Comparing Firefox 3 With Opera 9.5 On Linux 489
Joe Barr writes "Mayank Sharma has two recent stories on Linux.com; one evaluating the performance of Firefox 3, and the second comparing it to Opera 9.5. Which is better? For most people, it's probably more a matter of familiarity or personal preference, but these stories provide hard performance data to consider as well. Sharma notes, 'In terms of rendering JavaScript, Firefox 3 had the edge over Opera 9.5 in the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which has an error range between +/-0.8% to +/-11.3% depending on the type of test. In the JavScript Engine speed test, Opera 9.5 scores over its peers when it comes to error handling, DOM, and AJAX.'"
Slashdot shares a corporate overlord with Linux.com.
Choice is a Good Thing (Score:4, Interesting)
But what about plug-ins such as Flash? (Score:4, Interesting)
The real challenge/merit is whether Opera 9.5 is accepted by webpages as being able to display all the content correctly, rather than insisting a component isn't there and demanding its download only to be told it's still not there.
That's my complaint about the last version or two of Opera (and I've been using it since 3.5), that I wind up having to break out IE or FF for some pages because just being adherent to the HTML 4 standard isn't enough of a claim anymore.
Re:Opea is awesome! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:load gmail! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:awesome bar = f u bar (Score:1, Interesting)
Dude.. it only looks slightly different and puts things from your bookmarks below your address bar as you type.
I dunno wtf you're talking about. I use the internet all the time, probably 2-3 hours a day of web-browsing alone in that time... I use firefox from 1 through 3, and I've hardly noticed a difference.
Sounds more like a whining point than something substantially flawed. Just my 2 cents.
Re:Opera is awesome! (Score:1, Interesting)
New tab button...who needs that? The tabs also belong at the bottom and there shouldn't be an X on each one. Ya, I've been using Opera for far too long. But I still love it. I tried Firefox 3 but they STILL won't let you put the tab bar on the bottom (must be hidden somewhere if the option exists.)
I'm very happy with 9.5. The whole experience is just a tad bit better because I no longer have a few minor bugs to deal with from 9.2. FF3 finally feels like a finished product but doesn't seem as customizeable as I would expect from FOSS (without having to use extensions.)
Re:awesome bar = f u bar (Score:3, Interesting)
Am I the only one who thinks of this picture every time I hear "Awesome Bar"? It just seems like one of those things that was a placeholder name that never got changed.
Reminds me of 'OS/2 Warp'. Ugh. I'm not sure which company was more stupid - IBM not knowing what to do with OS/2, or Commodore not knowing what to do with the Amiga. *sigh*
Pretty good (Score:4, Interesting)
I gave Opera 9.5 a whirl last week and was highly impressed. It's packed with nice features (Where do you think Firefox and IE get most of their ideas?) but still pretty fast and light. Other versions of Opera never did much for me, but this is the first proprietary application that I've run across in a long time that I would seriously consider using on a daily basis. The only areas where it's really lacking are modularity (extensions, instead of everything being built-in to the browser) and of course the fact that it's not free software.
My priority is not speed (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that most of my extensions are un-installable in the latest version did not help matters.
This made me wonder...Why haven't the coders ported these extensions to Firefox 3.0 if it has been in development for a long time?
I also thought I would be in position to play live CNN streams but I was wrong! Firefox plays the commercial OK but will display a balck screen with sound when it comes to the actual content! Not good enough.
Re:Choice is a Good Thing (Score:2, Interesting)
You forgot netcat. ;-)
Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox (Score:2, Interesting)
mis-match (Score:5, Interesting)
But Opera 9.5 is no less revolutionary than Firefox, matching its open source rival feature for feature,
That should be:
But Firefox is no less revolutionary than Opera, matching its proprietary rival feature for feature
Do we really need to break out the list of things that Opera developed that are now taken for granted by other browsers?
