What are the advantages of Opera over Firefox? Cause I know there are people here who lean that way.

What are the advantages of Opera over Firefox? Cause I know there are people here who lean that way.

I've been using Opera since '98, so I'm used to it more than any other browser. Opera are the pioneers of tabbed browsing (on Windows at least--so it irritates me when I read Firefox/Mozilla users raving about it as though they came up with the idea), so they have the concept down to a fine art. As a result, you have greater control over image and formatting display. Unlike other tabbed browsers, Opera allows you to display, or not-display images in individual tabs. Thus one tab can be set to display all images, a 2nd tab can display only cached images, while a 3rd tab can display no images. Very handy if you have a dial-up account and/or a download limit and want to check out a site/page with a lot of unnecessary images you don't want, while also visiting a site with images you do want. All with the click of a button.

Equally important is the formatting display. A simple click of a button allows you to toggle between author mode and user mode. This is a boon when you come across a page created by someone with absolutely no clue about layout or colour co-ordination, or who has set their "visited links" to the same colour as unvisited. User mode strips away everything to leave a simple black on white page, with default colouring for links. The latest version of Opera also takes this one step further and in User Mode you can specify such things as "Emulate a Text Browser", "Disable Tables", "Show Structural Elements" amongst other things. Again, this is specific to the individual tab.

Moreover, both image and formatting modes are inherited by new tabs opened from existing tabs.

Opera also comes with the most accessible keyboard short-cuts -- z and x for back and forward, g for toggling images on/off etc.. It also has mouse movements which are handy -- hold right-button, click left button to go forward; hold left-button, click right button to go back, etc..

The Opera download manager is also pretty good, allowing resumes or retransfers. Doesn't allow queuing though.

hmmm.. and why have never looked beyond explorer and netscape?

I've been using Opera almost as long as Jimi. I've installed Firefox, and it's okay, I suppose.

I miss my mouse gestures. I was told you could install them, but went to the skins/modules/whatever site and got a headache. It has that expandable complexity thing.

My gripe with Opera is that it's less supported by sites than Firefox, and that the newest version does the same reload thing that clears your form settings.

But I'm downgraded to 7.23, and fire up IE every now and again, but keep my million tabs open in Opera every day.

Quick question for the mac-daddies among us.

If you had the choice between an HP 840C printer or an HP 4215xi all-in-one (fax/copy/printer)...either one free, which would you choose.

I'm going to be using it with my iMac.

Thoughts please? I need to decide in the next half hour.

Cheers!

My gripe with Opera is that it's less supported by sites than Firefox

This was the main factor that tipped me towards Firefox.

My gripe with Opera is that it's less supported by sites than Firefox...

It's been a while since I've come across a site that caused problems with Opera. There have been sites where I thought I was having a problem but it turned out to be shoddy coding and so didn't work in any of the browsers I have installed.

I will give Firefox credit for one thing Opera doesn't have--and probably never will have--and that's the plugin to disable flash. A bit of a pain when you come across a site that uses flash for menus etc. but handy for disabling those flash ads appearing every where.

Oh and another thing I like about Opera is its zoom function. It zooms the entire page, both text and images.

It's been a while since I've come across a site that caused problems with Opera.

Off the top of my head the ones that bothered me recently were the Yahoo coupon for free ice cream (displays in Opera, doesn't print), and Gmail in general. Launch.com doesn't work either, IIRC.

Some Flash plugin detector scripts don't recognise I have it installed -- more often than not I just end up skipping those sites.

I wish Gmail supported Opera. That is my big frustration.

Of course, Opera is perfect for me because of it's ability to save sessions. If I have to restart my computer, it's nice to know that Opera will go right back to what I was looking at, usually at the same spot in the webpage. That, if nothing else, will tie me to opera for a long time.

Of course, Opera is perfect for me because of it's ability to save sessions. If I have to restart my computer, it's nice to know that Opera will go right back to what I was looking at, usually at the same spot in the webpage. That, if nothing else, will tie me to opera for a long time.

I think there's a Firefox extension that allows you to do that as well. Someone on LJ was mentioning it the other day, but I haven't checked it out.