1) Opera 7.5 is going to have a much smaller ad bar.

2) Let’s not kid ourselves, if websites coded to the standards, it would be easier for everyone

3) As long as Mozilla group keeps comparing themselves to Opera’s standard setup, you can’t talk about extensions as being a feature.

4) Opera’s options even without the mail ones, are still more than Firefox’s — and the claim was that Firefox is more customizable. So you want us to ignore the mail customizations when Opera includes a mail client, but you want to include Extensions for Firefox? I don’t think so.

5) Firefox claims to have more space for the content of the window. Well, are you talking about default configuration? If so that means no Extensions here, we’re going to compare apples to apples. If we are going to let someone configure their client, well, Opera will let them put everything they want on one toolbar (without needing an Extension, or having to learn XUL). And if they want to maximize space, F11 is always there.

Now, if you want to say that this is a ridiculous claim that doesn’t have anything to do with reality, I’ll agree with you, but Firefox is making claims that aren’t true — or only true if you do things the want they want you to do it (i.e. “When we talk about Feature A we are talking about default configurations, but when we talk about Feature B we want to include Extensions.” That’s not legit.

Extensions may be cool, but they may also break and conflict with one another.

Oh, and any site that relies on generated content will work in Opera and nore Firefox.

6) If you want to use the keyboard shortcuts rather than the toolbar, you’re in luck. Opera will let you change the keyboard commands through the UI, and will let you define your own for search engines as well.

Ok, well, we’ve had 6 months to each say our peace, so comments will be closed today. Thanks to all who participated.

:: It’s much easier to turn popup blocking on and off with Opera - but then again, that’s because Opera doesn’t give you the option of telling it which sites that you want popups to open on. Firefox does. Enter the URL of the site you want to whitelist, and voila! No turning popup blocking on and off constantly when you surf from site to site. ::

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.

:: While Opera offers tabbed browsing, Firefox offers tabbed browsing AND Tabbrowser Extensions. For an extra 300kB (less than a minute to download even on dial-up, folks), Firefox suddenly gains the ability to do all sorts of neat tricks with its tabs - automatic DDE support, open in new window / tab by click type, progress meters in tabs, resizing tabs, automatic focus shift, a customizable right-click context menu - you name it. Firefox’s functions to save and recall tabgroups is less messy than Opera’s as well. Opera doesn’t even come close. ::

Opera beats every other browser in the world on integrated searching. Weve 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.

:: Same here with Firefox - at least the part about users adding in their own searches. Extensions and plugins are being developed by fans that enable Firefox to perform a wide variety of searches from its main window as well. They’re not much right now, but heck, Opera’s been around a whole lot longer than Firefox has. Give it time. ;) ::

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 Ill 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.

:: Now that’s just not right. Generally speaking, I’m an average Joe Schmoe. I don’t disable every visual element and shortcut in my browser window when I surf, and I assume no ordinary person does either. I’ll want my toolbars, my menus, my links, and perhaps a few shortcuts here and there. I’ll want to see tabs when browsing. And, in general day-to-day usage, Opera is beat in the display size department. Among others, there’s that damnable ad in Opera that won’t go away unless you pay, which hogs valuable screen space even if I set the toolbar size to as small as possible. Technically, Opera and Firefox are equal in the display size department, as you’ve pointed out - but in practice, that’s simply not the case. ::

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 didnt 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.

:: Score a point for Opera here. This isn’t a big issue for me, though, seeing as how I’d rather use the keyboard shortcuts rather than the toolbar at times. To be fair, a large number of the toolbar options in Opera are related to its mail client (which Firefox does not have by default), so I’d say it’s a rather moot point. ::

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.)

