it doesn't do that annoying blinking thing while the pages load.

Firefox doesn't blink for me.

serial:

The main thing, though, that I adore about Opera is the mouse gestures. Being able to close a window, move onto the next page, move back in history, open a blank page, or move up one level in the directory structure by just wiggling the mouse (no clicking required) is so addictive, and I find myself trying to do it in IE whenever I use it.

Opera is a tabbed browser.

ah. never used it. you'd probably like SB then.

Firefox doesn't blink for me.

it only did it for me on certain sites. lj, beta. places that had a lot of content to load on one page.

Doesn't blink on LJ for me, either. (Not trying to be contrary, just have never seen the behavior.)

FWIW, my LJ issue with Firefox is that in my particular style, it doesn't always render posts that start with a short first line correctly. For whatever reason it decides to make the rest of the post the width of the first line, no matter how short. When it happens, refreshing usually makes it go away.

Not to interrupt Browser Wars, but does anyone have a suggestion how to get a working laptop/notebook with at least Pentium 4 or comparable Athlon chip, for around 600 bucks?

Having used and loved both, what finally tipped me over to the Firefox side was not having to deal with banner ads. Not that the Opera ones were especially distracting, but I like having the extra real estate.

What I didn't like at first is that, in Opera, ALL of the flexibility is built in from the get-go, and in Firefox, you have to individually install the extensions you want (including mouse gestures). Now that I've gotten used to it, my impression is that Firefox is slightly faster.

Wolfram, I don't remember where you live, but I always go to Craigslist for used computers. There are some really good deals if you're careful not to get scammed.

I need to extend the copy of Firefox I'm using on this machine (the Powerbook G4). It's very rare that I run into a site that doesn't work under Firefox, which is a plus.

I grabbed Firefox here at work -- it stole my settings and passwords from Opera (at my request), which is kinda creepy -- it's going through the work proxy w/ password with no problem.

However, it won't go into Bank Of America. And I've just realised that Opera still can, when spoofing IE. Can Firefox spoof?

I haven't tried the mouse gestures thing. Where do I do that?

If you go into Preferences/Mouse and Keyboard, there's an enable mouse gestures checkbox there. Or you can try one, and it asks you if that's what you really mean to do. Right-left-right with the right button depressed (like a Z, but all at one height) closes the active window, for instance.

Now you've made me go to the mouse gestures homepage, and there's so much I could have been doing!