Opera
http://www.opera.com/
係 Slashdot 讀到 “Firefox Losing its Way?” <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/26/1423240>，再讀到 Danga 既幾篇留言︰
Danga (307709) “Re:No, it’s not “losing its way….
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208396&cid=16992150
Last, but not least, I’m not sure what the author of this article is proposing we all do. Switch to IE7 or Opera? Yeah, that will help the open source community.
I don’t know exactly what the author was proposing people do since I cannot get the page to load now but as much as I think open source is great I will be damned before I use an open source alternative that is inferior just to “help the open source community.”. I will use whatever software I feel works the best for me and if that means I do not have access to the source so be it.
Personally I have used Opera for about the last 5 years and the reason I chose it then was because IE was a POS and Mozilla was slower and neither IE nor Moz supported TABBED BROWSING. Now that both IE and FF support tabbed browsing I have given both a shot and while I will not be using IE for obvious reasons (although it now seems to perform faster than FF) I still won’t switch to FF for the simple reason that I have gotten used to Opera and it still is a faster and more stable browser both in my experience and from the comparisons that other people have posted online. The thing I like the best about Opera compared to FF is that if I setup a new computer I just install the latest build of Opera and it includes all the bells and whistles I need where FF requires some extensions to be downloaded and installed to get to the same level. This is just a convenience factor since I am somewhat lazy but I still think it is relevant.
Even some of the diehard FF users I know are considering switching to another browser because they seem to feel FF has started to become bloated and FF’s performance is suffering. It is one thing to add a lot of features in the core build but not suffer performance wise like Opera has done but quite another to start adding them and have the user experience suffer. I know the OS zealots will not budge and switch over to Opera but for many FF users I know if it does not cost them any money to switch to a better performing browser then they will in a heartbeat. The main reason many of the FF users I know who are complaining about its performance have not even tried another browser is because they think the only alternative is IE, Opera is just not well known to the masses. It is going to be interesting to see what happens in the next year since the Wii includes Opera and hopefully will get some more exposure out there.
Danga (307709) “Re:Good software can’t lose its way”
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208396&cid=16992452
The Opera browser is the best browser available and I wish more people knew it existed because the majority of people I know think the only choices available are IE and FF, many of them have never even heard of Opera.
Danga (307709) “Re:Opera is nice.”
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208396&cid=16993794
Yes, the zoom function definitely comes in handy at times.
I honestly cannot say if firefox is better once it is setup with the right extensions, Opera just has everything I need already built in. I also know that the cold startup time for Opera is WAY less. According to:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#winspeed [howtocreate.co.uk]
Opera 9 takes only 2.74 seconds to startup compared to FF 2.0’s time of 11.64 seconds. That alone will keep me from seriously testing out FF, when I start up a browser I want it working NOW and having to wait over 4 times longer is not acceptable.
FF definitely has a lot more extensions to use and they may be better but Opera does have widgets now so it no longer is held back in regard to not having support for any third party extensions. Until I see a significant reason to switch over to FF I am sticking with Opera since I am used to it and prefer how it is setup and I think most diehard FF users are of the same mindset regarding FF. I used to be a Moz user until about 5 years ago when I discovered the tabbed browsing that Opera had and that is what got me to switch over at that point in time. To each their own.
我無法止唔搵番過往既文章和報告去附和，證明 “Opera browser is the best browser available”。
提左速度，到安全漏洞︰
Opera was the only one of the four browsers monitored that actually saw a decrease in vulnerabilities, from nine to seven.
Further reading
Browser Vulnerability Study Unkind to Firefox
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/177226
Ars Technica – Number of browser vulnerabilities rising
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060925-7818.html
再到網頁標準規格
Opera supports all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 basic.
Opera has… become the second browser after Safari to be able to pass completely the famous ACID2 test.
In IE7
Further reading
Opera browser: Features – Standards support
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/
Slashdot – Opera 9.0 Fully Passes ACID2 Test
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/12/1416222
How To Create – Acid 2 in major browsers
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/acid/
The Web Standards Project – Acid2 Browser Test
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/
Opera Community – Belated Opera 9 easter egg
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=135403
Acid2. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 27, 2006, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/acid2
Slashdot – Do You Care if Your Website is W3C Compliant?
