Opera vs Firefox

[Dr. Z]

Right, I have been using Opera for a little while now and I have come to the conclusion that it is better than Firefox in a number of ways:


It loads faster, it does everything faster once you are using it and it generally feels more responsive. It might only be a fraction faster if you timed it, but thats enough to make it feel like greased lightning in comparison.


As I type this, Opera is using about 50Mb of RAM - quite a lot, but FF was using over 100Mb when I closed it. Not sure why browsers seem to need so much RAM these days but there we go. Opera is slightly lighter


"Speed Dials" - This is something I have wanted in FireFox for ages and ages. When I open a new tab, firefox does nothing - it presents you with a blank page. Whilst this is useful, often I would be opening a new tab to go to google or something and its impulsive to hit ctrl+t to open a new tab and then type in the address. If I wanted to go to a bookmark I would middle click the bookmark and away I went.

Opera lets you set up speed-dials, so that when you open a tab you are presented with 9 boxes containing an image of whatever you set them to be. Click the box and the page opens. Alternatively you can press CTRL+ the number of the speed-dial, so 1 opens google, 2 opens wikipedia etc etc.

Perhaps something you would have to get used to but for me thats a huge bonus and I never found a way to do it in Firefox.

Also, I dont know why but Opera just seems to "feel" nicer. I guess the fact that for so long people had to pay to use it means that somehow they have listened to their customers more and have developed a fantastic product.

Give it a go anyway - I have and I cant see myself going back to Firefox unless something drastic crops up with Opera :)

[Flibster]

I was a paying user. Was a little pissed when they opened it up for everyone, but it's brought in such a wealth of development improvements that it's better than it's ever been.

Currently running the Beta as my live system. Yet to have a crash from it.

Simon/~Flibster

[LeperousDust]

I've always used Opera long before the firefox name was even around or before firebird or whatever it was before that! Opera has a better sense of use i think, they seem to have thought of just about everything! The latest beta build is running great on my machine although it does have its moments and crash out under heavy use i'm not complaining its sooo much nicer.

Opera mini is good, but for smartphone i cannot wait for Opera Mobile 9 to come out that really will change the way a browser is used on a phone! At present Opera mobile is about on par maybe slightly worse than the inbuilt symbian browser but 9 will change that!

[MarcLister]

I've been using Opera for a few months now thanks to Mr LeperousDust. :)

9.24 seems to crash on me frightenly regularly so I might give the latest beta release a go.

So DRZ - Slightly off-topic but Intarweb access still on in the flats?

[Joe 90]

i've just picked up the latest release of opera to get this lappy upto date, but been using it since Alex introduced his thread on the Alpha builds and been very happy with it.

just before switching from firefox i'd began using the plugin to sync bookmarks, but been much happier with the sync options in opera, seems to work effort-less-ly now that i've installed it on all my machines :D
and as i've said before the only thing i keep firefox for on machines exclusivly used by myself is the web dev panel - its **** in opera :(

[After_8]

As can clearly be seen by the evidence at http://www.soaringrabbit.com/opera/opera_mascots.gif Opera is trying to impress us while Firefox is just being itself and having fun. I feel that this is more important as too many people take themselves too seriously, therefore I declare Firefox the winner.

[Feek]

I've just schleped the beta of Opera on my box after I wasn't too keen last time - What's the score with an adblocker and a spell checker?

[Feek]

I should add that this is quite funny, I'm going to web pages I visit regularly and I never realised they had adverts on them. The adblock extension on Firefox did a very good job of hiding them from me.

[LeperousDust]

Adblock is content blocker in opera, its just an ini file you need to update, google for urlfilter.ini and use that. Spell check sucks, there something called asell but i personally dont think its worth the hassle. Its the only thing Firefox and IE7 have the upper hand on really. But i find i can spell perfectly fine without it, although it would be a cool bonus. Opera 9.5 doesn't have it either, but i think it is on the cards, just not as high up as actual page rendering speed and operability, where opera excels over all the other browser i feel. I really cannot wait for Opera Mobile 9, it shoudl revolutionise the mobile browser industy and its the only real player yet theyre still innovating! Excellent really...

[William]

Used both, opera is better but for some odd reason I prefer firefox.

[LeperousDust]

Hey at least your honest :p
Firefox 3 does look interesting i must say, but i'll be sticking the stable version of 9.5 no doubt...

