Submitted by “There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.” On Windows, Opera was the fastest browser, while on Linux Konqueror performed the best for viewing basic pages (however, as soon as images, scripts or frequent use of back/forward buttons is involded, Opera is faster). On MacOS X, Opera and Safari perform the best. Overall, Gecko-based browsers did fairly poorly.
Opera has always been the fastest browser. Opera wins on all fronts: features, usability, memory use, install file size, stability, web standards, etc…
To bad many web pages are not designed having it in mind so you have to use an alternative one.
Many? No.
There are some pages that are not “designed with it in mind”, which either means “designed for IE” (and dont work in FF either) or they specifically or unintentionally send opera broken code.
In my experience, that is exceedingly rare nowadays. I can’t even remember the last time I came across a website that didn’t work properly in Opera.
I’m using the 9.0 series now, and it’s shaping up to becoming a truly amazing browser. By far the best option on Mac, in my opinion. Safari isn’t bad at all, but it’s a bit slower and tends to use a LOT of memory. I haven’t even bothered using Firefox on the Mac in at least half a year. It’s just way too slow. (Although it got a lot better when 1.5 was released, but the general feeling of the browser is still sluggish.)
On Linux, however, I use Opera and Konqueror.
Opera doesn’t work HERE:
http://www.keh.com
It seems to be generated HTML so I think Opera is being blocked.
Worked fine for me with Opera 8. Almost identical results betwen it and Firefox 1.5.
Ohhh . . . .
It seems to be working now. I complained, so maybe they fixed “the issue.”
Sorry.
Opera wins on all fronts
Except the fronts that matter, like “the majority of websites will work without issue.”
Not only that, many of us dislike Opera’s interface. Saying that it “wins on all fronts” is dishonest. Saying that “many people like using Opera and believe it to be a superior browser” would be far more accurate.
Except the fronts that matter, like “the majority of websites will work without issue.”
That simply isn’t true. The vast majority of websites work perfectly with Opera, a small minority have cosmetic issues, and a tiny handful of sites are IE only. It’s been about 6 months since I last had to use IE to access a site, for me compatibility simply hasn’t been an issue.
Not only that, many of us dislike Opera’s interface.
Obviously UIs are subjective things, but have you tried tweaking Opera’s interface to meet your needs? It has easily the most customisable UI I’ve seen in a browser, almost everything can be changed if you don’t like the defaults.
It has easily the most customisable UI I’ve seen in a browser
Ah! Then perhaps you can tell me how to do a few things:
1. How can I move buttons and such up into the Menu bar? I like to maximize my viewing room. If I could just move my Personal Bar up in that empty space to the right of the “Help” menu item, I’d have one more line of viewing space.
2. How can I get rid of the “Save As…” dialog when pressing the “Save” button? I’d like the viewed page/tab to be autosaved to pre-defined directories based on filetype.
2. How can I get rid of Menu bar items? With the save button out, I’d like to get rid of the superfluous “File” menu item. “Edit” as well, as I already know the keyboard shortcuts to all those functions.
3. How can I get rid of right-click menu items? “Back”, “Forward”, “Rewind” and so on are already represented by buttons that take one click. Activating the menu items would take two. I also don’t print webpages, so I’d like the “Print” entry gone.
4. How can I drag a page into my “Bookmarks” menu item for exact placement in the folder heierarchy? I know I could do that with the Bookmarks panel, but the thing takes up too much space.
5. How can I open up a folder of bookmarks in one click? I’m aware that I could middle-click on a folder in my Bookmarks panel, but it takes three mouse clicks to get to that point. So, four clicks in all.
6. I’d also like to add a digital clock with alarm settings to my toolbars.
All of the above are features and customizations that I enjoy with Firefox. They save me time, visual clutter, and aggravation. I know of them because I’ve been using that browser for so long–as you’ve probably been using Opera for about the same amount of time (or longer!) I assume you could point me in the right direction.