:: Point 2 for Opera. ^^ Still, frankly speaking - download size isn’t much of a concern to be, seeing as how it’s not likely to affect my daily browsing once I get the program downloaded. If Firefox suffers from slower speed due to its file size, I guess I’d sit up and take notice - but as it is, that’s hardly the case, and the extra megabytes is well worth the extra functionality I get in Firefox. ::

So why Firefox over Opera? Simple, really - Firefox is superior in functionality in almost every aspect, and I can’t say I’m too much into the “let’s-demand-webmasters-to-comply-to-our-browser-instead-of-the-other-way-round” way of thinking. There have been sites which work incorrectly in Opera but not in Firefox (Yahoo! Mail, for one), but I’ve yet to see a site that works in Opera but not in Firefox. Extensions are cool - there’s Adblock, for one. It doesn’t get any cooler than being able to automatically nuke any graphic element on the page, Flash ads included. ;)

You can’t compare versions that way. Firebird is basically just a window and a toolbar with the browser engine that was made for Mozilla, based on code donated and supported by Netscape!

Hmm, it seems lacking. Are there hidden buttons for stuff like Clearing, Errors Only, Messages Only, Warning Only? Is there syntax highlighting?

I’m talking about doing the day to day useful things that CSS can do, not the obscure stuff that is useful for “wow” factor alone. Isn’t generated content obscure and “wow” factor? I’ve needed to use any of the CSS3 generated content module properties/selectors.

I’d be curious to hear if anyone thinks Opera is missing any portions of CSS which they would like to use on a day to day basis. Opera isn’t missing anything crucial. Neither is Gecko. They’re both the same, to me, standards-support wise. Can’t we all just get along? =)

1) Download manager doesn’t pause over different sessions like Opera’s does Firebird does that for me, now. As long as the cache doesn’t get overwritten, you can resume. But I use Getright, anyways.

4) Star Downloader doesn’t integrate as well as I want it to You haven’t looked hard enough. =)

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/

Opera has a turn Multi Document Interface, meaning that you can tile windows, or show two together side by side or 6. Repeat after me: I never will or need to use those features. I have an 800x600 screen. =)

Mozilla can customize searches? How many? Infinity using bookmark keywords. 500-1000 using http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ .

So wait, you are admitting that you didn’t do the testing that I did, which showed that the Mozilla folks lied about showing more than Opera (again, you made it clear you were not talking about out of the box comparisons). Out of box: Mozilla has more screenspace, because of the lack of Hotlist. But, again, this varies so much, you really can’t compare.

Opera also has a vastly superior set of zoom options that will let you squeeze more in the page if you want, plus you can change your default zoom. There’s an extension for this. However, images can’t zoom and I don’t need to use it. But it is useful for visually impaired people.

(Opera 7.5 is designed to show much more by default). Isn’t Hotlist open by default? If so, Opera doesn’t show more than Mozilla.

All the time, because I customized them. I use one or directions, one for Google, one for IMDB, one for MRQE, one for images, one for AcronymFinder, one for the Bible, one for the dictionary, one for Amazon.com, one or Opera support I think I can get all those via http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ . But I use bookmark keywords.

However there is no guarantee that one won’t conflict with another, or break between builds. I’ve never had that happen. Not many extensions do that. If you see two extensions that do the same things, then obviously, they’re going to conflict.

If Firebird doesn’t count yet, then they need to stop comparing it to Opera on their website. They can’t have it both ways: either it is in competition with Opera, or it isn’t. If Firebird is in competition with Opera, it loses on about every front, including several bogus claims about being better than Opera. Where does the Firebird site say Opera? It used too (comparison table), but that was a boo-boo that was quickly removed.

So what? Is that not true about any piece of software? I find many of Mozilla’s features unnecessary and bloated. Opera is like 1/3rd of the size. I find Firebird, out of the box, to be lacking features. But I like that, especially w/ extensions. =)

Bogus. It doesn’t NEED extensions. (Or you give no reason for what it is missing). I agree, except I need some extra tab functionality. But that’s about it.

I really miss the simple ‘block cookies from this page’ and ‘unblock cookies from this page’ (in case I just blocked them, or in case of a standard cookie block, and then found out that the site does not work without cookies.) http://basic.mozillanews.org/

I haven’t gotten the icon to work yet, though, but it should be neat once it’s finished.