[William]

It's mainly a case of my firefox being customised to buggery and I can't be bothered it do it again with opera. :p

[Mark]

Tried an early version of Opera. Hated its guts. Swore never again, and kept to my word. Except on the mobile - where its a lot better at the web (non-Wap) than IE is (but still sucks when trying to browse this place so I hope the next version will improve there).

I run an extension-free Firefox install and have rarely had any trouble with it. Unlike some people though I do keep my tab count under control and closw the browser regularly. Any, FF3 is supposed to do a lot to help the memory and speed issues.

[LeperousDust]

i've just picked up the latest release of opera to get this lappy upto date, but been using it since Alex introduced his thread on the Alpha builds and been very happy with it.

just before switching from firefox i'd began using the plugin to sync bookmarks, but been much happier with the sync options in opera, seems to work effort-less-ly now that i've installed it on all my machines :D
and as i've said before the only thing i keep firefox for on machines exclusivly used by myself is the web dev panel - its **** in opera :(

Just fell across this (http://www.news.com/Opera-reveals-version-10-vision/2100-1032_3-6099692.html) :D
I've heard that once 9.5 is out they're looking to try and release an alpha (or probably pre alpha - ;D) before the year is out of 10. Looks like they heard your cries before you cried...

Also not that i've ever really been that bothered by security (although i probably should be). Everyone harps on about how secure Firefox was compared to IE. Well Opera is best in class in this department, better than Safari too which shocked me, as a fully cross platform browser thats a pretty big feat. Beating firefox and Safari in their currunt forms, and worrying (for everyone else :p) even moreso over the last few version! See here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(Internet_suite)#Security).

Counter argument to this would be, well we've never been affected by the vunerabilities, and tbh i'd agree, but its nice to know that Opera are doing their very best to keep security as tight as possible...

[MarcLister]

'Sup Alex. Er so I've decided that having a Google search bar to the right of the address bar might be quite useful for me. However I can't stop Opera from using Google.com for the default search. When I change the .com to .co.uk in the preferences it simply changes it back. How can I make Opera default to Google.co.uk for my default searches? I can't add Google.co.uk myself and make it default as Opera overrides it and makes Google.com default again. Also I can't delete the Google.com search entry. I did try to edit the search.ini or whatever but that seemed to bork Opera as the Google bar morphed into an Opera search bar.

Any ideas?

[Mark]

Yeah, just leave it alone. Google should sort itself out. :)

Well, it was sorting itself out until shortly after I posted that, then it stopped. Odd. :huh:

[LeperousDust]

Marc i couldn't tell you for sure, but i'm using the "Google I'm Feeling lucky" as my default search and Google.co.uk as my default speed dial search (that i never use). It works fine for myself? I do wonder why you need a google search bar to the right though? You can just type "g *search term" and google search it without even needing the search bar? So i'm slightly confused? I've never actually needed any search bars?
I think a well kept secret is setting your default search engine to I'm Feeling Lucky then you can just type whatever you know will be the first result into the url bar and go straight there, for instace i visit t-mobile.co.uk a fair bit and i just type "t mobile" (it works as long as its two words or more as single words can be confused as bookmark shourtcuts).

That as much as i can help...

[MarcLister]

Hmm. It's just that I hate to restore XP on my laptop at home over the weekend and I was using Firefox and I noticed the search bar. Started using it and thought it was actually very useful. I know I can just type "g blah blah blah" but with the search bar I don't even have to type "g".

Why oh why Opera is so stubborn in this manner is ridiculous!

[LeperousDust]

But you have to navigate to a search bar!? Press f2 type "g ***" enter, mouse not included... My search bar to the right includes all my quick searches i've made by default (i've never even noticed this until you have me look at it). It also defaults to my default search (funnily enough). Not sure what problems your having there, but i wouldn't put it past the fact its still beta?

[MarcLister]

Oooh didn't know about F2. :) I likes.

9.25 here. Haven't gotten around to 9.5 beta yet.

[Feek]

I installed the latest beta at the weekend again to give it a try and I persevered throughout the whole weekend but yesterday I had to go back to Firefox as there were too many minor irritations.

Firstly, having to play around with the skin.ini to set the tab width to something more user friendly is awkward, but perfectly doable although from time to time the tabs seem to resize themselves and the only cure is to close it and reopen.