1. How can I move buttons and such up into the Menu bar? I like to maximize my viewing room. If I could just move my Personal Bar up in that empty space to the right of the “Help” menu item, I’d have one more line of viewing space.
You can hide the menubar and replace the menus with the toolbar buttons found here: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/CustomButtons#menu
That means that the menus can appear on the toolbar of your choice, the layout can be tweaked using spacers so that it’s exactly how you want.
2. How can I get rid of the “Save As…” dialog when pressing the “Save” button? I’d like the viewed page/tab to be autosaved to pre-defined directories based on filetype.
Have a look in the “Downloads” section of the “Advanced” tab in preferences, is that what you’re looking for? You can also use the Links Panel and the Quick Download option for very fast downloading of multiple files.
2. How can I get rid of Menu bar items? With the save button out, I’d like to get rid of the superfluous “File” menu item. “Edit” as well, as I already know the keyboard shortcuts to all those functions.
As I previously mentioned you can hide the menubar completely and replace it with toolbar buttons for the menus you want. Alternatively you could edit the standard_menu.ini file in Opera’s “Defaults” directory, that allows you to remove the menus and individual menu items you don’t want, it’s pretty straight forward.
3. How can I get rid of right-click menu items? “Back”, “Forward”, “Rewind” and so on are already represented by buttons that take one click. Activating the menu items would take two. I also don’t print webpages, so I’d like the “Print” entry gone.
The contents of all popup menus can be edited in the standard_menu.ini file, you’re looking for the “[Document Popup Menu]” section.
4. How can I drag a page into my “Bookmarks” menu item for exact placement in the folder heierarchy? I know I could do that with the Bookmarks panel, but the thing takes up too much space.
That’s one thing you can’t do, personally I don’t think that’s a bad thing, dragging and dropping to menus seems like a very strange and inconsistent idea.
You can show and hide the bookmarks panel using keyboard shortcuts or a toolbar icon, that allows very fast access to it when it’s needed, so it doesn’t need to constantly take up space. Personally I find it quicker to select the folder in the bookmark dialog box than use drag and drop.
5. How can I open up a folder of bookmarks in one click? I’m aware that I could middle-click on a folder in my Bookmarks panel, but it takes three mouse clicks to get to that point. So, four clicks in all.
There’s an “Open all folder items” option in the bookmarks menu, and in the menus displayed when you click on a bookmarks folder on the Personal Bar.
6. I’d also like to add a digital clock with alarm settings to my toolbars.
That’s hardly a user interface customisation issue, and to me an alarm clock isn’t exactly a necessary browser feature, what’s wrong with having a separate app in your system tray? Personally I prefer to have a separate app so that it’s available even when I’m not running the browser.
There is a simple digital clock toolbar item available in the “Status” button category, but it doesn’t feature alarms. If you really need an alarm clock app included in the browser then I’m sure that will be possible with Opera’s new widgets.
Of course I could list quite a few Opera features that are unavailable in Firefox and IE, including features that are part of the core browsing experience, rather than addons like an alarm clock…
First off, thank you very much for responding at length.
1. That means that the menus can appear on the toolbar of your choice, the layout can be tweaked using spacers so that it’s exactly how you want.
the Menu hack did work well, and I thank you for that. However, I seem to be unable to add buttons etc to etther side of the Personal toolbar, and I also can’t figure out how to drag Bookmark folders out of the Personal toolbar. The spacers, they do nothink. The result being that either space is still being wasted or don’t have nearly enough space for the bookmarks I wish to access quickly.
2. Have a look in the “Downloads” section of the “Advanced” tab in preferences, is that what you’re looking for?
You know, this sure looks like it’s what I want. But I can’t get it to work. MIME type image/gif, set to “Do not ask for folder, save directly to” a test folder. But when I press the save button on a gif, a save dialog still comes up. Tried with jpeg and html too. Aha, it seems to “work” now when I follow a link or copy an url into the address bar–all content is piped to Transfers. So, now there’s no way to navigate anywhere.
