Opera 8.02 ranks among the browser elite, but is it better than Firefox?
by AC - permalink
It's been one week now since I got my greedy little fingers on a registered, ad-free edition of Opera 8.02. I've been splitting time between Opera, Firefox, and Avant Browser, and I've collected a few notes. First, the good news.
Lots of bugs appear to have been fixed since the Opera 8 beta I last tested. The browser hasn't crashed or locked once, though it did hang for nearly a minute once when I tried to close the Feeds tab while another site loaded in a background tab. No idea why. I've noticed a few other fixes here and there, like the Blogger preview function works now.
The overall UI still takes some getting used to. The navigation controls and URL bar are still tied into the currently active tab, so that closing all tabs leaves you with nothing but the Personal bar. It's a little weird. I had to do some customizing to the default layout. I removed the search fields from the Personal bar - they were both commercial, I believe - and dragged all my bookmark folders there instead. I left the Google search field on the Navigation bar, added a Panels toggle, and replaced the back and forward buttons with ones with drop-down arrows. I also had to lose the "fast-forward" and "rewind" buttons. This can all be done by drag-and-drop from the customize toolbars dialog, just like Firefox. There's also a Main bar, active by default, that seems totally useless in day-to-day browsing.
Page rendering in Opera is good, but can be a little wonky, mostly in the interpretation of font settings. The wrong one might be used, or it will be slightly too small or too large (as compared to the same site rendered by Gecko or Explorer). Big picture, though, Opera is just as standards-compliant as Firefox, and of course moreso than IE6.
In-dialog skins browsing via an Opera-hosted web server is much simpler than searching for themes across multiple sites, like virtually every other skinnable app ever. Unfortunately, Opera's servers have been wavering between slow-as-hell and completely-dead all day. Could be added traffic from the free-for-a-day promotion. In any case, there are some extremely good skins available, and they can be changed on-the-fly, unlike (to my knowledge) every Gecko-based browser.
The tab UI is generally good, a little slicker maybe than Firefox's, and provides a close button on each tab by default, something I love that can be done in Fx with an extention called Tab Mix Plus. Tab Mix also lets you reorder tabs by dragging them, another native Opera feature. But Opera's variable-width tabs based on length of the title of each web page is annoying.
Now for the not-great news. Opera has a useful array of sidebars, called panels, but to access them you need the Panels toolbar, which is a big fat vertical toolbar on the left edge of the screen. The Panels bar is just a list of the different panels, and can be moved, but the sidebar itself apparently cannot be displayed without it there, even though the sidebar's header contains a drop-down menu listing the panels. It's redundant UI that eats up screen space for no real reason.
Anyway, the panels include Bookmarks (lets you manage bookmarks in the sidebar, identical to Fx); Notes (really handy little widget that basically lets you keep a list of notes, displayed in the bottom half of the sidebar below the list); Transfers (the download manager, but it works best in its own tab, where it lives by default anyway). The History panel is a disappointment. The history is displayed as one massive list and seems almost useless compared to Firefox, which gives you five options for sorting the history. The Links panel is better, it simply collates all the links on the active page and lists 'em for you; haven't found a use for it yet, but someday I might. You also get a page Info panel.
If you've set up Opera's email client, you'll also get an email panel. I don't recommend it. The panel is simply Opera's mail client crammed into the sidebar. The problem, however, is the client itself. Opera calls it "revolutionary," and it's definitely small and fast. But it's also dated and lacking in features. Thunderbird is a far superior email client. Hell, I'd rather use webmail.
The other major problem is that Opera's RSS interface is tied into its mail client. Without an email account set up, the Feeds interface is actually pretty good. It's fast and intuitive and better than Fx's LiveBookmarks. You can set each feed to check for updates at a different interval, ranging from once every five minutes to once a week. Only basic content is shown in the feed viewer; it doesn't render the actual web page like Thunderbird, which is either good or bad, depending on personal taste, and you can always open the feed in a new tab with a click. You do have to delete the feeds yourself or they'll just keep piling up; they don't auto-update like with LiveBookmarks or the Wizz RSS reader Fx extension.
Unfortunately, with the mail client active, new RSS items are treated just like mail, and it becomes overly complicated dealing with more than just one or two feeds, especially if you get a lot of mail. This is probably the biggest problem I have with Opera's email client - it makes browsing RSS feeds a pain in the ass.
