Opera 10

[Faolan]

For those interested, Opera 10 has been released and features many new improvements.

Download (www.opera.com/browser)

Most people here are Firefox users, but for those who aren't or want to try something else...

[Mark-B]

For those interested, Opera 10 has been released and features many new improvements.

Most people here are Firefox users, but for those who aren't or want to try something else...

I started using Opera in 1997 and it was my primary browser while Netscape was king and while Internet Explorer was just starting out. I purchased paid upgrades every year through 2003. They eventually started giving it away for free and I eventually moved on to other browsers, but I have always kept a copy of Opera around.


-

[Faolan]

I've been with Opera 5 I think it was, there is few browsers that match Opera for speed of navigating or utilities built in for surfing the web. The other browsers may have a faster JS engine but Opera just is a lot more snappy to navigate.

Mouse gestures makes life easier to navigate instead of reaching for the keyboard, find a website you want to research later? Notes helps here. The intelligent address bar is far better than Firefox's (it searches for words within bookmarks, though not perfectly). For web developers there is Dragonfly built in plus Small Screen Rendering. In addition Opera is usually the safer of the platforms to test in, though it's losing the leading edge to Webkit/Firefox engines. Sessions is a great way to deal with multiple tabs as well, something I've never quite got to work in Firefox. In addition Opera 10 seems to be far more memory efficient than Firefox 3.5 for my usage patterns.

I also use Firefox, but trying to manage all those extensions across multiple PCs is a nightmare plus bookmarks etc. I usually just end up copying the profile directory.

Out of the two recent releases of Firefox/Opera, Opera seems to be a lot less buggy. Firefox 3.5 just feels rushed, it's got a lot of potential but they've seemed to have lost a lot of their 'mojo' as it where. In addition Firefox just feels sluggish on a Linux platform and crashes or fails to load Flash which works just fine in Opera. The final issue, and this affects Photographers, is the rendering issues with jpg images.

The main downside of Opera compared to Firefox is the lack of extensibility. Widgets Vs Extensions, extensions wins hands down.

[basroil]

Well, Opera supports more HTML5 features than any other browser, and also is the basis for Wii and DS's (and even IBM's OS/2 recovery partitions) web browsers. Did they add ICC profile support yet though?

[gcogger]

Did they add ICC profile support yet though?

No, unfortunately not :(