Opera 9.27 vs. Firefox 3

I was initially drawn to Opera out of curiosity. The beautiful and sleek interface made it easier for me to use a browser other than Firefox. (It's true, I was addicted). Let me explain how a web browser can be beautiful. Every time you hover over an HTML component, the element becomes highlighted, giving it the impression that it is glowing. Also, when a page is loading, the cursor becomes an hourglass, unless you are hovering over an element that is action driven. This subtly suggests that you can perform the action that you are hovering over. Speaking of hovering, when you hover over a tab at the top of the browser, it displays a small screen shot of that page so that you don't have to open the tab up just to see what's there. It has cool features such as fast forward and rewind. It also has an easy to use Speed Dial page which allows you to select from a number of specified pages. This feature is far more useful than a simple homepage. Whenever you close your browser, it will automatically save your session so that when you open Opera next time, you can continue exactly where you left off. It allows for you to disable scripts that are running on your page. This has come in handy for me with javascript debugging. Rather than cycle through masses of alert popups, or restart the browser, there is a checkbox in every popup to stop scripts. Wonderful! It is very compliant to web standards. One issue that irked me with both Firefox and IE was that When you highlight and copy html content, it also copies the hidden content. Not with Opera :) Opera seems less buggy than other browsers. Another important feature worth noting is that when multiple tabs are open, you can cycle through them just like with other browsers with Ctrl + Tab. The difference with Opera is that it doesn't cycle through them in order of tab, it cycles through them in order of how recently you've used the tab. In this sense, it is very much like using Alt + Tab for all applications. In case you haven't yet noticed, I like using a lot of tabs. Currently, I have 7. One final feature, do you ever get annoyed with the little download window that's always in a small, separate window? FYI, if it doesn't show up in firefox by default when you download something, you can force it to appear at any time by hitting Ctrl + J. Anyway, Opera has designed a cool feature that breaks out of the Netscape/IE mold. Rather than having a separate window for downloads, it has a dedicated tab called Transfers. I like this idea as you don't have to add yet another program to your list of desktop processes. Opera is free and I recommend you download it here. Opera has room for improvement incorporating some rich media, but I really like using it.


Recently I downloaded and installed the Beta version of Firefox 3 and I was impressed. They claim that they gutted the code under-the-hood and redesigned it. I was definitely able to feel the difference. In fact, I feel like I will be in love when the real version comes out which should be soon. Already, it makes me feel like I'm using a google product (with all the AJAX features [When you start typing in a url in the address bar, it matches your text not only to previously-used urls, but also text in the urls' title]) plus the sleekness of Opera. Oh yeah, apparently IE 8 is coming out soon too. Even though they claim that IE will finally play by the web standards, I'm not too excited about it.