What's New With IE, Firefox, Opera

prostoalex writes "The Web browser market hasn't seen the competition heat up for a while, but things are getting quite exciting, PC World reports. The magazine looks into the latest features that are incorporated into Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundation's Firefox and Opera Software's Opera. From the article: "We took Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1, and Opera 9 Preview 1 out for a spin. Both the Firefox beta and the Opera beta are available for download, although Opera isn't publicizing this early testing version; the browsers' final editions should be out around the time you read this. On the other hand, the IE 7 beta will not be available for downloading until early next year.""

Both Opera And Firefox Support SVG

[sysrpl]

Both Opera and Firefox are rolling native SVG support into their browser. If you are unfamiliar with SVG, this site.

http://svg.codebot.org/ [codebot.org]

Completely non-informative article

[AcidArrow]

To sum it up: IE7 gets tabs and better security (supposedly) (wow, we already knew that for quite a while) FF gets autoupdates that work (well, we all know that already) and Opera gets a variety of new features (but they were unable to test them for the article)

what about galeon?

[larry bagina]

Galeon [sourceforge.net] recently released v 2.0. Considering that most /. users claim to hate windows and love linux, it saddens me that such a feature rich browser gets completely ignored.

Re:Opera?

[croddy]

No.

It sends a user-agent string that is enough to persuade most browser detection that it's IE, but it includes the word Opera -- and web log analysis tools are designed to recognize that.

This is Opera's default user-agent (from the page you linked):

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; OS) Opera X.Y

People do, in fact, understand that this user-agent refers to Opera, and they develop their log analysis tools to report that fact. I have never seen a web log analysis tool that didn't understand Opera's user-agent.

The traffic on the webservers I maintain shows Opera at around 0.09% of total hits, just behind Lynx.

Re:Regardless of which.....

[Kelson]

it really doesn't matter to me, just as long as it's w3c compliant.

Heh. Hah. HA HAHA HAHAHA!

*ahem*

Sorry about that.

"W3C Compliant" is much easier to define for a website than for a web browser. Why? A compliant website uses only features defined in the W3C specs, or only uses other features in ways that will gracefully degrade in compliant browsers (though some purists will object to the latter definition).

For a browser, does it mean something that implements every part of a W3C standard? Or one that implements part of a standard but makes sure not to contradict it anywhere? Is it OK if it implements nonstandard features like those used in AJAX? And which standards? HTML, CSS and JavaScript/ECMAScript are a good start, but what about SVG? XHTML? XForms?

The specs are complex enough that there still is no web browser that implements all of even the current versions of HTML/CSS/JavaScript. At best, you can measure relative compliance, in which case Firefox and company, Opera, and Safari are all well ahead of even IE7. But waiting for a "W3C Compliant" browser is going to take a while.

Re:Opera UI

[cryptoz]

I can't configure it to use larger fonts.

Actually, you can. Look under Tools / Preferences / Advanced.

can't change the layout to be what I like.

Ah, this is interesting. You see, I can't get FF to make it the layout I like (one of my main reasons for using Opera.) I have the address bar and the tab bar at the bottom of the screen, and no File Edit etc menus at the top. Last time I checked, it was either impossible or nearly so to get FF to do this. So, I understand what you mean about interface being a big deal, but it's not Opera's fault that it doesn't work just the way you specifically want it to. I'm not blaming FF for it's configuration problems, even though I believe it has some.

Re:I wonder...

[pomo monster]

Drop shadows are terribly overused nowadays, but they can be enormously helpful sometimes to emphasize elements or set them apart from busy backgrounds, e.g. captions over a photo. text-shadow is already a property in CSS2 [w3.org], and they're considering adding a "glow" or "outline" to the next recommendation.

Firefox doesn't support text-shadow (or, totally apropos nothing, display: inline-block for that matter), but Safari does, and tastefully applied, it's great to have around. Why IE doesn't pair its proprietary filters to standard CSS properties like these is beyond me.

Re:Avant Browser

[aconbere]

I'm afraid cryptoz is right, what you're talking about is mouse gestures, and as suprising as this may be to you this feature has been available for some time in firefox as an extension and default in opera for ages. *gasp*

If you are however content to use a IE based browser that fails in all the same ways that IE fails (security and standards compliant rendering being my main to beefs) then by all means go right ahead. But be forewarned your avant browser, is nothing but an IE skin, and in my opinion it's not even a very good one.

~Anders

Re:Opera UI

[Aranth Brainfire]

"I can't configure it to use larger fonts."

You mean like the option, "minimum font size (in pixels)"? Or the options that allow you (in the same part of preferences, "fonts") to define the default fonts and sizes for websites? Or perhaps do you mean the option to zoom in on any webpage (although that increases the size of images too...)

Re:what about galeon?