If I've got a web page with a number of links and I want to open a few of them (pictures ;)), I have to hold down shift and control as I click the link to get them to open in background tabs and not take focus.

Once I get to those images, if they're too large for the screen, they don't get resized automatically to fit. There may be a setting for this somewhere but I couldn't find it.

Alt-S. I mentioned this in a previous Opera thread. A lot of my browsing is forum whoring and the standard keyboard shortcut to submit a post in all other browsers I've used is alt-s. I'm used to just typing in that text entry box and hitting alt-s to submit. It doesn't work, and despite spending a lot of time trying to find a way to make it work, it just doesn't. I can see from internet searching that I'm not the only person who has thought this a problem.

I found its method of using bookmarks quite clunky, the way they expand out into multiple panels doesn't compare with a scrollable list of bookmarks.

I do like the quick link screen and the ability to use ctrl-1, ctrl-2 etc to open a fresh tab and go straight to that page. It's good, it works and it works well.

It seems speedy, this is good.

I don't like the border around the page. This is minor, but annoying! When the browser is full screen it has a amall border on the left side.

The last thing I can think of is that Vista doesn't seem to recognise it as a browser! When I launch Opera, it always tells me that it's not the default browser and would I like to make it so? I always say yes. Next time, it asks the same question and if I manually go to set the default programs, Opera isn't listed. This is probably an OS thing but it’s annoying me.

All in all, I can see the potential and if weren’t for the few things I've listed, I'd be sticking with it. In fact, not all of those would need to be addressed but all together they make it unusable for me.

[Mark]

The Vista default browser thing is probably UAC playing it's usual games. Though you really shouldn't have to, right click Opera, run as Administrator, say yes to the prompt, close. Should fix that.

[Feek]

I have UAC turned off.

[LeperousDust]

I installed the latest beta at the weekend again to give it a try and I persevered throughout the whole weekend but yesterday I had to go back to Firefox as there were too many minor irritations.

Firstly, having to play around with the skin.ini to set the tab width to something more user friendly is awkward, but perfectly doable although from time to time the tabs seem to resize themselves and the only cure is to close it and reopen.

You mentioned this last time, i couldn't advise on this as i've never has a problem with the tab sizes, they do get small eventually but only after you have about 20+ open and i start using the favicons and just remembering roughly where they are (yes i've never realised myself that isnt good!). I'm sure there used to be some sort of way to make tabs stay the same width and stack over two lines, but i can't remember where that was...


If I've got a web page with a number of links and I want to open a few of them (pictures ;)), I have to hold down shift and control as I click the link to get them to open in background tabs and not take focus.

Fair enough, i think thats a good default setting, opening in front of you is intuitive and doesn't every other browser do that? For future reference though, if you middle click it does the same as firefox, or you could use the rightclick up down mouse gesture too. No keyboard needed.


Once I get to those images, if they're too large for the screen, they don't get resized automatically to fit. There may be a setting for this somewhere but I couldn't find it.

Yes opera's problem, if you have fit to width turned on (ctrl + f11, or in the view menu) from the initial page you were opening the images that is given to the links you open as well and that should work. Alternatively there is a UserJS script i use to use (from someone else) that worked a lot better, you could tell it how to default big images (ie fit screen) but by clicking on the top left of the window you could cycle through fit vertical, fit horizontal, normal, etc...
//Edit: Ta-da! (http://userjs.org/scripts/browser/enhancements/autosizer)


Alt-S. I mentioned this in a previous Opera thread. A lot of my browsing is forum whoring and the standard keyboard shortcut to submit a post in all other browsers I've used is alt-s. I'm used to just typing in that text entry box and hitting alt-s to submit. It doesn't work, and despite spending a lot of time trying to find a way to make it work, it just doesn't. I can see from internet searching that I'm not the only person who has thought this a problem.

New beta screws around with the old shortcuts, it didnt make old users happy, and it didnt attract many new ones either, no idea why they did that. But after enough moaning there is an option now in tools -> preferences -> shortcuts to tick "use single key shortcuts" that should bring it back. The reason to lose them in the first place as because the single key shortcuts opera has used for the last few years have always been know to mess up some other OS's


I found its method of using bookmarks quite clunky, the way they expand out into multiple panels doesn't compare with a scrollable list of bookmarks.

Agreed i suppose, but i don't even organise mine i just use quick find, thats if i even use the bookmard pane, i just use the shortcut names i've set most of the up with (intuitively) in the url bar.


