Trying out Opera
Ok, so for years, and years, I’ve used Mozilla Firefox (Firebird, etc etc!) as I’ve always liked that it was more secure, it was FLOSS etc etc.
Well anyway, after having spent a lot of time recently at Omega Sektor where I’ve had to use Opera (simply because their Firefox install is broken and I hate Internet Explorer!) I’ve come across a few features I’ve liked in it.. (Speed Dial - the fact that a popup without a URL bar has a lil thing giving the web site address across the top)… so I’ve decided to try it at home…
The install was smooth (sudo dpkg -i opera*.deb) and It’s working nicely.
I’ll probably end up either loving or hating it in the next few days, but we can only see how things go!
September 11th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Good choice! Opera is a /great/ browser. The more I use it, the more I found out about it and like it more. Small size, memory efficient, great IRC, RSS and mail handling, and more clever little tricks up it’s sleeve than you can shake a stick at.
I hope you and Opera become best friends.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I tried it a while ago as well. I could make it fit the desktop with some QT themeing (Polymer?), and managed to get rid of that laughable transfer manager tab (via opera:config option), and set it up pretty nicely in overall. It felt simply awesomely fast and solid!
The ad blocker is stupid (the engine is too dumnbed down for complex regexp matching) and requires some actual manual file editing (adding the ca. million lines of rules) to get really up and running effectively. And at that point the browser slows down slightly. Agh.
Then I found no way to download resources from web pages. I am talking about flash videos, especially from the sites that are trying to actually prevent that. For Firefox you have Unplug or can resort to LiveHTTPheaders. On Opera, you are simply out of luck. I tried several solutions and they just plain sucked.
It just feels too bad using several browsers for several different needs and situations. I’m back to Firefox. It sucks as well but it sucks a little less. Opera is a promising browser, but it takes still some time to mature to be usable.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I have just started using opera after having fallen in love with opera mini on my blackberry. So far, I have found it so so. I love the speed dial, but have had some small bugs on different sites.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
In response to Mr. Troll..
1) I dont neccesarily need to get content that people dont want me to get.. my Web Browser is for that - browsing the web. Polymer… well I didnt like it and went for the keramik theme (as I use plastik as my buttons etc etc and I prefer that style!
I’m not too sure with the ad blocker… I dont mind ads.. they’re there to pay people’s bills… so I’m happy to view them and well… even though they can be annoying sometimes (espescially in firefox where they use IE specific code and cover up the content I’m trying to view)
Mike, I’ve been using opera mini on my samsung d600 for ages.. ok, it’s a little annoying when trying to writem, but that’s a limitation of the phonjes software, not Operas. and greywulf… I’m not going to be using the IRC or email side of things… but I haven’t come across the RSS side yet! (oh actually, In just did by clicking on the RSS feed at the bottom of the page when typing this - I’ll look into it more in future!
September 11th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
have fun getting security updates.. (download .deb; dpkg -i for every update)
September 11th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I love Firefox for the extensions. Not only does Opera not have the widgets I want, but I also think widgets are implemented rather horribly. If Opera could use the FF extensions, I think I’d switch in a heartbeat.
September 11th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
I’ve used Opera for years before switching to linux (ubuntu).
I was then forced to convert myself to the ugly firefox just for keeping things “easier” using the default stuff (was a bit problematic installing flash and other stuff on opera compared to the ubuntu default browser - firefox).
September 11th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Dread Night, I for some reason found that when I’d installed opera, it picked up all the java plugins, flash etc etc that I’d previuouslty installed for firefox (guess I can thank ubuntu-restricted-extras for all that!)
September 12th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Glad to hear you’re trying Opera.
By the way, does anyone know why Opera seems to have been dropped from the Ubuntu repositories?