The links panel/quick download avoids the dialog, but has a wealth of new and interesting problems. For one, it takes an unacceptable amount of clicks to activate. Open the panel switcher. Open the Links panel. Select the link in the list. Right click to bring up the menu. Finally, select “Quick Download”! For two, it steals an amazing amount of browser real estate. A good fourth of the viewing area. For three, the links don’t have previews, so I have to do the job of manually matching up the file name in both places. For fourth… it ignores the filetype/folder setting I made. For fifth, it switches the view to the download progress screen. Utterly frustrating.
2(a) and 3. Alternatively you could edit the standard_menu.ini file in Opera’s “Defaults” directory, that allows you to remove the menus and individual menu items you don’t want, it’s pretty straight forward.
This is exactly what I was looking for here, thanks.
4. That’s one thing you can’t do, personally I don’t think that’s a bad thing, dragging and dropping to menus seems like a very strange and inconsistent idea.
Perhaps Opera has conditioned you to think like that? After all, it doesn’t even let me drag a bookmark into a folder on the Personal bar. And yet, I can drag pages to the Personal bar and make bookmarks, and pages to the bookmarks panel to make bookmarks. Whyever should one area of the UI be privileged over another?
4(a) You can show and hide the bookmarks panel using keyboard shortcuts or a toolbar icon, that allows very fast access to it when it’s needed, so it doesn’t need to constantly take up space.
Indeed. But it’s still an extra click/keypress I don’t have to make with Firefox. Not to mention the click/keypress to get rid of the panel afterward.
4(b) Personally I find it quicker to select the folder in the bookmark dialog box than use drag and drop.
Bookmark dialog took me… 4 clicks with opera. Bookmark–>menu dragging takes 1 click.
5. There’s an “Open all folder items” option in the bookmarks menu, and in the menus displayed when you click on a bookmarks folder on the Personal Bar.
Yeah, I noticed those. Still more clicking and mouse moving than just middle-clicking on a folder. Which Opera lets you do with folders in the Bookmarks Panel. But not for folders in the Personal bar, where it would actually help me.
6. That’s hardly a user interface customisation issue, and to me an alarm clock isn’t exactly a necessary browser feature, what’s wrong with having a separate app in your system tray?
Eh? I want to customize the user interface by adding something to it. I agree, not necessary for the browser, but very useful for me–and, I believe software should be useful. Firefox can both wake me up in the morning and load a bookmark folder with the same action. As for the system tray: my browser window covers up the taskbar 95% of the time.
Of course I could list quite a few Opera features that are unavailable in Firefox and IE, including features that are part of the core browsing experience
Please do. I am not finding Opera very compelling and would be interested in hearing what I’m missing. I too could list some more places Firefox feels much more polished and complete to me. While Opera is faster at rendering pages, Firefox seems faster for actually getting things done.
I disagree with your last assesment. I’ve always thought Opera was faster at rendering pages, but thought that was less debatable. However, faster at getting things done has always been a plus for using Opera for me.
It has a great fastback cache system that doesn;t hog too much memory and is VERY fast. It’s UI is more responsive while doing things. It has a lot of keyboard/mouse gesture shortcuts I can use, and I can customize those shortcuts infinitely to fit my needs. Can you customize keyboard/mouse shortcuts in firefox like you can in Opera? Pretty sure you can’t.
There are other things, but I just wanted to give a general idea.
Can you customize keyboard/mouse shortcuts in firefox like you can in Opera? Pretty sure you can’t.
Well, Firefox has got the keyconfig extension (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72994),
functions for keyconfig (http://www.pqrs.org/~tekezo/firefox/extensions/functions_for_keycon…). Along with All-in-One Gestures (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/12/). All customizable. Further, there’s easyGestures (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/29/) which allows one to make gestures with a visual menu to help. Does Opera also have that capability?
However, faster at getting things done has always been a plus for using Opera for me.
