Firefox is better than Opera IMHO

[casioculture]

Not meaning to start a loyalty war, but just reporting my experience
from having just tried opera. I know I should perhaps give it some
time, but this alone should be telling! With firefox I had no trouble
at all, it's all there right from the start, very easy and pleasant to
use, and after a little time, customizable to an extent that makes
using any other browser for even a slight period a considerable
annoyance.

No, it has nothing to do with the ad banner, it's just that Opera feels
a little behind the times compared to firefox. Also, it feels too
geeky, in a bad way; too many panels, too many buttons, too many
features, too many things that must read about. I accidentally clicked
some button and it sprang up a pane that I had no idea what it was for
or how to get rid of it; I'm not stupid, I just don't really have the
inclination at this time to RTFM much. I think the Firefox folks got it
right by making the base browser as simple as it can be, and leaving
all the additional functionality to extentions. Oh yes, and I knew I
would mis the firefox extensions and niceties, such as mycroft (all
those amazon and other 'shopping' searches on opera that I couldn't
easily change seemed hedious; firefox has that readily apparent 'add
search engine' right from the start).

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much better.
Same is for Thunderbird. The two are really delightful pieces of
software.

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

wrote:

Not meaning to start a loyalty war, but just reporting my
experience from having just tried opera. [...]

No war from my part. I've used Opera for about a year but switched to
FireFox acouple of months ago.

I think the Firefox folks got it right by making the
base browser as simple as it can be, and leaving all the
additional functionality to extentions.

I'll agree with you there. The extensions are really what sets FireFox
apart from Opera.

However, I think that Opera is a much more polished program:
- Usable navigation with the keyboard, as opposed to tabbing around
- Zoom that works as it should
- Tabhistory that doesn't sometimes forget
- No mistyping because one begins to type to fast after opening a
new tab
- Much better popup-handling, as it allows user-activated popups

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much
better. [...]

I'll stick to FireFox for now, but that's mainly because of adblocker
and webdeveloper plugins.

 

[Martin R. Howell]

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much better.
Same is for Thunderbird. The two are really delightful pieces of
software.

It's not even close. Firefox and Thunderbird win by a landslide.

 

[xtort]

Agrees with Toke... Opera is much more polished. The key mouse
gestures, the paste-and-go (which are only availible as an ext in FF),
the zoom, etc..

But that said, that ad (for the freeware user) is a drag they should
get rid of.

Ultimately though, as far as browsers go, the growth of FF is a good
thing -- while the abundance of IE wrappers is a bad thing. (it is just
diguised IE dependence)

 

[Murdock]

Hi,

Not meaning to start a loyalty war, but just reporting my experience
from having just tried opera.

I have been using Opera from version 4 (we are now at version 7) at I am
still happy with it. I also have FireFox installed on my machine, but I
always find myself returning to Opera. When thing that is really
annoying in FireFox is the way bookmarks are sorted. I want the
'folders' first (alphabetically) and than the links (alpabetically), but
that is impossible in FireFox. Another thing I like very much in Opera
is the 'Magic Wand' functionality used to remember user-ID and password.

Opera seems to be less 'compatible' than FireFox, but I can live with
that. The FireFox user interface is more polished than the Opera user
interface, but I am no sucker for 'bells and whistles'.

Bye Jan...

 

[123]

When thing that is really annoying in FireFox is the way bookmarks
are sorted. I want the 'folders' first (alphabetically) and than
the links (alpabetically), but that is impossible in FireFox.

Um, if you click the Bookmarks menu in Firefox they ARE sorted by
folders first and then links, both alphabetically.

Another thing I like very much in Opera is the 'Magic Wand'
functionality used to remember user-ID and password.

Um, Firefox also has this functionality.

So... have you every actually used Firefox?

 

[Aaron]

Opera seems to be less 'compatible' than FireFox, but I can live with
that. The FireFox user interface is more polished than the Opera user
interface, but I am no sucker for 'bells and whistles'.

Actually I find Opera has more 'bells and whistles', that's what makes it
harder to control .

 

[Aaron]

- Much better popup-handling, as it allows user-activated popups

Not sure what you mean by that. Firefox has this too.

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

Not sure what you mean by that. Firefox has this too.

Whoops, my bad. It sure has.

I wonder how I got the impression that it didn't? Maybe it was missing
in earlier version of the browser? Og maybe I just got it confused with
IE's popup-blocker.


The opening of such windows are btw. another case of Opera being more
polished. It's a little thing, but when I click on a link that opens a
new window in fireFox, it opens the window and then docks it among my
other tabs (I prefer new windows to be tabbed). In opera, the open
directly in a new tab. On my maschine, the FireFox way takes maybe ½-1
second more and worse: It's distracting.

 

[123]

The opening of such windows are btw. another case of Opera being more
polished. It's a little thing, but when I click on a link that opens a
new window in fireFox, it opens the window and then docks it among my
other tabs (I prefer new windows to be tabbed). In opera, the open
directly in a new tab. On my maschine, the FireFox way takes maybe ½-1
second more and worse: It's distracting.

Hmm, when I click a link in Firefox it always opens immediately in a new
tab. Are your settings correct? Check: Tools menu -> Options -> Advanced,
and under the Tabbed Browsing section, make sure "a new tab in the most
recent window" is selected. Let me know how it goes!

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

Hmm, when I click a link in Firefox it always opens immediately in
a new tab. Are your settings correct? Check: Tools menu ->
Options -> Advanced, and under the Tabbed Browsing section, make
sure "a new tab in the most recent window" is selected.

