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
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.