Having a slightly more responsive UI is useless if the UI requires you to take more steps to accomplish a task. User input is the slowest part of any system by far. Thus having to remember and act out multiple steps when one will do is a great waste. Can you tell me how to accomplish any of the complex tasks I’ve outlined above in a single keypress or mouse gesture in Opera? I tried to speed up one task a bit by adding “Quick Download” as a menu item to “Reload Menu” AND the “Image Popup Menu” but the entries did nothing when pressed. I’m not at all confident in Opera’s customizability at this level.
However, I seem to be unable to add buttons etc to etther side of the Personal toolbar, and I also can’t figure out how to drag Bookmark folders out of the Personal toolbar.
That is a limitation that should be fixed, I wasn’t aware of it as I don’t use the personal bar. It might be worth posting this as a feature request on Opera’s wishlist.
You know, this sure looks like it’s what I want. But I can’t get it to work.
The downloading options seem to work fine for me, but maybe I’m not understanding exactly what you want.
The links panel/quick download avoids the dialog, but has a wealth of new and interesting problems. For one, it takes an unacceptable amount of clicks to activate. Open the panel switcher. Open the Links panel. Select the link in the list. Right click to bring up the menu. Finally, select “Quick Download”!
By choosing such a slow way of bringing up the links panel you’re being a bit unfair. Even if you don’t want to display the panel selector all the time, with a toolbar button you can bring up a particular panel with a single click.
For two, it steals an amazing amount of browser real estate. A good fourth of the viewing area.
The amount of screen space it takes up is cusomisable and doesn’t really matter if you only display it when you need it.
For three, the links don’t have previews, so I have to do the job of manually matching up the file name in both places.
There are icons to show what kind of files they are, along with the titles I don’t really see the need for previews. After all, most of the time a link on a web page is just text, with the file type icon the Links Panel actually gives more information. In my experience it’s almost always obvious which links on the panel correspond to which links on the website.
For fourth… it ignores the filetype/folder setting I made.
That doesn’t seem to be the case for me, but generally I just download into a default folder using Quick Download.
That’s the big speed advantage of the Links Panel, you can select multiple items (by ctrl or shift clicking), then hit Quick Download and they’ll all be queued up in transfers. That’s much faster than clicking on multiple links on a webpage.
For fifth, it switches the view to the download progress screen. Utterly frustrating.
Turn it off in the View menu of the download progress screen.
Perhaps Opera has conditioned you to think like that? After all, it doesn’t even let me drag a bookmark into a folder on the Personal bar.
I agree with you that the Personal Bar is unnecessarily limited, perhaps with the bookmarks panel Opera just don’t consider it important. But being able to drag to a menu seems totally unnecessary and very poor design. A menu is intended to give access to commands, not be a drag and drop target.
To me dragging to a menu is a particularly weird and contradictory UI decision. When you can access the bookmarks panel with a single click and hide it just as quickly, other methods of adding and accessing bookmarks seem quite unnecessary.
Indeed. But it’s still an extra click/keypress I don’t have to make with Firefox. Not to mention the click/keypress to get rid of the panel afterward.
I’ve tried dragging to the menu in Firefox, to me it seems more fiddly and prone to error than using the panel. Despite the extra second or two taken to press a key or click a button, I don’t really see the speed advantage of drag and drop to menus.
Bookmark dialog took me… 4 clicks with opera. Bookmark–>menu dragging takes 1 click.
You can’t judge the speed of an operation simply by the number of clicks or keypresses. Personally I find it faster to press Ctrl+T, click once to change the folder, then hit enter, rather than dragging a link to a menu, waiting for the menu to drop down, then navigating to the folder I want and releasing the button. I find that it only takes a few seconds to create a bookmark, even less if I don’t need to change the folder, are you really saving much time by dragging to a menu?
With Opera’s saved sessions and ability to reopen the pages that were in use when it was closed, I don’t find that I create bookmarks as often in Opera as in other browsers. Opera runs fast even if I have a large number of pages open, and has a UI that can cope with that demand, so I tend to keep pages open rather than bookmarking and closing them.
