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I have mentioned before, on more than one occasion, that I have trouble settling on one browser to be my ‘browser of choice’. The Mac platform has some first class options as well. Safari I have used but hate that ‘brushed metal’ look which I find distracting and ugly – but it renders well. I love OmniWeb but it still lacks a few standards that drive me elsewhere from time to time. Camino is excellent but always seems, somehow, a little unfinished.
And then, of course, there is the favourite standby – Firefox. Which I have been using exclusively now for several months. But is it just me or has anyone else noticed that with each successive Firefox release it gets slower and slower? The initial load time has become a puzzling and long wait for something to happen. And it has a habit of not quitting as well. But mainly, it’s the rendering speed and what used to be, in those early, heady days, a real zippy download time compared to say, IE, now feels more like pages are coming down supported by a zimmer frame.
My suspicion is that Firefox is falling into the same trap that was a standard IE-baiting rallying call – that of code bloat. It gets bigger and fancier and the original intention of a fast, slim and standards compliant browser has been thrown out the window with the last copy of Netscape. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the way it feels.
Which is what led me to listen when my son recommended I take another look at Opera. And damn me if this thing doesn’t absolutely hum! It surely has to be the fastest renderer out there at the moment. But my initial reaction to the interface was that it sucks. Until I eventually took the bull by the horns and worked my way thoroughly through the preferences where I learnt that there ain’t much I can’t change.
It really is worth taking another look at Opera. It starts out looking odd and confusing, and it has some serious limitations (like the way it handles viewing source code for example) but once you get the hang of it you can sit back and enjoy the performance.
I can’t find it right now but I seem to remember there’s a userjs that helps viewing source code in a better way. I suppose you’re using Opera 8.54, the next version (9) has a different way of displaying it: pic
Yes – 8.52 in fact. I shall shoot off and take a look at this. Thanks for the pointer.
Of course – one way that Firefox is indispensible is using the ‘Web Developers’ tools extension and then I have to ask – is it this sort of stuff that is causing the bloat
I am wary of opera beta’s. When I downloaded one of the 8 beta’s I could no longer open Opera and it seemed to have a knock-on elsewhere with some preference settings. Took ages to sort out!
Thanks very much for the tip.
but you take extensions off Firefox and there’s not much left…the developer’s ext. is great, anyway.
I suggest you try the beta release of Opera (or one of the weekly builds) because it is the first real company answer to the competitor: many long needed things are now included (opml support, simple search engine customization, gmail support), many options now have a UI just like about:config in FF, and it’s rather stable (the Win version at least).
Personally, i love firefox, though some don’t. It’s a bit slower on the page rendering, and a pain on a mac as MOST have pointed out, but still, on my winlaptop and desktops it’s the browser of choice.
btw, what a coincidence. I just, about 30 minutes before checking your blog, downloaded opera 9 beta (alongside ie7 beta2) in order to test out which one is better.
btw, new site design, skip the java will yea
it looks a bit offbalance though. and I can’t seem to find anything anymore.
Hey stabani
Be interested to hear what you think of IE7. I don’t have a Windows machine any more so I can’t take a look that easily.
Off-balance? Any chance you could elaborate? Anyway – I need to use js iun order to learn it…
well, the left sidebar colors don’t flow well, and personally, i don’t see any number of comments on the front page
Is this using IE? Or Firefox. If it’s not working in Firefox then something is wrong! Can you let me know?
hmm, actually, on second thought, it was an error brought on by one of my plugins, works fine in bon echo.
btw, can’t seem to use ie7 tabs. stupid microsoft.
I just noticed the IE banner on the right hand side. Good Touch.
It does look a bit screwed up with IE7b2
bon echo?
I was worried about IE7 although in principle it should it should behave. Perhaps it isnl;t going to live up to expectation after all…
Thanks for the tip. No doubt I’ll get to see a cipy soon…
bon echo is firefox 2.0 alpha 1. it’s basically a few *minor* changes to the current version of firefox (the major difference was places which will be scrapped for 2.0 release).
ie 7 seems to bold some text on your site.