[MaskedSlacker]

Its a fine browser, but like FF is based on mozilla, lacks extensions, or even the nifty features of opera. All in all, opera and FF are hands down the two best across all platforms, and if FF didn't have extensions, Opera would win. Opera > FF w/o extensions, FF w/ extensions >> Opera.

Re:Avant Browser

[Farrell]

Avant Browser is actually an alternative version, if it's not the direct descendant of, an IE browser called, I believe, IEOpera, who's goal, quite amusingly, was to bring Opera's features to IE. Everything you listed on there is an Opera feature, and some of the more basic ones. It's definately worth trying Opera out itself, if just because it's now completely free.

Re:Both Opera And Firefox Support SVG

[Kelson]

They're both subsets so far -- and unfortunately they're not the same subsets. Opera 8 supports SVG Tiny [opera.com]. Mozilla intends to implement SVG Full eventually, but the current SVG support in Firefox 1.5 [mozilla.org] is still missing quite a bit.

So some features work in both browsers, some only work in Opera, and some only work in Firefox.

Re:I'm getting tired of this

[Phroggy]

They are only browsers! A piece of software where you can check out websites with! They are not that important, you see. Dude.

What percentage of your time using a computer is spent using a browser? For most of us, it's a pretty significant percentage. That's what makes it important.

Opera beats out Gecko

[Bitsy Boffin]

For a long time I was a big advocate of gecko based browsers. Then firefox started to suck a bit, ok, it started to suck memory and CPU a LOT, not all the time, but enough to be incredibly annoying.

A few months ago I started using Opera again (I've used it since Windows 3.1 days, but not seriously since then) full time, it took some configuring, I changed some keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-T to open a new tab for a start), added a web developer type toolbar, rearranged some stuff, and got a nice skin for it. But man, it's just so much faster and more responsive than Firefox.

There are only three things I miss.. the abundance of plugins (some I miss particularly - live headers , url navigator and the flash click to play thingee), Venkman, and a designMode/contentEditable API (rich text (html) editing in the browser). Opera 9 implements designMode now, so that just leaves 2 before Gecko browsers earn the "browser of 2nd to last resort" badge from me.

People really should give Opera a fair try, it really is better than Gecko IMHO. And now it's free (beer), there's not much of a reason not to give it a shot.

Re:Regardless of which.....

[masklinn]

ECMAScript is an ECMA standard, not a W3C standard.

DOM and Javascript DOM bindings, on the other hand, are W3C standards.

Re:Regardless of which.....

[masklinn]

amaya, a web browser which is ONLY w3c compliant, and made by w3c people will crash on 90% of the sites out there on the web, if not more. it crashes on msn.com...

Amaya is a piece of dung, 90% of the CSS specs ain't implemented, it isn't even able to render reliably a perfectly valid HTML4/CSS1 website.

Re:Opera beats out Gecko

[patro]

some I miss particularly - ... the flash click to play thingee

Try this [userjs.org].

Re:Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me preface this by stating that I am a huge fan of Firefox and I promote it very heavily amongst friends and family because I honestly feel that it is a better alternative to IE. However, I also feel that Firefox is in dire need of some serious optimizing. Take a look at what top is reporting as I type this (Thunderbird is included as a bonus):

PID USER       PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
8916 sc        16   0  316m 141m  17m S  0.0 37.6 205:53.37 firefox-bin
8996 sc        16   0  122m  39m  16m S  0.0 10.6   7:48.32 mozilla-thunder

With all that memory it is gobbling up, Firefox could pass for a Java app! Thunderbird looks as though it could stand to trim some fat as well. Memory consumption like this seems ridiculous to me especially when other browsers out there (e.g. Epiphany, Opera, etc.) do not consume nearly as many resources to get the same job done. Hell, Opera even packs its punch in a smaller binary.

For those of you who can't understand why this is an issue because you have 1 GB of RAM, keep in mind that there are still an abundance of Win98-era machines in use and bloated software is especially painful on them.

Re:Opera

[hkmwbz]

"I hated it because it felt awkward and unnatural."

Wow, that's really specific!

That's like saying "I don't like Firefox because I don't like it".

Re:safari!!!

[JonJ]

I think you are confusing "PCs" with "Windows", a common mistake amongst Mac fanatics.

Re:Whatever

[Dr.Syshalt]

By default FF decides itself how much RAM it uses. You can limit the RAM cache either in user.js - add the following string

user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 10240);

...or just install FasterFox extension - it will allow you to modify RAM amount it uses for cache. I run FF 1.5RC here for several hours (yes, on Windows XP - I didn't even check it memory footprint on Linux since it simply doesn't bother me) - it uses 44MB of RAM which, I guess, is ok for me.

Re:Opera beats out Gecko

[moonbender]

FWIW since either Opera 8.5 or Opera 9, Ctrl-T works by default. Pissed me off to no end because Ctrl-N stopped working, the key combo Opera has been using since before there even was a Firefox. But it was simple enough to add it in, now both Ctrl-T and Ctrl-N work. I also use Gmail with it without any showstopping bugs, although I'm not sure if the address autocompletion works.