I’ll concede that dragging to the menu is a Firefox feature that Opera doesn’t have, and I can understand that you would miss this if you’re used to it. I never claimed that Opera had every single little feature of Firefox, just that its UI was highly customisable.
Yeah, I noticed those. Still more clicking and mouse moving than just middle-clicking on a folder.
You’re talking about an absolutely tiny difference, where Opera takes a fraction of a second longer than Firefox. In my opinion even the little differences in rendering speed are much more significant than having to move your mouse a short distance after clicking. Are you really opening folders of bookmarks so often that a fraction of a second is a big deal?
Eh? I want to customize the user interface by adding something to it.
I was talking about the ability to customise the existing UI, rather than non-browser related addons like that. At the moment there are more things like that for Firefox thanks to its extensions, with widgets more tools like that will appear for Opera.
Please do. I am not finding Opera very compelling and would be interested in hearing what I’m missing.
To me Opera’s MDI window management is an absolutely massive advantage that outweighs just about anything else. The tabbed browsing in Firefox and other browsers just seems completely crippled and painfully limited when I’ve been heavily using Opera’s MDI.
With tabs all the pages in a window have to be maximised. In Opera you can cascade and tile pages, look at two pages side by side, or move one partially off the side of the screen, while still keeping them all contained within one window. Directly clicking on pages is generally much faster than searching through a load of tabs, the spatial positioning of pages makes it easier locate and sort through them. It means that Opera is able to more efficiently deal with a large number of open pages, even when screen space is limited.
Other Opera features like the Windows panel complement MDI perfectly. That allows you to see at a glance the pages that are open in different windows, quickly access specific pages and windows, close multiple pages with a single keypress, drag pages between windows, etc. It keeps on working perfectly when conventional tabs would have become unusable, I can still see full page titles if I open 100 pages in a single window. It’s another thing that helps Opera be more screen space efficient when dealing with a large number of pages, which is excellent when I’m browsing heavily on my old 400Mhz laptop with its 800×600 screen.
I probably haven’t explained this well and there are loads of other features I love in Opera, but MDI is the no.1 reason why I wouldn’t use anything else for heavy browsing. It has more of an impact on my browsing speed than all the other nice little touches put together. After using Opera, the limitations of other browsers constantly get in my way and slow me down, using them is like typing with one hand tied behind my back.
Of course Opera isn’t perfect, even though it’s highly customisable there are still limitations, but in my opinion the flaws and limitations in other browsers are much worse, and they simply don’t compare with Opera when it comes to useful features. Opera’s significantly lower use of system resources is simply the icing on the cake.
The vast majority of websites work perfectly with Opera, a small minority have cosmetic issues, and a tiny handful of sites are IE only.
Majority is relative. If a person happens to use a specific set of websties often that don’t work well in Opera then it’s the majority of websites for that individual that don’t work well.
The thing I run into the most often is Opera’s very different interpretation of how styles should be applied compared to IE/Mozilla. Who is correct is difficult to say since the specs are often vague or leave it to the user agent to decide what to do. In the end, I don’t really care which browser I’m using. I just want my browser to work.
I’m glad that most of the websites you use work without issue, really, that’s great! But, for me, Opera just too many small annoyances that add up to make it not worth using.
many of us dislike Opera’s interface
Well, If you don’t like Opera’s interface, change it, it’s easy enough, just trag and drop things, display or hide bars. Once I customized Opera to look like Firefox. The only thing that was different was the icons.
“Well, If you don’t like Opera’s interface, change it, it’s easy enough, just trag and drop things, display or hide bars. Once I customized Opera to look like Firefox. The only thing that was different was the icons.”
Or else they could….ummmmm…..use Firefox if they like it better, no?
To me because i’ve found Firefox 1.5.x the fastest, Opera I just cannot get on with. Maybe Opera is faster on lower end systems?