It is much more flexible with both SDI and tabs like firebird. It’s more memory friendly too. Firebird and Opera are about as fast for me. I don’t care about the memory they use, but how fast I perceive it, whether it be hallucinated or not. =)

Opera is at version 7, firebird is at 0.7. That’s actually not arguable since Opera uses a different versioning system than Firebird (more liberal).

You say Firebird is faster, so I’m supposed to believe you? Unless it is with JavaScript-laden pages, I’d have to see some independent numbers first. Both the same for me.

I can open things up and modify the code in Firebird. I don’t have to figure out which .dll I can modify (and which windows API that will conflict with). That was my biggest complaint about Mozilla in its current state. Yep, I like open-source better. You can build your own builds, look at the code, develop extensions easily, Bugzilla (bug tracking system), Tinderbox (look at the checkins), talk/complain with the devs freely about the code, CVS, etc.

IE has always been super speedy on my machine. Never crashing, always perfectly horrible.

“Close left and right tabs? Never saw the need. If I want to close other pages I generally do ‘close all but active’.”

This is where a XUL interface comes into play. If you don’t have a feature you want, it’s not hard to change it. This is basically what makes Firebird + TBE slightly better than Opera’s MDI.

“However, last I knew Opera far outmatched the options as to what Mozilla could offer for searches. With the multi-search dropdown, you can have 15 at your fingertips, and assign keyboard shortcuts to them all.”

http://mycroft.mozdev.org/

For hotkeys, you’ll have to manually create bookmarks and assign them. I know, tedious.

“Mozilla is great too, but it seems like a huge investment in time just to seek out code for editing characteristics vs. opera’s .ini file setup (usually in plain english i might add… ex. “Execute program”).”

CSS is very English-friendly, which is basically all you do to modify the look. For prefs, there’s this wonderful thing where you go to about:config. Magical, really, especially with the filter feature.

“The fact that Opera saves form info automatically, enabling users to go back a couple pages to double check something and not risk losing the text in the form (no matter how long it is), was the first feature that got me hooked (read: obsessed) with the browser.”

Firebird does that too. In fact, Opera doesn’t do that for me on BlogThis, which kind of surprised me for a minute. I might just be hallucinating.

“They can`t still playe yahoo launchcast radio”

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/

” If you are looking for generated content, Opera is your only real option.”

Which is about 5 people. =) The only reason Mozilla doesn’t do that yet is because CSS3 is not a Working Recommendation yet. :after and :before are quite enough for me. =)

“There is dev-menu available from opera forums. User stylesheets are pretty useful too (outlines for objects, showing document structure). There is hotkey to validate page.” Dev-menu? If you mean dev extensions, Firebird has a bit of those. Firebird also has userContent.css. Not as good, I’ll admit. The devs are planning to add user style sheets, though, so they’re catching up. =) There’s an extension that adds a button or a context menu item to validate a page. Not as fast as a hotkey, though, although I have enough hotkeys to memorize, as is. =)

“Opera has unbeatable tabs+sessions. I can stop my surfing anytime with one click and continue later, with one click too. No looking in history etc. Pages open as tabs whenever I want. I can’t believe that mozilla still doesnt have some ‘tabs-only’ mode. Minor change in code, major change for users.” Get TBE. It has everything you mentioned. What devs can’t do, extensions can, is the motto. =) I don’t use tab sessions, though, so all well. Firebird/Mozilla do need to add some more tab functionality (and they plan to do so), though.

“Opera has a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) which is different and better than just plain tabs (read more about it on Day 8 of 30 Days to becoming an Opera7 Lover).” I really do not think Opera’s MDI and Firebird’s tabbed browsing (plus TBE) are any different. They’re the same, and that’s good enough for me. Unless you happen to feel the urge to cascade all your windows. =)

“Problem I’m Having with both of them though is getting streaming audio to work eg Real player and Launchcast.” For Firebird: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/ The joys of being a non-IE browser and having no plugin companies supporting you.

