Opera’s great - I use it almost exclusively, now. (There’s a page or two I often use that won’t work outside of Netscape and IE, however.) The mail and news clients are well-integrated and easy to use; the mouse gestures are wonderful; I’ve never had a page display incorrectly.
The downside is that it costs $40, but the ads in the free version are unobtrusive and can be ignored by viewing pages full screen (F11), as I often do. I’d consider plopping down the student-discounted $20 for the full version, but upgrades are $15, so why bother?
I do want to try Mozilla a little more. Getting everything set up for it took more time than I wanted to spend. Opera comes packaged nearly perfect.
Larry, thanks for that link. I’ve often wanted a talking browser, so I could walk around and pick up toys, fold laundry, knit, etc while perusing the Dope. And now my wish has come true!!!
Oh, and I love Opera. It took me a little while to get used to the mail client, but now I like it much, much better than OE. And I love the tabs, and the way it goes right back to where I left off if the four year old closes the browser when my back is turned.
I am test-driving Opera even as we speak (urrmmm type). In a strange twist of fate, the ITS guys kidnapped my work computer last week to do some updates and loaded Mozilla for my browsing pleasure. So I will be trying them both out. It took awhile before I figured out that it is normal for the e-mail connection to be “disconnected”. I kept trying to reinstall it. But no pop-ups so far and I am really happy.
I mostly love Opera. Enough to use it 80% of the time, anyway.
I wind up with plug-in problems, usually dealing with video clips, java applets, etc. I’ve fiddled with the settings and plug-ins, and settled some of the problems, but that got tiring, so now I usually use IE if I’m going to any pages where I usually experience problems (watching Survivor Insider, playing GameBlast, etc). It’s just easier. Also, sometimes when I’m filling in forms (order forms, etc), it won’t take my info. I click “submit”, and then I get the blank form back again. For really long forms (like my student loan), that was REALLY annoying because I had to type it all in again with IE. And even though I have my settings set so that Opera identifies itself as IE, if I try to do online banking, I get error messages saying that my online banking only operates with IE or Netscape.
sigh
Now that I think about it, I guess I have more problems with it than I originally thought. Still, it’s the browser I enjoy SURFING with the best! I have absolutely everything set up just the way I like it, shortcut keys and all. It’s fast. It’s lean. I just can’t play games, watch videos or bank with it.
Like Izzard before me I suffer from technojoy, and am forever rushing headlong into new software and stuff, assuming I know how to do everything and immediately wrecking my system before sheepishly uninstalling the software and going back to default settings.
However Opera’s an exception. I find it extremely intuitive, I’ve never found any reason to ditch the ads (in fact I almost enjoy the new Google ad system). I know I’d save some screenspace but not all that much really. The skins and buttons are a joy, the wand feature is triff, there’s a whole email thing I’ve never got round to investigating… it is a browser without a problem (compatibility problems are not Opera’s problem, they’re the individual sites’ problem! Refer their webmasters to the appropriate page on Opera.com!"
Opera is invariably the first thing I add to any freshly installed operating system. It is just a beautiful piece of kit. Right now I’m running the Dope, Ship of Fools, and smamurai’s cartoon page. Flipping between them all as if I were changing channel. This is just something IE won’t do. What’s great is that as far as I’m concerned IE is now just an occasionally useful gizmo sitting on my desktop for moments when websites have been to dim to be Opera-compatible, so because I’m able to treat it as a mere toy, I’m always chuffed by updates to that too. I’m less bitter. My long and grimy marriage to IE is over, we see one another in passing, and frankly our relationship has never been better.
The question is not “why Opera?” The question is “why on earth would you be using anything else?”
(this is not an advert. But I’m really serious! Mind you I’ve never tried Mozilla properly)
One thing Mozilla can do that I could not figure out with Opera: I like to middle-click a link, have it open in a new tab in the background, and keep the focus on the original page. I find that incredibly useful; like here for example. I open a forum, middle click the threads that interest me, then go to the next forum. The hampsters churn away at the threads I want to read, and once the first one is loaded, I read it while the other tabs grind away.
With Opera, you just right click and choose “Open in Background Page” … is that what you mean? It opens the link in a new page, but keeps the focus on the original page.
You can also get the same effect by holding Ctrl-Shift while you click.
But, Revtim in my copy of Opera, the middle mouse button does an open-in-background operation. I think that’s the default - if not, you can set it in Preferences: Alt-P, select “mouse and keyboard”, click on “middle button options”.
I love opera and am going to recommend it to my mom. It is the most intuitive browser I’ve ever used, and when I have questions I can just click on the opera folder on the tab.
I love the x and z forward and backward keys. And the ctr alt z to open the pages I close by accident (I do this all the time). And I guess since I always work with full-page no ads!!!