Re:Firefox unfriendly to European languages

[GauteL]

I would recommend adding to the bug and actually listing the web sites that are going to break. These sites are the equivalent of Dixons or Best Buy in their respective countries and are mainstream sites with lots of visitors.

Firefox and Opera.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well not all features of OPERA are available as extensions of Firefox.
I have been using Opera from 6.5 and Firefox from 0.6 / 0.7 (not sure), but at that time I was the only one in my neighbourhood.

Well Opera for once had faster loading times for pages initially, but rendering and compliance of ... - even javascript - was not up to mark. Memory was overconsumed. it has definitly changed. And to 8.5 - it has lost speed (still better than IE and by little FF) a bit but became more stable, less memory usage, and better compliance [I was using it with banners - they did not annoy me].

Thing I love about Opera is Last Session. :) Really good when I am in the middle of something and still one of the most loved things in it.
Also it loaded pages a little faster. But even now javascript is a little itchy in Opera.

I have also been using Firefox - no rules says you can't use two browsers - was pretty neet, it was good at one thing - browsing. The memory was not a issue - compared to that time Opera .. One and half year ago.
Now it has grown - extensions and all... and is certainly great in browsing, better compliance and stable.

[Yeah the ACROBAT extension - sink it in the sea, and sometimes the Flash extension, they are the things that crash it. Acrobat is a must crash extension ! Firefox eats memory and sometimes processor. (Not that it is firefox's fault - I remeber in 0.6 you had had to look for the flash extension, google for it)]

I haven't used IE over 1 year.
But people around me started swithing near FF 0.8-0.9 // Opera 7.4.

And by the way Opera has plug-ins, obviously, you do know that??!

I'll stick with the two for now.

Re:When do we get REAL RESIZING like acrobat

[nick8325]

Opera's had that for ages, can't remember when it first appeared though...

Re:When do we get REAL RESIZING like acrobat

[cgenman]

Opera recently added "fit to window width" under the view tab, which intelligently downsizes pages to avoid horizontal scrolling on smaller windows, but keeps everything as-is if there is sufficient width. As a last resort on very, very small screens it degrades to a custom CSS file. It's really quite nifty.

Re:Regardless of which.....

[jrumney]

The spec only says "it must be in ASCII". Fine. I feed it UTF

In both cases you did something wrong, and the browsers either did something to try and salvage things, or followed the spec and gave you garbage. If anything, I'd expect non-ASCII text in headers to be encoded as per RFC-2047, but I doubt any browsers implement that.

What's not explicitly forbidden is allowed, right?

Non-ASCII text in headers is explicitly forbidden.

Re:Has firefox fixed updates?

[Hieronymus Howard]

Yes, software updates in 1.5 are vastly improved. It automatically downloads the update and then asks you if you want to use it the next time you start Firefox. I've had no trouble with this on the release candidates.

Re:what we need for compliant browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

SVG support *is* in Firefox now, at least in the version that this article is talking about.

Re:what we need for compliant browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

That shame DOES work. It worked to take market share from IE, and give it to Firefox.

Did what? Sure Firefox had an amazing rise in just a few months, but it took 100% share out of Netscape 6.2, and about 50% out of mozilla.
IE share was solid in the long run. The rise of firefox stopped as soon as every /.er had it!

So, firefox buble is like talking about IE users turning to Avant browser! Pretty lame.

Re:what we need for compliant browsers

[jeff_schiller]

SVG is similar: a well-defined standard, with LOTS of potential for the web, but yet Microsoft ignore it. Hell, Mozilla has ignored it, too. It's available for Mozilla as an add-on, but why isn't it IN there now? What about Konqueror and Safari?

Microsoft proposed their own graphical markup language (VML) that they also use in Office - but it was rejected. I guess they feel spurned.

But Mozilla has ignored SVG?!? Firefox supports SVG natively since Firefox 1.5 Alpha - it is NOT supported as an add-on. Furthermore, the SVG spec is a very complex one - it's not something that can be trivially implemented.

FYI, Safari is currently working on updating WebKit to support SVG based on Konqueror's KSVG plugin.

Re:When do we get REAL RESIZING like acrobat

[Anonymous Coward]

This extension will do what you want. It works exactly like opera.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=1499 [mozilla.org]

I agree this should be built in to the browser, though.

Re:what we need for compliant browsers

[powermacx]

SVG is similar: a well-defined standard, with LOTS of potential for the web, but yet Microsoft ignore it. Hell, Mozilla has ignored it, too. It's available for Mozilla as an add-on, but why isn't it IN there now? What about Konqueror and Safari?

SVG support in Safari? here [webkit.org]. Still rather unstable and lacking features, but full support will be there eventually.