just tiring. Use whatever works best for you and move on.
- NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Not our site. The boss may be on my ass to constantly fix things that are broken in IE6, but they always work in Firefox/Opera/Safari/Konqueror (and to a lesser extent iCab). Why?
IE doesn't offer any web development tools. (And no, Visual Studio isn't one).
Call it a religion if you like, but everyone like you that lets Microsoft hold him hostage keeps the web from offering truly incredible stuff. Thanks for ***** it up for the rest of us. I don't care what you use. I really don't. Just don't use IE. - robojerk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0In order for M$ to use standards, people/companies will have to bite the bullet and stop using Microsoft branded technology.
- cynicist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Opera is a good browser but I think it will have less of an audience in a year or so. Firefox is catching up with standards compliance and rendering speed. (and lowering memory usage) Soon there won't be much to separate the two besides extensions and the fact that one is proprietary while the other, open. If Opera wants to compete they would be wise to open up their code. It alone would no doubt bring a larger user base. (those interested in improving an already great browser)
- GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1There is no major battle.
Just two days ago, I gave IE 7 a try. Not that I had to do any work, I'm running Vista and it was right there, so I figured, what the hell.
I was actually impressed. It rendered pages quickly, had some nifty features, I found a lot of things working exactly as I've been used to in Firefox 2.0... that is, until I realized:
You can't undo tabs. You close a tab, you're done. You can go digging through your history to get it back, but there's no time for that. With tabmix for FF, I just middle click on a white space on the right of the tab bar and you get your tabs back, in order of when you closed them.
IE7 has add-ons, but they're not as open and extensible as Firefox.
My decision stands: Firefox is just plain awesome. - NoMoreNicksLeft, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5If by war you mean "IE7 valiantly charging across the trenches as Moz, Safari, Konq and Opera gun it down with a water-cooled machine gun", yeh, I suppose that's a war.
But 6 years, and the only thing to offer is PN transparency, and fixing its worst CSS flub-ups? If this is the Redmond idea of war, I look forward to the alternatives imposing a Versailles treaty on it any day now. -
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