I would like to point out as well that a friend of mine uses Opera all the time and has it startup with 5 tabs open. It takes about (according to him) 20 seconds with all the pages rendered on his A64/1Gb ram/SATA system. I tried the same thing here in Linux and it loaded in 8-9 seconds on my AthlonXP-2600+/1Gb ram/UDMA133.
It depends on many things, i know for example that old versions of Opera had a small delay when the user has many bookmarks(but 20secs on such system…), if you want to compare something use the same version,configuration, and without bookmarks and other personal data on both systems.
(Acer C300)
Windows Tablet Edition 2005
Opera 9(latest beta)
ATA100 60GB
1GB DDR 266Mhz(220 free)
Centrino 1.6
Kaspersky AV
load time with 4 tabs (
2MySQL,
Engadget,
http://redbook.cs.berkeley.edu/redbook3/lec7.html
)
hundreds of bookmarks: 4secs
ram: 7.606 k
ram[minimized]: 3.724 k
swap: 24,192 k
swap[minimized]: 24.180 k (yes it reduced, some kind of memory optimization on minimize)
Edited 2006-05-06 18:35
Konqueror is nice and fast as they say for simple pages. It can be absolutely miserable with javascript though, as well as large pages, often locking up for a while. Konqui back/forward functionality got a lost faster with the patch resolving this bug: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78575 and has since been quite nice. It’s my day to day browser nowadays.
When I used Windows, it was Opera. Yeah, it’s available for Linux but it doesn’t use the same widget set as the rest of my apps (yes, I can be that shallow). I hacked up a keramik skin so it at least looked like it fit in ( http://my.opera.com/community/customize/skins/info/?id=1717 ), but when I changed to another Qt style I didn’t feel like doing it again. [/OT] It really is fast though. It’s always fun to use rocker gestures to blaze back through 20 pages.
Very Old Test, just a fake… Opera isnt as fast as the tests say… never.
The test includes Opera 9 and FireFox 1.5. How is this “Very Old”?
Just added Names… nothing new… the old false test. Just Trollfeed… FUD oder simple: Shit.
These speed test come out from time to time claiming one is faster. People make claims on these forums that browser x is faster than browser y.
I reality web browsers are insanely complicated things. Each browser is faster and slower at different things. It all depends on what you are testing. So in the end what matters is for the web sites you use which browser performs better for you.
After you have played with the browsers for a while you get to know what is good at what and how to work around these problems. Instead of doing performance tests to declare a winner it would be nice if someone did detailed performance test to show people how to get the most out of each browser.
A simple example that many people run into is string appending in javascript. += will kill you performance wise in Internet Explorer while it will run fast in Firefox. Switch to using an array to append to with a .join when you want the complete value and Internet Explorer will be just as fast as Firefox.
Evens the field.
… Which both Opera9 and FF1.5 have.
I usually use Konqueror on Linux but as someone says, it can get knocked over from time to time, and for those pages I use Firefox. I also use Firefox on Windows. Opera is a lovely browser and very fast, but on Linux there is something awkward about it’s gui that has always had me going off it after a week or so.
I use the excellent privoxy on both Windows and Linux which keeps out some nasties and adverts, and levels the field between browsers a bit.
I don’t think a few milliseconds really matter. Keeping the bloat down (memory usage, etc.) and security mean more to me. Firefox is probably slower here than it need be, but then I run a few extensions. They are so useful that I don’t mind a slight slow down.
Opera gets blocked and sent to microsoft.com/ie/ on lots of websites
Where did they get Epiphany 1.0.7 when 2.14 is already out? And as you know with GNOME 2.14 everything got faster. Another point is that Epiphany is using gecko as backend
Camino on OS X is ridiculously fast.
“Camino on OS X is ridiculously fast.”
