go...

Opera vs. Firefox

After Firefox crashed for me a few times in the last couple weeks I began experimenting with Opera. I have not used it enough to really get a full feeling for the differences between these two browsers, but here are my initial findings:

Firefox and Opera both have different default settings for new window and link clicking behavior in tabs. I am trying to not mess with the default settings in this case but instead play with each browser's default settings to see which I prefer (I imagine the developers set the defaults to what they think is best for their browser). So far, they are just slightly different in ways that I am actually finding quite difficult to describe but neither one stands out as significantly better or worse than the other.

For a web developer, Firefox is the clear choice, not only is the end user far more likely to be using Firefox than Opera (including Safari users, whose rendering engine I have been told Opera uses), but Firefox's robust extensions tool-sets has been employed by users to create many useful and painless-to-install features. A few of my favorites that I have not found Opera replacements for are:

IETab - mimics Internet Explorer's rendering engine (actually don't use this too often, because of various complications behind the scenes I'm guessing the IE rendering isn't spot on, and you can't toggle it between IE6 or 7. Also it seems to have a decent chance to crash the browser - still, a cool idea)
lori - displays Length Of Request Info in a compact part of the status bar. Includes response time, total page load time, page size and number of requests. Really great for getting a general sense of how your pages are performing.
Firebug - an indispensible Javascript debugging tool. Firefox comes with a classy Javascript console which does a very decent job but Firebug is as far ahead of the built-in option as the built-in is ahead of Internet Explorer.

Opera's competing technology, widgets, seems more geared for wizbang shit that really just tends to annoy the web's more savvy users. Opera definitely comes with more functionality out-of-the-box than Firefox does but my purposes, Firefox's extensions more than make up for it.
update: I'm not sure how up-to-date it is but this here is a list of the most popular Firefox extensions and how to mimic their functionality in Opera. Nowhere on the list however is lori, and one of Opera's responses to Firebug is "bookmarklets" which doesn't seem like a very clear answer...

Firefox's latest update to 2.0 included a graphics overhaul that got the browser looking real shiny, but Opera's extremely simple theme updating options and attractive library kick ass. I'm using the Lix theme and when I go back to Firefox now it looks like just another dull window.

When it comes to speed there's no question - Opera loads faster, doesn't require advanced customization to prevent it from hogging memory, and crashes less frequently. Depending on your usage you may or may not ever notice this. I tend to keep a lot of tabs open and push pages and servers by putting as much stress on them as I can so for me this is the main point in Opera's favor and it's a big one.

I haven't checked the RSS aggregators on Opera yet but I'm sure that they have something for people like me who prefer a slim version (I use Sage in Firefox) as well as anything in between all the way up to your most demanding user.

Shooh, short answer: "Yes" with an "If," long answer: "No" --with a "But."

Posted by Jon at January 8, 2007 05:57 PM