Topic: Mozilla 1.5 Versus Opera 7.50 (Read 3549 times)

Demosthenes · « **on:** July 06, 2004, 10:19:33 AM »

Over on LinuxQuestions.org and on most other Linux forums I've seen, it seems like the overwhelming majority of Linux users use Mozilla as their primary browser.

Myself, I've always found Mozilla to be slow, kind of cumbersome in how it functions, slow, occasionally buggy and inexplicably unstable at times, and slow. But mostly slow.

In spite of my initial feelings about Mozilla, however, I thought that maybe I was just missing something, so for the past week and a half or so, I've been forcing myself to use Mozilla while in Linux (instead of my usual choice, Opera) to see why people think it's so much better. I'm using the default version of Mozilla that came with Slackware Linux 9.1 (which is Mozilla 1.5).

And my conclusion?

I don't get it.

Here is my basic breakdown (the version of Opera I'm using for comparison is a licensed Opera 7.50 Final):

OPERA
Cosmetics

Many, many more skins available
Skins can be switched to on the fly, without restarting browser
In addition to skinning your browser, there are also nine different default color schemes that can add to your customization
Toolbar buttons can be moved around, removed, different ones added (in other words, you can customize your toolbar at will)
There's a rather annoying banner built into Opera's interface, but it goes away if you buy a license key (which is cheap)[/list:u]

Functionality
- Faster than any other browser I've tried
- Stable (no unexpected "POOF! Your browser just shut itself down for no apparent reason!" incidents)
- Mouse gestures! I don't use many (there are tons of them built into Opera), but the "back", "forward" and "refresh" gestures I use constantly. Very convenient. Don't have to click on toolbar buttons or touch the keyboard to accomplish the same thing.
- 100% Tabbed browsing if I want it. I like tabbed browsing. Click on a link that normally opens a new window, and in Opera it opens a new tab for me instead. Less clutter.
- Speaking of tabbed browsing, Opera has a feature that lets you hold down the right button and use the wheel on your mouse to scroll through the tabs you currently have open. I like that as well.
- More on tabbed browsing... holding down the shift key while clicking a garden variety link opens the link in a new tab instead of the same window.
- Did I mention fast? Opera's really fast.[/list:u]
  
  MOZILLA
  Cosmetics
  - Not nearly as many skins available. Had to dig around other sites to find them (other than Mozilla's site). Not to mention, the skins available are really not that great. Nowhere NEAR the variety of Opera.
  - Skins can't be switched to on the fly. Have to restart browser for different skin to take effect.
  - No color schemes.
  - Default toolbar buttons cannot be moved around, removed, or have different buttons added. Don't like the buttons the way they are? Tough.
  - Mozilla is 100% free, with no ads, without having to pay for it. That's nice.[/list:u]
    
    Functionality
    - Mozilla is actually SLOWER than any other browser I've tried. This past week and a half has been kind of miserable. Mozilla seems to take FOREVER to load some pages that I'm used to instant results from with Opera.
    - Seems kind of unstable at times. I've had it lock up on me twice where the only way I could navigate was by right clicking and selecting "back" or "forward"... the toolbar buttons stopped working.
    - NO Mouse gestures! I constantly find myself right-clicking and moving my mouse slightly left in order to move back a page in history, only to find a menu pop up, from which I have been selecting "back" instead.
    - The tabbed browsing seems a bit half-assed at best. Sometimes Mozilla will still open pages in an entirely new window, even though I have the "open new windows in tabs instead of new windows" option checked. Add to this the inherent tendency of Mozilla to be sloooooow to begin with, and this just irritates me to no end.
    - Had to download and install a goofy plugin in order to get Mozilla to use tabs more effectively. Without this plugin, the tab bar doesn't show unless you have more than one tab open... unfortunately the "new tab" button only shows up on the tab bar...
    Since there's no way to customize the tool bar to add the "new tab" button (like I do in Opera), opening a new tab is a pain in the ass.
  - Speaking of tabbed browsing, Opera has a feature that lets you hold down the right button and use the wheel on your mouse to scroll through the tabs you currently have open. Mozilla has no such thing. If you want to go to a different tab, you click on it. End of story.
  - More on tabbed browsing... In Opera, holding down the shift key while clicking a garden variety link opens the link in a new tab instead of the same window. In Mozilla, it opens a stupid "save as" dialogue!
  In EVERY other browser I've ever tried, holding down "shift" (or sometimes "control") while clicking on a link opens the link in a new window! Why does Mozilla go counter to that basic functionality?
  
