Opera vs Mozilla

Is Mozilla’s browser better than Opera? Well, let’s compare what they consider to be Mozilla Firebird’s biggest features:

comprehensive popup controls to keep unwanted advertising off your desktop

Yup, Opera can do that, and Opera makes it much easier to turn popups on and off. Just press F12 (which also gets you to a lot of other options as well).

a tab browsing mode that lets you open several pages in a single window, allowing you to load links in the background without leaving the page you’re on

Yeah, Opera can do that, and could do it long before anyone else. Opera also makes it easy to make sure that all of your pages show up in a single window.

integrated Google search

Opera beats every other browser in the world on integrated searching. We’ve got Google, Amazon.com, Google Groups, eBay, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Download.com, SearchBoss, Images, Videos, MP3s, News, and Opera Support… and you can add your own if you want to.

industry leading accessibility with Find As You Type – find links and page text by simply typing

Opera has “Inline Find” which is a progressive find feature. You will find it throughout Opera. They aren’t the same thing exactly, but they are close. Find As You Type sounds like a useful feature, except that I don’t often know what letters or words will be linked and which won’t be. Spatial Navigation, however, will let me jump through the links on the page with ease, and much easier than any other browser (we’ll talk more about Spatial Navigation another day).

simplified privacy controls that let you cover your tracks more effectively

More effectively than Internet Explorer, yes. More effectively than Opera? No. Mozilla’s privacy controls include History, Saved Form Information, Saved Passwords, Download Manager History, Cookies, and Cache. Opera can do all that, and will let you delete any or all from one screen, like this:

Plus Opera gives you a great deal of control over what information is given away in the first place, including referrer logging and automatic redirection.

a streamlined browser window that lets you see more of the page than any other browser while at the same time being more configurable

Is this true? Well again, if they are comparing against Internet Explorer, then yes. But they are comparing themselves against “any other browser” and I think they are wrong. But I’ll let you be the judge.

Here are two screenshots, one of Mozilla and one of Opera. Both are viewing the same page. Both are 640 by 480 pixels with the minimum number of toolbars visible, with the default settings for font sizes, etc.

You can see that Opera shows every bit (no pun intended) as much as Mozilla, and actually a little more (compare the bottom right of each screenshot). And in Opera you can press Control + F11 and make even the main menu (file/edit/view/etc) disappear.

Ok, well what about the claim of being more configurable? Again, compared to Internet Explorer, they are definitely right. Compared to Opera? Not even close. Again, don’t take my word for it, compare for yourself.

Here are your options in Mozilla [Note: there is one icon hidden, which is “Paste”] I count 13 options for configuration:

Now compare that to the options you have with Opera:



If I have counted correctly (there are so many I may have lost count!) there are 18 search options and 11 general options on the first screen, and 48 options on the second screen. Opera actually has another panel of options, large icons, which I didn’t even bother to show because they are mostly the same as the small ones… However, this shows clearly that Opera gives you more options than Mozilla.

Still not convinced? Don’t forget that in addition to what I have already mentioned, every toolbar in Opera is completely customizable (using drag and drop), meaning that you can take any of those fields onto any of the toolbars. Opera will also let you edit menus, keyboard commands, and mouse settings by editing plain text files.

a large variety of free downloadable extensions and themes that add specific functionality and visual changes to the browser;

Currently there are 99 extensions for Mozilla Firebird. The claim is that these extensions allow Mozilla Firebird to stay small and unbloated. Compared to Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firebird is small and unbloated. However, just so we are clear, Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 is 6.8 megabytes for Windows (9.2 megabytes for Linux, and 11 megabytes for Mac).

Opera 7.2 is 3.3 megabytes. That is less than half the size of Mozilla Firebird — and Opera also includes a top-notch mail program. (If you want a mail/news program from Mozilla, prepare for another 8.9 megabytes for Windows, 9.2 for Linux, and 10.6 for Mac.)

I haven’t examined all of the extensions, and many of them look very cool, but several of them duplicate functionality which Opera has built-in, including Mouse Gestures, which Opera had long before any other web browser. There’s also Close Other Tabs, Kiosk Mode, Alternate Stylesheet Switcher, User Agent Switcher, and several others to add the same functionality you get from Opera out of the box on a much smaller download.

Like I said, a lot of them look cool, but many of them are either trivial, or aren’t likely to be used by many people, or have nothing to do with web browsing (such as MineSweeper).

As for themes, Opera has plenty of those too. In fact there are currently 177 Opera Skins available. Opera7 has a new one-click download & install feature for skins as well, so you can quickly change the skin you’re in (we’ll talk about that more another day).

At the end of the day, Mozilla and Opera are both great browsers. They are both operating on an entirely different level than Internet Explorer. On a scale of 0 to 10 (where Internet Explorer is clearly a zero), I’d give Mozilla a 7 or 8 and Opera a 9.