Q: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
Interesting read, I still like the feel of Firefox better because I can not seem to tweak Opera to my affection, but no less interesting results.
Re:Opera ran OK on my old rig considering it was a celeron 300. Firefox broght it to a crawl though, it was a joke.
Re:Opera 8 is great, however it just doesn't work right with some of the sites I frequent (like our school's login site). I've also grown quite acustomed to scrolling with the middle (blue) button on my thinkpad and Opera doesn't seem to support this inside ANY window, browser or preferences. Also, I think firefox manages pop-up windows (the kind you want) and tabs better than opera, plus it supports my scrolling button.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
good to see someone fighting for something other than the "trendy" firefox.
It's trendy to be anti-trendy now.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
I've been a long-time Netscape (since 1.0 16-bit for Windows 3.1) user, and then switched to Mozilla at around 0.9, and then to Firefox at around 0.6 (maybe 0.7). I've used Opera for a few weeks at various points in the past, usually when I was frustrated with the bloat of older Mozilla versions. I recently decided to get Opera 8 beta a spin, over Dec/Jan holiday vacation, since my FF 1.0 was acting up. (Crashing in JS3250.DLL – lated obtained an updated file that seemed to fix the problem.)
Anyways, unlike my experiences with earlier Opera 7.20 in comparison to Moz 1.2-1.4-ish, Opera 8 beta was decidedly a lot more bloated and sluggish than my FF 1.0RC2 is. It wasn't just my opinion, I had Task Manager open to graph the CPU usage, Opera 8 eats CPU like there's no tomorrow. It also had trouble decoding images occasionally. Overall, I didn't like it at all, it was worse than 7.x. The page-scrolling is buttery-smooth, compared to FF, but at the cost of major CPU time, and actual page-loading time in Opera was far worse than either FF 1.0 or what I remember of IE5. (This is on a 1.5M DSL connection – one would think that nearly any page would load "snappy", but that wasn't the case with Opera.) Perhaps this was all because it was still "beta", but I've used plenty of Mozilla/Firefox versions labeled "beta", and they were all more-or-less similar to the released versions.
So, in the end, Opera out-does Mozilla, in being even MORE bloated, slower, buggier… oh yeah, Opera cloned Moz's sidebar too. 
All while FF 1.0 became faster, lighter-weight, and more "spry" than Opera 7.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Opera 8 beta had a lot of annoying rendering errors on some sites, things that FF didn't even have problems with. I tested by changing the user-agent strings to Moz and IE6 as well, in case the server was sending bad markup intentionally, but no change. If there's one thing that a browser should do right, it's render the page correctly, and Opera 8 was pretty bad in that regards. Perhaps they were doing a complete re-write on the engine or something? I dunno. It also causes some wierd machine crashes too, due to the strange way it uses modal pop-up windows for the URL location bar. (Even after attempting to minimze Opera, the URL bar was Z-order topmost, on top of my other active applications!. Total PITA UI brokenness.)
Weeeeell the OP says you are wrong. According to the graphs, Opera 8 is pretty quick. Of course, any issues with it could simply be due to the fact that it's beta too, who knows when it will be released. Although I have to say many of your issues sound odd, as I never have any problems with opera rendering pages correctly or anything. And it's not bloat at all. The beta download is only like 1mb more than firefox, yet it offers the same capabilities as dozens of extensions you'd need to download for firefox.
Re:I've been a long-time Netscape (since 1.0 16-bit for Windows 3.1) user, and then switched to Mozilla at around 0.9, and then to Firefox at around 0.6 (maybe 0.7). I've used Opera for a few weeks at various points in the past, usually when I was frustrated with the bloat of older Mozilla versions. I recently decided to get Opera 8 beta a spin, over Dec/Jan holiday vacation, since my FF 1.0 was acting up. (Crashing in JS3250.DLL – lated obtained an updated file that seemed to fix the problem.)
Anyways, unlike my experiences with earlier Opera 7.20 in comparison to Moz 1.2-1.4-ish, Opera 8 beta was decidedly a lot more bloated and sluggish than my FF 1.0RC2 is. It wasn't just my opinion, I had Task Manager open to graph the CPU usage, Opera 8 eats CPU like there's no tomorrow. It also had trouble decoding images occasionally. Overall, I didn't like it at all, it was worse than 7.x. The page-scrolling is buttery-smooth, compared to FF, but at the cost of major CPU time, and actual page-loading time in Opera was far worse than either FF 1.0 or what I remember of IE5. (This is on a 1.5M DSL connection – one would think that nearly any page would load "snappy", but that wasn't the case with Opera.) Perhaps this was all because it was still "beta", but I've used plenty of Mozilla/Firefox versions labeled "beta", and they were all more-or-less similar to the released versions.