I do like the quick link screen and the ability to use ctrl-1, ctrl-2 etc to open a fresh tab and go straight to that page. It's good, it works and it works well.

It seems speedy, this is good.

I don't like the border around the page. This is minor, but annoying! When the browser is full screen it has a amall border on the left side.

I'd never noticed this until i had someone else point this out to me, on the left is there because of the panes you can click out, although f4 does just fine so you should be a llowed to remove it. Thats the only border i can see. On Full Screen theres nowt at all just checked, not even the border to the left.


The last thing I can think of is that Vista doesn't seem to recognise it as a browser! When I launch Opera, it always tells me that it's not the default browser and would I like to make it so? I always say yes. Next time, it asks the same question and if I manually go to set the default programs, Opera isn't listed. This is probably an OS thing but it’s annoying me.

Mine works fine (even the beta), i'll blame Vista x64 sorry.


All in all, I can see the potential and if weren’t for the few things I've listed, I'd be sticking with it. In fact, not all of those would need to be addressed but all together they make it unusable for me.
I think i've made excuses for most of them now :p ;D :D

[Feek]

The tab thing isn't an issue any more, I found the tweak option in skin.ini, but it's a shame I had to do that - The rest, I'll play again this evening, ta :)

[Feek]

Wayhay, I found the thing making the border - It was the clicky thing to expand out the left panel so that's gone.

I've changed the shortcut thing so I'll see if that works when I submit this message.

The image script is loaded, that works and resizes nicely, I added the image prefetch script that's linked from the same page - Ta.

Never really used middle click before, it's quite stiff on my mouse (fnarr) so I'll run for a few days and see if I can get used to it.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, I downloaded a urlfilter file which has helped with the adverts but I'm seeing a lot more adverts than I've ever seen before. The FF adblock addin is much better, but I guess it's a case of tweaking the filter file as I find stuff.

Right, with these tweaks I'll give it a few more days trialout, thanks :)

Bah - On single click shortcuts, alt-s still doesn't do anything.

[LeperousDust]

Right, middle click i don't like doing that either as my mouse isn't really middle click friendly. I use the up down mouse gesture personally. Mouse gestures are the way forward anyway, look at those :)

I'm VERY suprised with urlfilter.ini failing. Where are you seeing ad's? Getting upto date urlfilters sometimes is hit and miss maybe, but i haven't updated mine in ages now, mine definately works great. Although the odd bit of flash gets through, becuase it isn't a script like the FF plugin just a literal URL filter which has its upsides (perfomance) and downsides (some crap still gets past :().

This alt-s thing i'm gonna have a look at, i'm assuming its some kind of submit command? I'm checking that now as we speak :) Hope this helps!

[Feek]

It all helps, Alex - In fact all these little tweaks are making a big difference :D

I see right click, down, up as the gesture to open in a background tab - Seems to work, it's just remembering to use it!

And the ads I'm seeing most are automatic word underlines in some news items/forum posts - I've tried adding the URL into urlfilters but in this specific case it hasn't worked -

This sort of thing http://www.ukrm.org/feek/advert.jpg, where the double underline is put in automatically and hovering over it gives that pop up.

[LeperousDust]

Your advert.jpg doesn't seem to load for me, but i think i know what you're on about, theyre kinda scripted events, which annoyingly are the only thing i think opera urlfilter can't block... Because of the very simple nature it works. There maybe a script that you can add to UserJS that quietens them, i've never looked into (i avoid double underlined things like the plauge! :D). What are the specific advers called again i know they have a name but i can't remember it!

I'm no closer with alt-s i'm afraid, i've never used it, and i'm just used to pressing tab then enter, thats my only answer there. It is some command issued by the browser which means it can definately be replicated by opera but i dont know what i'm looking for in the advanced shortcuts section. I've tried looking for "submit" and things on that line but turned up nothing.
I'm being pretty lazy and can't be arsed checking, but i think this (http://www.twobeds.com/upload/userfiles/LeperousDust/urlfilter.ini) is the urlfilter list i'm using :) It's working great for me, tip dont make the urlfitler file too big (it just means opera takes a little longer to start up inititally thats all).

Mouse gestures will transform your browsing habbits, and one day you'll wonder why the F**K windows explorer doesn't use them, or most other things by default.