I also have a problem with the way Opera handles cookies. The default cookie manager is decent, better than many browsers. But there doesn't seem to a way to create a cookie blacklist, a killer Firefox feature. And I had another issue: I use an exclusion cookie when reading this blog, so that my hits don't register when I'm looking at the site traffic. The cookie works in Firefox and Avant, but Opera seems to be ignoring it.
The biggest deal-breaker for most of us, particularly Firefox users, is Opera's lack of adblocking. As Nitin Bhargava put it, "Where's my adblock?" AdBlock Plus is the essential Fx extension, and even little Avant Browser now has native adblocking, arguably even better than Fx's. Adblocking is actually possible in Opera. There are several methods, but the easiest is by creating a file called filter.ini in the profile directory, then altering opera6.ini to refer to it. If you have a long blacklist in AdBlock for Firefox, you can export the list to a textfile and just alter that. Unfortunately, there's a bug in Opera (or is it a feature?) that seems to make the browser arbitrarily ignore blacklisted URLs, so that many ads will appear anyway, and iframes always seem to get through.
There's also the little matter of the big, attention-grabbing ad banners at the top of the browser window itself in the free version of Opera. The reason I've been playing with Opera for as long as a week is that I was lucky enough to get a free registration code during the ten-year-anniversary promotion last week. But if you weren't so lucky, the big question is simple: Is Opera 8.02 good enough to use despite the annoying ads, or even good enough to drop $39 U.S. for a registered version? It might be, if you've got the disposable income. If you run at a high screen-res (1280 or above), you might be able to put up with the ad banners (though I never could). 8.02 is clearly the best Opera so far, much, much better than 7.x.
All I can really tell you is that I'm going to keep using it, probably more than I use Avant, K-Meleon, or the Mozilla Suite. But Firefox 1.0.6 will remain the default browser on my system, and it won't be replaced until Firefox 1.5 is released shortly. Firefox still offers the best total package in the best interface, with the best extendibility. But for registered users, Opera has claimed second-place.
by AC - permalink
It's been one week now since I got my greedy little fingers on a registered, ad-free edition of Opera 8.02. I've been splitting time between Opera, Firefox, and Avant Browser, and I've collected a few notes. First, the good news.
Lots of bugs appear to have been fixed since the Opera 8 beta I last tested. The browser hasn't crashed or locked once, though it did hang for nearly a minute once when I tried to close the Feeds tab while another site loaded in a background tab. No idea why. I've noticed a few other fixes here and there, like the Blogger preview function works now.
The overall UI still takes some getting used to. The navigation controls and URL bar are still tied into the currently active tab, so that closing all tabs leaves you with nothing but the Personal bar. It's a little weird. I had to do some customizing to the default layout. I removed the search fields from the Personal bar - they were both commercial, I believe - and dragged all my bookmark folders there instead. I left the Google search field on the Navigation bar, added a Panels toggle, and replaced the back and forward buttons with ones with drop-down arrows. I also had to lose the "fast-forward" and "rewind" buttons. This can all be done by drag-and-drop from the customize toolbars dialog, just like Firefox. There's also a Main bar, active by default, that seems totally useless in day-to-day browsing.
Page rendering in Opera is good, but can be a little wonky, mostly in the interpretation of font settings. The wrong one might be used, or it will be slightly too small or too large (as compared to the same site rendered by Gecko or Explorer). Big picture, though, Opera is just as standards-compliant as Firefox, and of course moreso than IE6.
In-dialog skins browsing via an Opera-hosted web server is much simpler than searching for themes across multiple sites, like virtually every other skinnable app ever. Unfortunately, Opera's servers have been wavering between slow-as-hell and completely-dead all day. Could be added traffic from the free-for-a-day promotion. In any case, there are some extremely good skins available, and they can be changed on-the-fly, unlike (to my knowledge) every Gecko-based browser.
The tab UI is generally good, a little slicker maybe than Firefox's, and provides a close button on each tab by default, something I love that can be done in Fx with an extention called Tab Mix Plus. Tab Mix also lets you reorder tabs by dragging them, another native Opera feature. But Opera's variable-width tabs based on length of the title of each web page is annoying.