“AND you can still use Opera because it has keyboard controls for everything” Yep, Firebird’s lacking in the keyboard customizations dept. Darn XML/Javascript interface.

“My biggest bitch with Firebird is the incredibly slow startup on my machine” Firebird and Opera starts up the same on my machine: 3-5 seconds. Win98, PIII, 433Mhz, 312 MB RAM.

“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.” You can acheive the same effect by dragging icons, and hiding toolbars. Yep, not as user-friendly. The devs are going to add it though soon. They haven’t done it so far, because it’s hard to do with XUL.

“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).” Size doesn’t dictate features. Opera has a lot more features than Firebird (some would consider them bloat, I don’t =) ), but it is smaller because it is packed. If you pack Firebird into a .7zip file, it turns to 4.6 MB. Considering it’s based on XUL (try making Opera in XUL), that’s pretty good. Still, Opera has Firebird beat on file size. But not bloat. Bloat is purely subjective and highly volatile (“hey, isn’t an IRC client bloat?” // “bite me!”).

“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.” Those extensions are only one to ten kilobytes, to be fair. I like the extensions philosophy better because I don’t use many of the features in Opera, like user stylesheets, but I know this is purely opinion.

“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).” That’s why they’re extensions. =)

“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).” Firebird has one click install too. Just press OK one or two times (security reasons) and magic. The true test of skinning is not how many skins there are, but how many good skins there are. Firebird also has a lot of non-documented gems. Blame it on unorganization. =) However, I do like Opera’s themes better than Firebird’s themes as a rule of thumb. Who knows why?

“3.3MB for Opera, 6+ for Firebird, 15 for Mozilla, and up to 76 for Internet Explorer… Clearly Opera has the tightest codebase.” Again, file size != tighter codebase.

“How do they do that? They have a team of coders working on it, and working together to make tight code.” I agree. The devs over at Mozilla are beginning to do some work on it, though.

“Can you get tech support from Mozilla?” Oh, definitely. There’s loads of documentation sites. True, not first-party support, but there are some damn good quality stuff (mozdev.org, personal sites, http://texturizer.net/firebird/). The forums are really great too (just like Opera’s, although a little bit less snappy at Firebird users =) ).

“Spread that cost out over a year and it is $0.08 per day or $2.43 a month to use a faster browser with a better UI. And you get 6 months of Operamail and personal email tech support.” Some geeks don’t have money because they’re minors, like me, and, since we’re geeks, we don’t really need personal tech support. =) But I can see where personal tech support would be nice. I really wouldn’t mind paying, if I only had money.

“MOUSE GESTURES!” Firebird has two different mouse gestures extensions. Take your pick. =) I do like Opera’s UI for mouse gestures though.

“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.” From what I’ve seen, Firebird’s tabbed browsing is the same as Opera’s MDI, especially with the addition of Tabbrowser Extensions (lots of goodies, too).

“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.” As someone said above, http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ . Keyboard shortcuts can be assigned via Bookmark Manager (you’ll have to create seperate bookmarks though, which can be a hassle).

“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” I like setting Find as You Type to all words. Magic. I never have to use Find again. Opera has the same, but you have to type “/” first. You might be able to modify that behavior.

“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:” Firebird does most of that with one click too, it’s just not seperated that much. Of course, some of the things might be considered too excessive (bookmark visited time?), but that’s just me. =)

“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.” You can change that via about:config. True, not as user friendly.

“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.” Just a menu bar is unusable for me. I need, at least, the drop down back history and the URL bar. Firebird lets me put those on the menu bar and the Compact Extension (all menu labels -> one). I can achieve the same thing using one of Opera’s button thingys and hiding the menu bar. So they’re the same.

I can open things up and modify the code in Firebird. I don’t have to figure out which .dll I can modify (and which windows API that will conflict with). That was my biggest complaint about Mozilla in its current state.

Plus it opens fast and renders faster than Opera or Mozilla on my 1.33 GHz machine.

http://www.opera.com