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/16/2127212
World Wide Web Consortium. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 27, 2006, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/world-wide-web-consortium
用家對 Opera 的綜合意見… 講真佢真係冇乜受到人重視，希望任天堂的新一代電視遊戲機 Wii 可提升佢既名聲。
Slashdot – Browser Comparison – Firefox 2 b1, IE7 b3, Opera 9
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/19/1458259&tid=185
Slashdot – A Browser War Preview
http://backslash.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/20/1916236
Bogtha offered one of the most insightful comments on the issue of Web standards
“Browsers are lousy in terms of supporting the various specifications people have published that define useful things web developers want and need to do. This has numerous effects:
- It slows down and frustrates web developers.
- It raises the costs of web development.
- It makes some things impossible.
“All of these are pretty bad for web developers, but they have knock-on effects that end-users suffer from, but don’t understand. For example, when was the last time you ran across a bug on a website? Did you ever consider that a web developer would have got around to fixing it before you had trouble with it if he hadn’t been busy trying to work around a bug in Internet Explorer?”
“The Acid2 test is merely a collection of all kinds of ways in which browsers screw up support for particular specifications. The idea is that it contains lots of things that browsers get wrong which cause hassle for web developers, and that browser developers can use it as a check-list for bugs. It’s also a gimmick to raise awareness for these bugs to put pressure on the browser developers to fix them.”
The more browsers that pass the Acid2 test, the better support there is for web developers. The better support there is for web developers, the higher the quality of the work they put out. And you, as an end-user of that work, benefit.”
Reader AK Marc griped that “Opera gets no respect,” despite seemingly good showings when stacked up against other popular browsers, writing
“I like Opera. I use Opera. I read the comparison, and Opera looks to come out favorably. Then I read the comments. Firefox compared to IE, again and again. Reasons why Firefox is better. Reasons why IE is better. Reasons why more people use IE. But there are fewer comments on Opera. I can’t understand why. It has lots of things that Firefox needs extensions for built right in (and without significant differences in resources), and some things, like bittorrent support, that aren’t available in any extension. It has better standards compliance than the other two. It has Widgets (like extensions) if you want to expand it more. But yet, a 3-way comparison is treated as a 2-way comparison. I thought this would be more of an eye opener, ‘Wow, I didn’t know Opera did all that and did it better than the other browsers!’ But instead, the comments read like the posters glanced at the IE and Firefox pages of the article (if they read it at all) and hopped right back on the IE vs Firefox war. I find it sad that a competitive browser receives to little consideration, especially from a group that is supposedly early adopters.”"
“Me, too,” wrote reader lee1. “I think there is a reflex to ignore Opera because for so long it was pay- or ad-ware.”
Reader bartkusa also spoke up for Opera
“Opera’s UI is extremely customizable [opera.com]. Skinnable interface and lots of flexibility with toolbar and button placement, on the output side. On the input side, you can set up your own keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures if you don’t like the default ones.”
支持 open source 的 Firefox 還可理解；支持同樣係 close source，但樣樣都差一截既 IE 就真係無理由…
starseeker (141897) “Opera isn’t open source”
<http://backslash.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191751&cid=15755397>
Whether it’s fair or not I leave as an exercise for the reader, but I think the reason Opera doesn’t get the attention or respect of Firefox is that it’s closed source, pure and simple. After all, how many years did people put up with early versions of Linux simply because it was open source, rather than using more polished but closed tools?
I like Opera, and I hope they succeed, but I will never want to rely on them because in the end they are closed source, and if their company should die Opera would die with them. That’s why people support open and inferior over closed and superior – the open software can be improved upon, and won’t go away. There are cases (CAD is one, at least so far) where the difficulty of writing the software is such only a commerical model has produced reasonable tools, but Firefox and Konqueror are proof that web browsers are not in that category. So source code ultimately matters, and there Opera looses.
Now if we look at Opera vs. IE, there I would agree I don’t understand support for IE.
Further reading
Slashdot – Opera 9.0 Released
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/20/1223233
可惜就連 Firefox 係香港既知名度都唔高，Opera 要出位就更加難…