Re:But what about plug-ins such as Flash? (Score:1, Interesting)
running ubuntu 7.10 and FF sometimes ignores my clicks to open /. comments and it's friggin toolbars take up half the screen. Opera 9.5 can use the WHOLE screen and never ignores my requests. For me Opera is the best browser at the moment...
Re:Easy. (Score:3, Interesting)
They're similarly capable, but Firefox is FOSS
So? Opera has been free (as in beer) for a long time now, and the guys developing it actually made an excellent work of porting it to several OSs/architectures; it works as good and snappy on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It's small, very fast, rock stable and packed with a lot of useful features (a.k.a, not bloat). FF3 is very nice on its own too, yes, but the more competition the merrier. What's not to like?
People dissing Opera because it's not FOSS are missing on a great browser, and perhaps the best UI available on this kind of software.
The one thing that gets me... (Score:4, Interesting)
operaajax!faster (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm on WinXP, and I've got ff3 and Opera 9.5. On my work's sites, ff3 beats the shit out of Opera with regards to Ajax and DOM speed. An Ajax call and DOM node insertion (with the contents of the Ajax call) that takes 2.5-3 seconds in Opera takes less than 1/2 of a second in ff3. Maybe linux vs Windows is a huge difference, or maybe the benchmarks are just not representative of real-world applications.
Re:Choice is a Good Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
You should look into Personalize Menu, or if someone has updated it for FF3, "Tiny Menu".
Both of these collapse that large list of menu entries into one icon that then has File Edit View etc as submenus.
Personalize Menu even lets you configure the menu so you can put the things you actually use where you'll get to them easily.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Opera screen real estate vs Firefox (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know about an extension for Firefox being available that can do this but Opera will let you undo the closing of a tab. It is the only browser I know of that allows that and it has saved me a few times where I clicked the X on one tab while meaning to click on the tab next to it to make it the active one. The Undo brings the tab back to the position it was in and on the page you last left it. I know Firefox doesn't do this "out of the box" but there may be an extension for it. Bottom line: don't worry about closing tabs by accident in Opera. They got you covered.
Re:But what about plug-ins such as Flash? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I have honestly seen people argue that it's not worth supporting anything but Internet Explorer because all of their users use Internet Explorer, when the reason all of their users use Internet Explorer is because the site in question is Internet Explorer-only by design or has massive bugs in other browsers. It's less about a lazy attitude and more about a stupid, head-in-the-sand attitude.
both are fantastic browsers (Score:1, Interesting)
I've always been a massive fan of Opera, but now I've tried out both Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3.0 on my Windows machine, I have to admit that Firefox has really caught up to the speed and responsiveness of Opera and still beats it a touch in rendering accuracy (though whether this is the fault of Opera or web developers I don't know).
The "awesome bar" is nice, and I'm not sure what the complaints are about. Search anywhere and the enhanced page zoom are also great, but this is stuff Opera has had for ages and now Opera has full history search, which also searches page text, not just the title and url, and seems just as fast as the awesome bar.
I'm starting to see why so many people praise the add-on support Firefox has, as ad-block plugin in particular is fantastic; it blocks just about every ad, collapses empty elements and I never have to touch it. Opera has a pretty decent content blocker, but it's spoiled by being entirely manual.
It's an absolute joke how badly IE fares next to either Opera or Firefox in terms of features, standards compliance, and (on my machine at least) speed. I've also got Safari installed, but it seems like another case of Apple software that's great on Mac but crap on Windows.
Re:Choice is a Good Thing (Score:1, Interesting)
Which one is better for pr0n?
Opera mem leaks when you use flash =/ (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes I will be filing a bug report.
Re:Choice is a Good Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I'm afraid market share still rules - and Opera still barely moves the needle for reasons unfathomable to me. I used early versions and liked it a lot. I switched to FF only because I have an overwhelmingly strong preference for libre software.
However, with Apple making significant inroads into the PC marketplace, Safari is slowly becoming a significant player. And if web developers eventually have to code for three browsers, they might as well just go ahead and use the standards - and we all win.