I second this. It and Safari are the only usable browsers on my old Sawtooth Powermac (I don’t care for Opera, so I haven’t tried it on OS X yet). I use Camino and install the Camitools package, switch the useragent to say it is Firefox, and it does everything I need it to. (Last time I checked, Gmail and Blogger don’t work quite right with Camino unless you spoof your user agent, I just leave it set as Firefox 1.5 Mac all the time).
I have a low-budget Powerbook G4@400Mhz with only 384MB of RAM and from my experience with all (and I mean ALL) OSX browsers, I chose Camino as the fastest with Safari and Opera as close 2nd place. On a much faster iBook G4@800 Mhz from a friend I really don’t notice much difference between those 3 browsers. It really depends on the specs of the machine.
I have the same experience with my Sawtooth (see previous comment). However, I might be picking up a cheap Sonnet or Giga Designs processor upgrade card, in which case I should be able to use whatever I want.
I really wish Camino would have an auto-updater though. After Firefox got updated, I had to check Camino’s website daily to see if they updated the browser.
What good is speed if you doesn’t work with many websites (regardless of those websites being broken)?
Honestly, I have no reason to use Opera because IE6 and FireFox work well enough, and work on far more sites without issue than Opera. So, in the end, regardless of who’s fault it is, I have no use for Opera.
I use Opera on a daily basis, and I don’t remember having seen any web site that doesn’t work in Opera. Although there is a “Report a site problem” option in Opera, but I haven’t used it.
If IE and Firefox are fine for you, no reason to change.
Agreed.
An example of what not works with opera is for example the rte of invisionboard. It’s a simple fact that if you use a browser which is more common, you will have more sites that work with your browser. I also miss extentions with other non firefox browsers.
Whats with all the “loads of sites wont load in opera right” comments? Can you give any examples? I haven’t had a site NOT load correctly in opera in well over a year. Have all of you making these claims used opera lately?
Try heroes.dk
It looks fine to me…
Try to login
Apart from being in language i do not understand, there is nothing wrong with this page using
Opera 9.00 Beta; Build 236;Linux 2.6.11-x1 on i686,
Except that you cannot login
I use Opera 9.0 Beta on Linux/powerpc.
I used Firefox before, but found it becoming slower in recent releases and less stable. Then I changed to Mozilla and only since last month I am using Opera.
I’ve come across several sites that simply don’t want to “load” in Opera. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with the site itself and that Opera can render it fine, but Opera seems to keep “loading” the site and it never gets rendered. Closing Opera, restarting it and going back to the site will then most of the time result in having the site render correctly.
I did report those sites with the “report a site problem” feature. Is there anyway to see which ones I reported?
Ah.. just checked my history in Firefox.
For example the following page:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=4396
It renders immediately with Firefox, but for some reason it keeps “loading” forever on Opera. I come across sites which give this quite often. Please tell me if it’s some kind of a configuration issue. I am seriously starting to like Opera.
Edit: Just restarted Opera to check the mentioned site again and now it renders correctly. It’s a weird and annoying problem and I have seen this problem mentioned by other Opera users too.
Edited 2006-05-07 13:07
Edit: Just restarted Opera to check the mentioned site again and now it renders correctly. It’s a weird and annoying problem and I have seen this problem mentioned by other Opera users too.
It can be possible that ad banners (flash?) are making Opera crazy. (I’m using Opera on windows -) I’ve not seen any problem with pages loading, but I’ve flash usually disabled – makes internet faster
Reading Opera forums, seems that there are some problems with flash content.
Have you tried hitting Esc (to cancel page loading) and Reload after that?
—
About speed and feature comparison – there’s no such beast as “best browser”. Speed depends more on internet connection than on browser, needed features are highly user-dependent. I for example use Opera and IE – Opera for surfing, IE for googling; both are usually open. And (rarely) Firefox – for debugging javascript errors and other web development.
