Firefox vs Opera
In case you´ve been living under a rock lately, Opera recently announced that as of version 8.5, they will no longer be charging for usage of their browser.
Published 24.10.2005 - Last edited 09.12.2005 - 5935 views - 9 comments
Those were dark days, my friend, dark days. Luckily, there has been a new dawn, of brilliant luminance, shining forth from the Firefox. Recently I’ve been using the beta of Firefox 1.5, and have to say that thus far, it’s been the most pleasant browsing experience ever. But, now that Opera has done the right thing, I wanted to give them a fair shot, an objective look to see if it’s worth making the switch. First, I’ll take a look at what I love about Firefox 1.5, and then I’ll critique Opera 8.5.
Note: I have left out Safari, because even though it is an awesome browser, the majority of users who are on Windows don’t have this luxury. I am also not critiquing Internet Explorer because there haven’t really been any notable improvements in the past five years, with the exception of the IE Dev Toolbar.
So, basically the purpose of this article is to take a look at the two main alternatives to IE6, because no self-respecting Windows user should still be forced to use this browser. In an attempt to be objective, I will be looking at both Firefox and Opera from a fresh-install, "out of the box" standpoint, as to not sway opinion based on extensions. Let us look first at the Fox...
Firefox 1.5 beta
From my stats logs, I see that the majority of visitors to this site are on Firefox already, so I’m assuming you already know what makes it so great. I will turn my attention instead to the improvements I’ve noticed in the 1.5 beta. Thus far, I have been very impressed by the ability to drag and drop tabs to arrange them in different order. This has made it very easy to arrange multiple homepages in the order I want them to appear, rather than having to manually re-open each one and then reset my homepages.
Another feature I really love, also related to tabbed-browsing, is the option to force all target="_blank" and JavaScript pop-ups to launch in a new tab, or the same window, rather than spawn a new window. To me, this is the epitome of tabbed-browsing, giving power back to the user and taking it out of the hands of picky developers. As you may know, one of my pet-peeves is an all-Flash site that launches another window, just for the sake of aesthetics.
Opera, a fair shake
Now, shifting the focus, I will describe what I like about this browser. The coolest feature is by far the zoom feature. Rather than just resize the text like most browsers, it treats the entire page as a whole, and zooms in accordinly. It would be like having a newspaper in front of you, and gradually bringing it closer to your eyes, rather than just having all the titles and story text get bigger while the paper itself remained the same size. Basically, the zoom enlarges everything proportionally, very nice.
That being said, there is little else I have found about Opera that Firefox doesn’t already do better. A quick glance at the product features they’re boasting reads like a laundry list of what Firefox already offers. The one thing that stands out as possibly useful is Voice, which allows a user to talk to their browser. I can see this being useful for those with impaired motor funtion, and applaud them for taking these steps. However, for the average person, you’ll probably get some funny looks if you’re sitting in your cubicle talking to your computer, saying things like: "Opera next link, Opera back…"
Another interesting point on their list that they are supposedly the first browser to offer native support for SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics. This was a spec for an open-source alternative to Flash, pioneered by companies like Adobe. But, now that they’ve basically conceeded defeat and bought Macromedia, I don’t see SVG being all that important, in light of Flash.
So, those pleasantries aside, allow me to rip on the things I dislike about Opera. First of all, and this is huge – there is barely any support for negative CSS margins. Look at some of your favorite sites in Opera, and see what I mean. For designers, this means that many techniques for tweaking margins and padding are not available if your client cares about Opera.
Another big qualm I have is that when you display a site in full-screen, Opera looks for CSS of media="projection". This means that if you have a style type defined, such as for screen or print, when full-screened in Opera the user will see an unstyled page, with just line by line text. Luckily, it is easily fixed by changing your type to media="screen, projection".
In my opinion, this is a huge logical flaw on the part of Opera. Very rarely when a website is displayed in full-screen does this mean that the user has a projector hooked up to their computer. Most of the time, it will be people wanting to take screenshots of a site, or simply see more of the page they are reading. Why they chose to make this styled projection is beyond me.
I was also surprised and disappointed when I realized Opera does not have accesskey support. It’s odd that they would go to such great lengths to have a nice zoom feature for those who are visually impaired, and yet leave out something as simple as this. Basically, this means that embedded keyboard shortcuts don’t work if you are viewing a site in Opera.
Okay, almost done, but before I finish ripping on Opera, I want to point out one more thing I don’t like. This isn’t so much a bug as it is a non-sensical issue. In Firefox, when you press Ctrl-T this opens a new tab, and when you press Ctrl-N it opens a new window. It should be noted that Ctrl-N is a very common shortcut, and launches a new document in just about every single Windows program. In Opera, Ctrl-N opens a new tab, and in order to open a new window, you have do so some limber finger-work and hit Alt-Ctrl-N. Again, seems very counter-intuitive. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s really a “shortcut” if it takes more than one hand to use.
Tweaked Out
Another problem with Opera is that of customization. It seems to have a whole lot of options that don’t add up to very much. For instance, there are Appearance and Preferences under Tools. I wonder, could these both not have been consolidated into one, as in Firefox? Also, I find it funny that Opera offers a Clock feature, since it displays the same time as in the system tray.