Now for the not-great news. Opera has a useful array of sidebars, called panels, but to access them you need the Panels toolbar, which is a big fat vertical toolbar on the left edge of the screen. The Panels bar is just a list of the different panels, and can be moved, but the sidebar itself apparently cannot be displayed without it there, even though the sidebar's header contains a drop-down menu listing the panels. It's redundant UI that eats up screen space for no real reason.
Anyway, the panels include Bookmarks (lets you manage bookmarks in the sidebar, identical to Fx); Notes (really handy little widget that basically lets you keep a list of notes, displayed in the bottom half of the sidebar below the list); Transfers (the download manager, but it works best in its own tab, where it lives by default anyway). The History panel is a disappointment. The history is displayed as one massive list and seems almost useless compared to Firefox, which gives you five options for sorting the history. The Links panel is better, it simply collates all the links on the active page and lists 'em for you; haven't found a use for it yet, but someday I might. You also get a page Info panel.
If you've set up Opera's email client, you'll also get an email panel. I don't recommend it. The panel is simply Opera's mail client crammed into the sidebar. The problem, however, is the client itself. Opera calls it "revolutionary," and it's definitely small and fast. But it's also dated and lacking in features. Thunderbird is a far superior email client. Hell, I'd rather use webmail.
The other major problem is that Opera's RSS interface is tied into its mail client. Without an email account set up, the Feeds interface is actually pretty good. It's fast and intuitive and better than Fx's LiveBookmarks. You can set each feed to check for updates at a different interval, ranging from once every five minutes to once a week. Only basic content is shown in the feed viewer; it doesn't render the actual web page like Thunderbird, which is either good or bad, depending on personal taste, and you can always open the feed in a new tab with a click. You do have to delete the feeds yourself or they'll just keep piling up; they don't auto-update like with LiveBookmarks or the Wizz RSS reader Fx extension.
Unfortunately, with the mail client active, new RSS items are treated just like mail, and it becomes overly complicated dealing with more than just one or two feeds, especially if you get a lot of mail. This is probably the biggest problem I have with Opera's email client - it makes browsing RSS feeds a pain in the ass.
I also have a problem with the way Opera handles cookies. The default cookie manager is decent, better than many browsers. But there doesn't seem to a way to create a cookie blacklist, a killer Firefox feature. And I had another issue: I use an exclusion cookie when reading this blog, so that my hits don't register when I'm looking at the site traffic. The cookie works in Firefox and Avant, but Opera seems to be ignoring it.
The biggest deal-breaker for most of us, particularly Firefox users, is Opera's lack of adblocking. As Nitin Bhargava put it, "Where's my adblock?" AdBlock Plus is the essential Fx extension, and even little Avant Browser now has native adblocking, arguably even better than Fx's. Adblocking is actually possible in Opera. There are several methods, but the easiest is by creating a file called filter.ini in the profile directory, then altering opera6.ini to refer to it. If you have a long blacklist in AdBlock for Firefox, you can export the list to a textfile and just alter that. Unfortunately, there's a bug in Opera (or is it a feature?) that seems to make the browser arbitrarily ignore blacklisted URLs, so that many ads will appear anyway, and iframes always seem to get through.
There's also the little matter of the big, attention-grabbing ad banners at the top of the browser window itself in the free version of Opera. The reason I've been playing with Opera for as long as a week is that I was lucky enough to get a free registration code during the ten-year-anniversary promotion last week. But if you weren't so lucky, the big question is simple: Is Opera 8.02 good enough to use despite the annoying ads, or even good enough to drop $39 U.S. for a registered version? It might be, if you've got the disposable income. If you run at a high screen-res (1280 or above), you might be able to put up with the ad banners (though I never could). 8.02 is clearly the best Opera so far, much, much better than 7.x.
All I can really tell you is that I'm going to keep using it, probably more than I use Avant, K-Meleon, or the Mozilla Suite. But Firefox 1.0.6 will remain the default browser on my system, and it won't be replaced until Firefox 1.5 is released shortly. Firefox still offers the best total package in the best interface, with the best extendibility. But for registered users, Opera has claimed second-place.
2 comments:
Oh boy, another comment from a spambot. I hope this doesn't become a recurring theme.
Post a Comment