Anyway, there’s nice to read that my favourite browser appears to be one of the fastest too
I tried that page again just now and again it just keeps loading and does not render the page. Cancelling page loading and then reloading does not help. I don’t have a Flash plugin, so it’s definitely not Flash. Maybe banners then…
Hmm.. actually, I do see in the url-bar that it loads x KB and then it is just stuck at “Images 0/0”, so maybe it is the banners after all. Disabling images and reloading does not help.
Well.. after all, it’s still a beta. Let’s just hope they fix this for the next beta.
Even though I’m an Opera fan I wouldn’t say that the kind of rendering speed advantages indicated by that table are very important to me. I also use IE and Firefox quite regularly, generally I don’t notice a significant difference in speed between the three browsers when simply displaying a single page.
I find that the use of system resources and the browser’s interface are a lot more important. To me Opera’s main speed advantage is that I can open a large number of pages without the browser slowing to a crawl, and even on a low resolution screen I can manage those pages efficiently. That’s particularly important when I’m browsing on my old 400Mhz Celeron laptop, but even on my modern desktop PC, Opera has a big advantage when I’m heavily researching something and I have dozens of pages open.
Dont people ever get bored by browser comparisons ?
Guess not – how about text mode browser comparisons at least for some variation ?
Opera – the best – nothing new 8)
> Guess not – how about text mode browser comparisons at least for some variation ?
Obviously you haven’t read the article all the way down to the bottom, have you? 😉
Opera has always been the fastest browser.
Not really. Links 2.x in graphics mode can be faster, as can browsers like Dillo.
If you only compare against large GUI browsers, though, Opera is quite fast.
Opera wins on all fronts: features,
usability, memory use, install file size, stability, web standards, etc…
Not when you compare against all existing browsers. Opera is a huge, bloated monstrosity compared to the browser I’m using right now, for example. 🙂
Browser: Links (0.99; OS/2 1 i386; 80×33)
Well I think everyone here knew the comparison is ebtween modern browsers with actual CSS/JS/DOM support, not text or light gui browsers.
One use for all these browsers is to use them as the default app for looking at locally stored jpg/gif/png files, nothing to do with the browsers real capabilities but a use that is often set as default and probably never should be.
For W2K (IE or FF), BeOS (NP+ve), OSX (Safari), I have loaded around 20-150 images in 1 go and usually seen all these OSes go down the toilet. BeOS needed reboot with only 20 NP images, W2K, OSX needed endless window closing before becoming stable again.
So why do OS or browser vendors even suggest or set these as default as an image viewer and not provide a much leaner tool for the job, beats me.
I think the major problem with this test is that it’s impossible to buy a new Pentium 3 machine to reproduce the actual test results! The article author should have run the tests on the lowest-spec’ed machine available from the big OEMs – which is probably about 3 times the power of the one he tested it on!
Hence, the figures quoted probably have to be scaled down, particularly if they are CPU-bound, and this in turn makes the differences between the browsers on the “worst” machine you can currently buy new much smaller. It makes you suspect that the author deliberately chose the slowest box he could find to widen the gap between the figures…
To be honest, total page rendering speed on machines you can actually purchase *now* (as opposed to 5+ years ago) doesn’t matter that much – what’s more important is things like progressive rendering, standards support and useful features (which is why Firefox’s extensions are a *massive* plus for that browser – often cancelling out potential reasons not to use it).
Don’t forget “Opera:config” in Opera 9; no more editing .ini files! Just enter Opera:config in your address bar, and you’ll see a GUI to all the .ini files.
This benchmark seem rather old.
From the Linux benchmark page:
[/i]”The tests are done on SuSE Linux 9.1, using KDE (except Epiphany, whose results are shown for Gnome, as that is its normal operating environment). .. (snip) Opera 8 tests were done using Opera 8 beta 1. Mozilla 1.8 tests were done using Mozilla 1.8 alpha 6. Firefox 1.5 tests were done using Firefox 1.5 beta 2. Opera 9 tests were done using Opera 9 technical preview 1.”[/i]
This Benchmark is at least six months old. Why is it on the news page?
G.
Edited 2006-05-07 16:21