[MarcLister]

Not just me then Alex! ;D

I was thinking, "Er, there's nothing here".

[Feek]

Is it being blocked because it has advert in the filename? ;) (it loads perfectly here!)

[LeperousDust]

Nah, opera still loads things with advert in it, just certain urls added to the filter, tried IE which has frig all installed to stop that, its not displaying anything either.

The popups are called "Hover Ads" "DHTML Ads" "Mouseover Ads" AFAIK, and apart from on a site by site basis, looks like thats something you'll just have to learn to avoid, sorry :( But if you visit the same site regulary tits possible a UserJS file (for that site only) has been written to write out the ads.

For example :) (http://userjs.org/scripts/site/fixes/scambusters-com-popupfix)

[MarcLister]

I've had enough of Opera 9.24 crashing on me so I tried to check out the debug information. Something is up with opera.dll apparently. The txt file that tells all has gone so must be a temporary file. Next time Opera crashes I will endeavour to find the sod and work out what it means or who to send it to for an explanation of why it is crashing.

I'm annoyed as I understand Opera is meant to be superstable compared to Firefox and IE7. Well its more unstable than they are. Something is wrong with how Opera is setup on my PC I think.

[Stan_Lite]

Feek's link works for me in all three :p

I downloaded and installed Opera last night after reading this thread (latest beta - in for a penny, in for a pound :D) and I think it's ok so far - it seems to be pretty quick.

I managed to get the toolbars moved around so that it's the same as FF (I like the way they're set out in FF). I made my own version of the bookmarks toolbar folder as that's one of the features I like about FF, I have several folders each containing a number of bookmarks in the toolbar directly above the tabs.

After much faffing about, I managed to get it to open several tabs with my most visited sites at startup - took bloody ages though. FF is a case of opening up whichever pages you want on separate tabs and clicking "use current" in options - why can't Opera be as simple?

Now that I've mostly got the set up the way I want it, I'll start trying it out properly and see how I like it. I've been using FF for so long that I'm going to take a bit of convincing but I'll try to give it a fair trial.

I may be back with questions so don't go too far away ;)

[LeperousDust]

Marc crashing like that is quite often upto the few third party plugings, like flash, shockwave, WMP, quicktime etc... All those totally up to date?

Stan are you talking about sessions? You can save the current window or multiple windows as sessions? I'm not exactly what you're talking about though...

[MarcLister]

As far as I am aware yes. How can I check?

[LeperousDust]

Not entirely sure, have a poke around "opera:plugins" :)

//Edit: That doesn't help at all, personally i'd just download some plugins and install them again see what happens. But that might only make things worse i dont really know....

[Stan_Lite]

Stan are you talking about sessions? You can save the current window or multiple windows as sessions? I'm not exactly what you're talking about though...

Ah, I didn't know about sessions. Having checked it out, that's a lot easier than what I did and quite handy.

[LeperousDust]

In the general startup preferences choose "Show start-up Dialogue", so you can jump straight into sessions you usually use, or start with none what-so-ever. Thats how i've got mine set up anyway :)

[Stan_Lite]

In the general startup preferences choose "Show start-up Dialogue", so you can jump straight into sessions you usually use, or start with none what-so-ever. Thats how i've got mine set up anyway :)

I have it set to "continue saved sessions" as I only have the one session saved. This opens the browser with the pages I want in tabs but in the same state I saved the session in. I would like them to refresh automatically when I start the browser. I Googled for a solution but the only solution I could find made no sense.

Another couple of little niggles, is there a way to refresh all tabs at the same time? In FF, you right click on any tab and click "reload all tabs", I can't find a similar function in Opera - Also CTR+F5 does absolutely nothing :huh:

The only solutions I have found to the reload all tabs and reload at start issues involve a navigation tab of some sort which doesn't seem to exist (older versions, possibly?) I found a navigation toolbar but it doesn't seem to do anything and the options in the solutions I found don't exist on it anyway, so that can't be the same thing.

