I have always been pretty loyal when it comes to web-browsers. I own, somewhere, a fully licenced version of Netscape 0.9 (or was it 1.0) on floppy disc. Since that day I have been a Netscape user and turned to Mozilla when that became the non-AOL enabled version. Netscape/Mozilla has also been my mail program of choice for most of the time – although I did use Eudora for quite a while until multiple accounts became available in a Mozilla release.
Over the years I have had to use Internet Explorer. Primarily I use it for work where the software we develop has an interface optimised for IE.
I had a brief spell as an Opera user (and licenced a copy) but I never grew accustomed to the interface. Yesterday I received an email from Opera announcing the beta release of Opera 7.5. So, I downloaded it and two things struck me about it. Firstly, it’s fast. Despite the claims on Mozilla’s site about 1.7 Opera won (I haven’t run Firefox yet to compare that code). Secondly, Opera’s full-screen mode really is full-screen. No address bars. No scroll bars. Just full-screen browsing. I really must remember that because at times it’ll be very, very useful. And, what’s more, I still like Opera’s small-screen rendering option!
Yeah….I think Opera’s browser is extremely slick in many ways including its integrated IRC chat, very innovative email app, RSS newsfeed reader, and newsgroup client. I use it as my primary Internet software—I’m still forced to use an IE-based browser at times because of the MS monopoly. Firefox is pretty good, but the 3rd party extensions that one is forced to download to get the same functionality that exists in Opera is not good because of usual problems/conflicts between the extensions and/or the browser itself. Thunderbird, the email client is kinda’ boring and only slightly more feature packed than Outlook Express, arguably. Here’s some good links that compare Opera to other browsers—-these sites are produced by Opera users: http://tntluoma.com/opera/lover/7/ and http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WhyOpera
I was a longtime Opera zealot until Gmail came out. Opera doesn’t work with Gmail. And then I got to thinking “You know, there’s a lot of Web sites I have to fire up IE for because they don’t work with Opera.” So now I use Firefox. And it’s not as sleek as Opera, but just about as functional – I have my mouse gestures! Just to warn you of that whole not-working thing.