Also, with Firefox, it is possible to fully customize the position of pretty much anything, from the address bar, to every last button. Since I prefer to see as much of a webpage as I can, I have everything positioned on one bar, so no space is wasted, and I make the most of my screen. Even Internet Explorer 6 can do this by default. It is odd that Opera locks you into what can be put on certain bars, so one cannot achieve the same effect…
Comparison
The illustration above shows a comparison of how I customize Firefox, and the closest I could do in Opera. Note that there is not a single bit of wasted space with Firefox, but with Opera, only 1/3rd of the browser top is actually put to good use. Also, though there are plenty of useless extra buttons available, one of my Firefox favorites is absent in Opera – the view downloads button.
Wrapping it Up
So, in case it has not yet become obvious, I heavily favor Firefox over Opera. While it is cool that Opera is now offering their browser free, I think it will be a few more versions before anyone should care. The only immediate effect of Opera being free is designers have yet another quirky browser to cater to. In order of preference, here is how I rank the major browsers out there: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, and Internet Explorer in distant last place.
1 | Thursday 10 Nov 2005 17:06:03 | Casper has this to say:
Hi Thomas!
First off, congrats on the comments module! Works perfect.
While we are talking about browsers, we might also consider talking more about editors as well. This matter greatly influences peoples ability to create good and readable pages. Just a thought anyway...
Keep up the good work man!
2 | Friday 18 Nov 2005 18:04:13 | Max has this to say:
I've tried IE, Netscape and Opera and I must admit that in the end none of them even remotely fullfills all the tasks and options you get when browsing with FF.
It simply outscores the rest like it was a plane running a speed contest with turtles...
Anyway, really enjoyed reading your review. Even though you put it much more objective than I just did. The conclusion is the same I guess. Thanks for sharing your well-written and objective review with us!
3 | Wednesday 28 Dec 2005 07:28:17 | Gail has this to say:
Good lord, FF *adopted* most of the stuff from opera- like tabs for instance. And FF doesn't necessarily do it BETTER, opera just does it DIFFERENTLY. Take 'zooming' for instance- Opera- has a redrawing feature- unique to its browser which is why it rocks on mobiles et all.
Opera manages RAM better, manages RSS feeds better, and while it may seem 'bloated' even with the chat, mail client etc. it works just as fast if not faster than firefox- its all transparent in the end.
I challenge you to spend a tenth of the time you spent on firefox, working with Opera. Its just as good if not better.
And there is this idea that 'open source' is BETTER- not necessarily. I rely on Opera for stability. That's something majorly lacking in Firefox.
I could actually do a detailed, detailed explanation but instead I'm going to refer you to this:
http://sonspring.com/journal/opera-round-2
4 | Wednesday 18 Jan 2006 11:10:43 | Marc has this to say:
Just wanted to clear up some of the blatant lies:
"Note that there is not a single bit of wasted space with Firefox, but with Opera, only 1/3rd of the browser top is actually put to good use."
Maybe right-clicking on any part of the interface to customise it to your liking was too complicated for you? I have a workable setup (thanks to mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts) that displays a total of three lines above and below the browser window. And one of them (address bar) is toggled off by hitting Ctrl+F8.
"Also, though there are plenty of useless extra buttons available, one of my Firefox favorites is absent in Opera – the view downloads button."
I would direct you to the panels sidebar. There you will not only find your downloads, but a host of other useful buttons, most of which do not have any equivalent in Firefox. Or, if you can master pressing two keys at the same time, try Ctrl+7. For more fun, try Ctrl and other numbers.
As for the Ctrl+N/T issues, it may please you to hear that Opera has now changed the default (as of v9). Of course, instead of just whining you could have just customised it to your liking. But I guess as a Firefox user, you would not expect that to be possible, so you did not look.
How on earth you could come to the conclusion that Opera is somehow less customisable than Firefox or IE is beyond me.
I would go on, but I know that your mind is already made up. But please, if you are going to write something that claims to be a fair comparison, do not resort to blatant lies.
5 | Wednesday 18 Jan 2006 12:05:13 | Thomas has this to say:
Well Marc... Being a FF user I must admit I jumped to conclusions on many accounts before publishing the article.
I suppose you need at least a month to fully appreciate the features provided. After spending a bit more time with Opera I noticed several features handled better and others not even handled by FF.
But in the end it's all about personal taste isn't it? And by publishing a provocative article like this you certainly get the discussion started, which again acts like a source for more info.
So, thanks Marc for sharing your knowledge in shortcuts!
6 | Wednesday 01 Feb 2006 17:12:42 | gladiator has this to say:
hey buddy i have somethin to say....one feature that i love most of opera is that it saves the tabs when i close them and those tabs are reopened when i restart opera.it saves the opened tabs for the next time.I don't know whether this feature is provided by any other browser.
7 | Wednesday 01 Feb 2006 17:14:47 | gladiator has this to say:
hey buddy i have somethin to say....one feature that i love most of opera is that it saves the tabs when i close them and those tabs are reopened when i restart opera.it saves the opened tabs for the next time.I don't know whether this feature is provided by any other browser.
8 | Monday 13 Mar 2006 13:23:41 | Ian has this to say:
This is a one sided review. Opera users "trying out" Firefox have as many complaints. Both dont know the other browser in depth. Opera has for a very long time had some powerful features not available in FF or now copied in FF extensions.
9 | Monday 18 Dec 2006 11:46:13 | John has this to say:
Might be a little one-sided, but then again even if Opera has a lot of powerful features FF has an almost unlimited possibility for add-ons, and yet keeps a very clean GUI which leaves a lot of space for what it's actually supposed to do - viewing websites...
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