At least CTRL+F still works :p

[LeperousDust]

Go into Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Shortcuts & Tick "Enable single key shortcuts". It's a version thing, all the shortcuts were changed from single keys to very strange multiple ones, so its compatible with everything (some shortcuts were system mapped originally). Once this is ticked, the shortcuts 1,2, ctrl + p, ctrl + f5, 0, 9, and countless others like obvious ctrl + n, and ctrl + r etc... are all back to normal :)

[Stan_Lite]

Go into Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Shortcuts & Tick "Enable single key shortcuts". It's a version thing, all the shortcuts were changed from single keys to very strange multiple ones, so its compatible with everything (some shortcuts were system mapped originally). Once this is ticked, the shortcuts 1,2, ctrl + p, ctrl + f5, 0, 9, and countless others like obvious ctrl + n, and ctrl + r etc... are all back to normal :)

I did that and it made no difference so I went back in and changed the keyboard setup from "Opera Standard" to "Opera 9.2 compatible" and all was well - CTRL+ALT+R reloads all the tabs nicely :cool:

[LeperousDust]

Oh cool :) You could just add reload all yourself and bind it to ctrl + f5 in the customise section. Strange ctrl + f5 works fine for me...
Apart from that then, hows it feel :p?

[LeperousDust]

How are the Opera installs coming along? I installed and configured the latest Opera beta built last night, backed up my profile, and completely removed everything and installed again, and Opera is currently absolutely flying! :D I may write a little how to initially configure Opera tutorial if anyone likes? Just got Del.icio.us as integrated as it can get too, and finally solved a few little niggles with my external download manager (FDM). Only final problem is downloading xml nzb files from NewzBin opera can't detect and save the correct file extension...

[MarcLister]

Still having the rather annoying Opera 9.24 crash opera.dll issues. Would completely removing all traces of Opera and reinstalling be worth it?

[LeperousDust]

Possibly, i did, i uninstalled it removed the program files folder and the %appdata% folder and then just copied over speeddial.dat wand.dat and oper6.aht for speed dial wand and bookmarks. And set all my other settings up again, it really is flying currently. I don't know about yourself but i'm totally reliant on the beta now, its perfect for me :)

[MarcLister]

Well I'm in between two places really. As far as I am concerned 9.24 should be rock stable and it isn't. Although I know that it is opera.dll crashing I don't know what it is, some pages cause it when they are just one of several tabs, but when I open up an offending page on its own, nothing happens.

I'm wondering if completely nuking Opera and reinstalling will help. I assume it will, even if it doesn't work, it would then imply that something else on my PC is causing the problems.

I also had that rather amusing problem with a beta from a few weeks ago, I would shut Opera down and then get a message telling me its crashed! I think not, good sir! I've just shut you down. :p

I don't use Speed Dial at the moment but I have exported my bookmarks so I might nuke Opera now. I'll go to the Opera site and see what folders I need to hunt down and mercilessly annihilate to clean my PC. ;D

[LeperousDust]

Yeah just reinstall doesn't take more than 30 mins to have Opera exactly as you last had it :)

On a more anal retentive note that doesn't matter but is nice anyway, i just found these opera speed tests (http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html) (shame it only goes up to 9.01 though) Opera does pretty bloody well in these!

[MarcLister]

Well I've reinstalled and I'm not going to use the urlfilter.ini for a while. Or the custom css I had for over there. Just going to try Opera as vanilla as possible and see how it works. That way if the errors still happen I know it isn't the urlfilter.ini or the custom css etc.

[LeperousDust]

I should be revising for two exams i have over the next two days but anyway, if anyone has Opera 9.5 and would like to use the new Gmail 2.0 (which gmail won't push to us because they ignore opera). The opera community have (as usual) solved it themselves! http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=215172 Follow these instructions and you can use all the new fancy Gmail 2.0 features right in your favourite browser ;)

Haven't tried this yet, as i use Aspell, but this UserJS spelling which uses the GMail spelling engine looks good too, see here:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=182282

[LeperousDust]

Wow I'm VERY impressed with this online spell checker, it's totally in-line, its only problem is it has to be run by pressing a little button when ever you want to check spelling. So its not fully automatic like I've used with IE.

[LeperousDust]

Just found this whilst tweaking some-more, this is for you feek unless you've already spotted it. Checked the "wrapping options" on the appearance of the tab bar? Easy way is to right click te tab bar and click customise, and mess around with that i think thats what you're after. Or go through the menus, tools appearance, toolbrs then select the toolbar area to activate the options for it. :)

[MarcLister]

Incidentally Alex 9.24 is very stable now. Either there was a dodgy file somewhere or the custom css I had for that site over there was causing me a problem. I doubt it was the urlfilter.ini as you have that as well without any problems.