Maybe I need to upgrade to 1.0.1 (or whatever the newest version is),
because my 1.0.0 didn't have that preference.

However, I found that "Open these requested JavaScript popups i tabs:"
was set to "Unresized popups". Setting it to "All popups" solved the
problem. Thanks a lot!

Now I only need the keyboard navigation and the zoom to be truly happy
with FireFox.

 

[123]

However, I found that "Open these requested JavaScript popups i tabs:"
was set to "Unresized popups". Setting it to "All popups" solved the
problem. Thanks a lot!

Where are these options in Firefox? Are you running FF or Mozilla?

 

[Aaron]

Maybe I need to upgrade to 1.0.1 (or whatever the newest version is),
because my 1.0.0 didn't have that preference.

However, I found that "Open these requested JavaScript popups i tabs:"
was set to "Unresized popups". Setting it to "All popups" solved the
problem. Thanks a lot!

It is advisable to upgrade to 1.0.1 due to the security patches, but you
can have advanced tab browsing options in 1.0 too. Follow the
instructions here

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_tabbedbrowsingoptions

Or type about:Config in your location bar and do the same thing.

Now I only need the keyboard navigation and the zoom to be truly happy
with FireFox.

You need extensions for these.

 

[Heinrich Himmelschrei]

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much better.

I prefer K-Meleon.
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

Heinrich Himmelschrei
Himmelschrei Fluggesellschaft AG

 

[Bill Day]

Not meaning to start a loyalty war, but just reporting my experience
from having just tried opera. I know I should perhaps give it some
time, but this alone should be telling!
[snip]

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much better.
Same is for Thunderbird. The two are really delightful pieces of
software.

well.....I see these threads now & then, and I almost never see Opera
& Firefox compared on what I consider the most important features.
Neither one is perfect, so I use 'em both!

Opera is internally faster....this has nothing to do with time to load
a web page, or even time to load initially. But once running, it
navigates much faster between tabs, and especially going forward and
back between several levels of a web site. I guess this has something
to go with its caching algorithm. Firefox has a noticeable ......delay
that sometimes has me hitting 'back' twice, whereas Opera is as close
to instantaneous as it can be.

The other feature that Opera excels in is the handy one finger
keyboard shortcuts for common moves. For going forward and back in a
web site, it is 'x' and 'z', and for tabbing thru HTML links in a
page, it is 'q' and 'a' ...all right under the left hand. I know that
Firefox has similar shortcuts, but they require either the mouse or
two hands or two keys. (alt left arrow..etc..)

Also, Opera has a really serious trick that I do NOT see a way to do
in Firefox...it can *hide* the tabs you have open, so that you not
only have more window space, but casual observers passing by don't see
the tabs to gaming and porn sites you might have open.. *grin*....and
these invisible tabs are cycled thru by using the '1' & '2' keys,
again, under the left hand .

(Opera also has a "session saver" built in, so that on a crash...or
just because you wish, the sites & tabs you were using are saved,
allowing you to continue from where you were.)

Now, that being said, Firefox, has recently made "session saver"
available in an extension......and of course, by using extensions,
Firefox's open source design has made many, many features available
that Opera does not have. ....such as weather on the toolbar and
clever download tricks...etc. I have maybe 10-12 extensions installed
in Firefox, from a color picker to "image toolbar" to download
controls to enhanced tab & mouse gesture tricks.

If Firefox would allow hiding of tabs, make keyboard shortcuts easier,
and speed up its internal navigation, I would happily use it almost
exclusively....as it is, I use both Opera and Firefox on a daily
basis, with occasional excursions into K-Meleon and Off by One.

Hard drives are BIG now, and I see no problem with having several
browsers...just in case. (oh, yeah....I.E. sits over there in the
corner also...for that twice a year special need.)

 

[elaich]

When thing that is really
annoying in FireFox is the way bookmarks are sorted. I want the
'folders' first (alphabetically) and than the links (alpabetically), but
that is impossible in FireFox.

Not with the "Sort Bookmarks" extension.

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/list.php/Firefox/all#sortbookmarks

 

[miskairal]

Murdock wrote:




Um, if you click the Bookmarks menu in Firefox they ARE sorted by
folders first and then links, both alphabetically.

Umm, well mine aren't and I have nothing in the Bookmarks menu that
allows the folders to be sorted before the links. I am using 1.0. This
is the only annoying feature I find with FF

 

[miskairal]

The whole user experience of using Firefox, IMHO, is much much better.
Same is for Thunderbird. The two are really delightful pieces of
software.

I had used Opera for about 2 years but the last few vesion I had kept
crashing at least once every few hours which was not pleasant when on
dialup.

I finally switched to FF a few months ago and will never go back to
Opera. I like the idea of extensions and it's so much more stable. The
FF Bookmarks are horrible though. I'm now making all my friends and
family use FF or I won't fix their computer problems

 

[casioculture]

Umm, well mine aren't and I have nothing in the Bookmarks menu that
allows the folders to be sorted before the links. I am using 1.0. This
is the only annoying feature I find with FF

You should update to 1.0.1 for security

 

[123]

Umm, well mine aren't and I have nothing in the Bookmarks menu that
allows the folders to be sorted before the links. I am using 1.0. This
is the only annoying feature I find with FF

Um, try using the latest version then and right-click any bookmark and
select "Sort by name" and you'll get them the way you want.