Just tried out Opera. Wow! My Firefox will be left set off to the side now.

 

They also have Safari for PCs.

I have it on my PC, but haven't used it.

 

THEY HAVE SAFARI FOR PC's?!!!!!!!!

I feel dirty. I must shower now........

 

I kid you not.

http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

No go shower.

 

I think I will stick with the Geeks on this one. I will admit that IE7 has improved but I see no reason to switch back at this point.

 

Safari looks slick, but I've found it to be lacking when it comes to configuration options. It seems targetted towards non-power users. Too bad because my next computer will be a Mac, but I'll likely be running Opera still... even if I have to run it on a virtual machine.

 

I have used Firefox for years, with great success. I am certainly willing to give Opera a go. I just hope it can give me stuff like 'Forecast Fox' (built in forcast feature), as well as 'No Script' (LOVE this one for stopping all sorts of crap that slows down my already decrepit dialup connection).

 

In Opera, click the eye-glasses for some additional options, including speach control of the browser (I find it too clumsly but it is cool).

Also, if you're developing a web site and you want to see what it will look like on small PDA/cell phone screens: Shift-F11

+ or - keys to zoom/unzoom

It has an special layout for those with vision problems.

The quick dial is really cool. Also, hover your mouse over a tab and it shows you a small thumb-nail of what that page looks like without having to switch to it.

Want to take a tab and make it a separate browser instance? Click the tab and drag it anywhere off the main page and it becomes its own independent browser window.

I have a bunch of short-cuts I use that makes it very handy.

Plus, Opera does support plug-ins, hundreds of them (they say thousands because it also supports Netscape plug-ins )

 

Ok...Ok...so I am now using Opera!

What plug-ins are recommended?

 

What rendering engine do Firefox and Opera use?

Way back when (back when HTML 1.0 was all the rage and most people still thought Java was coffee!), I had the unenviable task of trying to load java-intensive web pages into either Netscape 3.0 or IE 3.0 (those being the only two choices of the time). The machine was fairly limited in both it's processor HP and it's memory capacity.

Netscape, with it's Mozilla engine, routinely crashed the entire computer; either with a hard lock-up or simply shutting down the machine.

IE of the time rendered the pages without a complaint. I grudgingly switched. I had to have the pages, but I always thought Netscape's user interface was much better.

In years since, I've occasionally tried non-IE browsers on Java- and JavaScript-intensive pages, and still run into problems.

My company's website now is optimized for IE6, and the company refuses to support (or even acknowledge, in some cases) anything else. It's HEAVILY JavaScript dependent.

Are there hardware (i.e. processor/memory) constraints, or setup issues, that prevent the Mozilla rendering engine from working as well as IE's?

-blaine

 

Yea! What Frankenbiker

I also want to know if Java is coffee compliant, and that IE is backed with HTML
engines and Netscape interfaced transmissions; and that Java-scripted pages
are intensive without a complaint from I.E. 6.3

I have no idea about this stuff.

 

No modern browers that I know of have problems like that. Most rendering engines from tests I've seen are far better then IE, the other browsers, Opera and FF included sometimes have problems with IE optomized pages because IE needs quite a few hacks and tricks to make certain things to display how they should. Some sites have hacks that don't play nice with the other more compliant browsers

 

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presto_(layout_engine) - Opera uses their own rendering engine, and licenses it to other companies. Many cell phones use a scaled down version of it.

2. I agree about Netscape. 4.x was wonderful, especially the collapsable menus. They really dropped the ball and made a slow, buggy pig with 6.x.

3. I've yet to run into an Javascript problems with Opera. Java... well, none that had anything to do with Opera and everything to do with the version of Java (the same bug would show up in all my browsers until I changed Java versions!).

4. If you run into a page which requires IE (there are some), go to the site preferences and tell Opera to mask itself as IE. Works the vast majority of the time.

5. Plug-in.... well, I guess that depends on what you are using it for. As a developer, my choice is likely to be very different but right off hand I recommend these:

(Notes:
-blocking is built-in, but I never use it... I'm one of those who considers it copyright infringement and undering the ability for a site to provide free content.
-If you use torrents, bit-torrent file transfers are built in as well. Use at your own risk... most torrents are pirated stuff with no way to know if there is a hidden trojan in the software.)

1. Powermarks book mark plug-in. Works with most browsers, including Opera. Think of it as a book-mark manager on steriods (although Opera's is very good).

2. Opera file explorer. Manage your cookies, links and history with an interface similar to Window's file explorer.

3. No need for any download managers. Built-in, with lots of features.

4. Window controller. Provides even more user interface benefits.

5. Many of your current plugins for Firefox/Mozilla should work with Opera. I believe the Mozilla team has also started documenting which one's have been tested.

6. Dictionary searches are built in in Opera. No need for a plug-in for this like you need in Firefox.

7. http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew...nels/pagerank/ - Google pagerank button

8. Firefox tab browser preferences extension.... functionality is already built-in to Opera.

9. http://userjs.org/scripts/browser/en...nts/link-alert - Link alert and anti-phishing plug-in

10. User-agent switch extension to Firefox. Built-in to Opera. Hit F12.

11. Ctrl-Alt-V - page validator built-in to Opera

12. http://userjs.org/ - Opera's built-in user Javascript features. Firefox requires Greasemonkey plugin to do the same thing.

13. Firefox session saver plug-in. Built-in to Opera.

14. Firefox Quicknote plug-in (like stickie notes for web pages). Built-in to Opera. Select text and hit Ctrl-Shift-C

15. Nextplease Firefox extension: yup... you guessed it. Built-in to Opera: http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/fforward/

16. Firefox download manager enchancements extension... all these features and more are built-into Opera.

17. Linkification extension for Firefox lets you click plain-text non-clickable links. Built-in to Opera. Right-click the URL and select Go To URL.

18. Duplicate tab extension for Firefox. Built-in to Opera. Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N

19. http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/2006/0...ions-and-opera - Of the top 113 extensions for Firefox, 38 are already built-in with Opera, 14 are available as Opera plug-ins or buttons, and 21 can be roughly emulated with advanced customization features.


Netscape plugins usually install easily. For those that don't, a tips page:
http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/278/

Oh... when I say "Netscape" plugins I also mean Mozilla. Firefox is based on Mozilla.

When people think of Firefox, they also think of the extensions that make it nice. When they think of Opera... they don't because most of it is already there plus many things you can't find Firefox extensions for.

If something better than Opera comes out I'll use it regularly but so far they keep raising the bar that others have to match with extensions or new browser versions.

 

I have been using Opera now since 2005 (when I first saw Ken's suggestion on trying it)

I think its the ducks guts.
I, personally find it runs a little slower than Fx - but that is more due to the fact that I usually run Opera with about 15tabs open at once, and Fx with only 2...

I really love the "return from last time" feature for your home page, the simple usability of it. Options and ad-ins.
Want to move back a page? Hold the right mouse button down, move the mouse back. Forward is the exact opposite.


I will admit, as a not-so computer savvy person, it did take me a bit to get used to it from Fx and IE, but having used it more and more, it is just simple, and MAKES SENSE.

 

Fred. I thought since you're down under, isn't it the opposite?

Move the mouse back to go forward, and move the mouse forward to go back?