05 August 2006
Firefox vs. Opera
I have used Firefox for quite a while now and recently I installed Opera to see the differences and to see which one I liked better. That being said I'm a fan of both of them.
The current version of each has a lot of similarities. One feature I like more with Opera is the way they deal with the tabs. Opera has automatically a close button on each tab. With Firefox a similar feature can be gained with the installation of an extension which allows you to close the tab with a double click. Also still on the topic of tabs, Opera seems to have better support of their tabs and every window that opens will create a new tab unless you tell it to do different. So links that pop-up smaller windows still will but those windows will be directly linked to the tabs. Firefox has some difficulty in getting every window into a tab. The preview feature of the tabs in Opera is also very nice when you have a lot of tabs open. I would prefer the option of previewing links on web pages in Opera as one extension allows in Firefox.
Regarding extensions and widgets, Opera has some very nice widgets. Firefox has some as well and has the advantage of having a lot more extensions to offer. Many of the Firefox extensions are to give Firefox the same features as Opera, but a lot give it other very useful features as well.
Opera has one feature not found anywhere in Firefox that is exceptionally nice. I'm sure everyone has at one time or another closed either a tab or their browser by mistake. For users of Opera who close a tab accidentally there is a "trash" that holds the pages that you've visited to recover in that situation. It won't help you if you closed the browser, but if you use the feature of starting Opera where you left off the previous time, that won't be an issue as everything will already be there.
I encourage everyone to try both Firefox and Opera and see which one you like better. Both are very good browsers. Internet Explorer users might try Firefox first as it seems to me to be a kind of a step between IE and Opera. All web pages will look a lot closer to the way they do in IE and will behave the same way, while pages can sometimes behave strangely in Opera.
The current version of each has a lot of similarities. One feature I like more with Opera is the way they deal with the tabs. Opera has automatically a close button on each tab. With Firefox a similar feature can be gained with the installation of an extension which allows you to close the tab with a double click. Also still on the topic of tabs, Opera seems to have better support of their tabs and every window that opens will create a new tab unless you tell it to do different. So links that pop-up smaller windows still will but those windows will be directly linked to the tabs. Firefox has some difficulty in getting every window into a tab. The preview feature of the tabs in Opera is also very nice when you have a lot of tabs open. I would prefer the option of previewing links on web pages in Opera as one extension allows in Firefox.
Regarding extensions and widgets, Opera has some very nice widgets. Firefox has some as well and has the advantage of having a lot more extensions to offer. Many of the Firefox extensions are to give Firefox the same features as Opera, but a lot give it other very useful features as well.
Opera has one feature not found anywhere in Firefox that is exceptionally nice. I'm sure everyone has at one time or another closed either a tab or their browser by mistake. For users of Opera who close a tab accidentally there is a "trash" that holds the pages that you've visited to recover in that situation. It won't help you if you closed the browser, but if you use the feature of starting Opera where you left off the previous time, that won't be an issue as everything will already be there.
I encourage everyone to try both Firefox and Opera and see which one you like better. Both are very good browsers. Internet Explorer users might try Firefox first as it seems to me to be a kind of a step between IE and Opera. All web pages will look a lot closer to the way they do in IE and will behave the same way, while pages can sometimes behave strangely in Opera.
Labels: firefox, internet, opera