So, in the end, Opera out-does Mozilla, in being even MORE bloated, slower, buggier… oh yeah, Opera cloned Moz's sidebar too. All while FF 1.0 became faster, lighter-weight, and more "spry" than Opera 7.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Opera 8 beta had a lot of annoying rendering errors on some sites, things that FF didn't even have problems with. I tested by changing the user-agent strings to Moz and IE6 as well, in case the server was sending bad markup intentionally, but no change. If there's one thing that a browser should do right, it's render the page correctly, and Opera 8 was pretty bad in that regards. Perhaps they were doing a complete re-write on the engine or something? I dunno. It also causes some wierd machine crashes too, due to the strange way it uses modal pop-up windows for the URL location bar. (Even after attempting to minimze Opera, the URL bar was Z-order topmost, on top of my other active applications!. Total PITA UI brokenness.)
Re:You don't pay a single thing out of your pocket for it, and the ad is for opera, nothing else
Irrelevant, it's still an ad trying to get you to pay for their non-free software.
It's trivial at best, and it's ridiculous to not choose the best browser simply because of this. It's your loss.
It's not even close to being the best browser.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
good to see someone fighting for something other than the "trendy" firefox.
Re:good to see someone fighting for something other than the "trendy" firefox.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
I've already proven that time and again. You can go to the site right now, download the browser, and run it, forever, with every feature. It's entirely free.
Except for the fact that you can't remove the ad, which is a form of payment or they wouldn't have included it.
You don't pay a single thing out of your pocket for it, and the ad is for opera, nothing else. It's trivial at best, and it's ridiculous to not choose the best browser simply because of this. It's your loss.
Originally posted by: guy
A bunch of numbers in a table is far from an "interesting article". What fvcking difference does it make if one browser takes 0.4 seconds longer to load a page than another?
Makes a difference when people claim one is faster than the other. There can be only one. It's strictly for bragging rights.
Re:A bunch of numbers in a table is far from an "interesting article". What fvcking difference does it make if one browser takes 0.4 seconds longer to load a page than another?
Re:I've already proven that time and again. You can go to the site right now, download the browser, and run it, forever, with every feature. It's entirely free.
Except for the fact that you can't remove the ad, which is a form of payment or they wouldn't have included it.
It's just like TV and free websites. Sure the broadcast is free (assuming you're not paying for cable, satellite, etc) but they get money out of it by running commercials and other types of ads.
Re:Yes there is. Has been since like verion 6.
Opera :heart:
Re:Originally posted by: guy
It's not free, if it was they wouldn't need to offer commercial licenses.
I've already proven that time and again. You can go to the site right now, download the browser, and run it, forever, with every feature. It's entirely free.
Re:It's not free, if it was they wouldn't need to offer commercial licenses.
There's no source available, I will always choose OSS software over commercial when I have a choice, it uses QT on Linux and I hate QT, and is there something like the AdBlock extension for Opera or even something as simple as the "Block images from …" that every Gecko browser has?
Re:It is free, and the ad is for opera in a space that will always be there even if you remove the ad. So it doesn't take away from the browser at all, and you won't even notice it when you are browsing. I can't believe people would actually not use opera just because of that, pretty ridiculous if you ask me. It is the best browser and you refuse for one trivial thing.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
if only it were free / didn't have ads.
I love Firefox 
and adblock
:thumbsup::beer:
Re:I'll take slightly slower and free/OSS over faster with a stupid banner ad any day.
Re:Originally posted by: guy
Originally posted by: guy
if only it were free / didn't have ads.
I love Firefox
and adblock
Re:Originally posted by: guy
if only it were free / didn't have ads.
I love Firefox
Re:if only it were free / didn't have ads.
Re:Fastest and most expensive! Mozilla's fine for me, it sits around waiting for data, so I highly doubt anything could be faster for me.
Re:Firefox didn't last a day on my rig, just doesn't come close to what Opera offers. Newest version in beta right now will have web accelerator built in, so all those netzero commercials can die.
0 Comments.