  I know, this is just "different", not necessarily "worse"... but it's annoying. Mostly because there doesn't seem to BE a way to open a link in a new window/tab without right-clicking on the link and selecting "open in new tab".[/list:u]
  
  I know, these seem like minor things. But they add up to an experience I find less than satisfactory. Opera is faster, has far more options for customization, far more flexibility, more stable, and has more features. Mozilla, by contrast, seems not to have made any real significant advances in years... it seems stunted and out-of-date. And I don't mean like "I'm using version 1.5 of Mozilla, which is a year or so old". I mean using Mozilla is like using something made in 1998, by people who haven't paid attention to some of the things that just about every other browser out there has done to spiff up their interface and features (even crappy ones, like Konqueror seem to have more going for them than Mozilla).
  
  I think I'll be sticking with Opera. I don't understand why so many Linux users swear by Mozilla... it doesn't even come close. *shrugs*

hackess · « **Reply #1 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:25:41 AM »

I use Mozilla Firefox 0.9. It works well for me. Matter of preference, I think. *shrugs*

Demosthenes · « **Reply #2 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:26:54 AM »

Well, I wasn't comparing Opera to Firefox... just Mozilla 1.5. Firefox is a whole different story. The vast majority of Linux users are still using Mozilla's basic browser... only a handful are using Firefox.

hackess · « **Reply #3 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:31:57 AM »

See, I don't need that all-in-one garbage. In fact, I'd prefer to not have it all bundled together. I like my email program separate from my browser separate from my chat client, etc.

reimero · « **Reply #4 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:33:02 AM »

I find Mozilla to be a bit of a clunker as well, which I think has everything to do with the fact that it still had the whole "Netscape Communicator" philosophy behind it: integrated web, email, news and html editor. Given that it's coded to be platform-independent, it's loading a lot of extra crap you just don't need. Still, I've generally preferred it to Opera (too cheap to pay but didn't want the ads. Also, Opera was less stable when I used it several versions ago. But that was then.)

Anyway, Mozilla has its shortcomings. Firefox, on the other hand, is teh win. I use Firefox on pretty much all my PCs (except for the 2% of sites I have to go to that require IE or when I'm doing web development and need to test it across browser platforms.) On my Mac, I use Safari, which is a wonderful browser in its own right.

hackess · « **Reply #5 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:47:34 AM »

Oh, right, yes. I still use IE when I absolutely must (testing web sites during development). I think I've converted my non-techie BF to Firefox.

Demosthenes · « **Reply #6 on:** July 06, 2004, 10:47:35 AM »

Firefox locks up X-windows for me in Linux -- like clockwork -- not to mention it seemed really flaky. Lots of unexplained browser-window-vanished-and-whole-thing-needed-to-be-restarted crap happening. So I got rid of it. I think I'll wait until they come out with a full version release before I try it again.

Safari is pretty impressive, considering where it came from. Konqueror is one of the weakest browsers available in Linux in my opinion, and Apple managed to forge a really nice, full-featured browser out of Konqueror's basic foundation, which couldn't have been an easy task.

I guess the folks over at Mozilla were kind of peeved about that choice (since apparently Mozilla was in the running as well), but Apple wanted something fast, open source, and simple to start with, and the "fast" and "simple" pretty much ruled Mozilla out.

I like this comment I found when searching for Apple's statement on the subject:

Quote

Apple just released a new web browser for MacOS X, called Safari.

It's based on KHTML, the rendering engine of KDE/Qt's Konqueror web browser, instead of on Gecko, the rendering engine of Mozilla. Don Melton explains why:

"The number one goal for developing Safari was to create the fastest web browser on Mac OS X. When we were evaluating technologies over a year ago, KHTML and KJS stood out. Not only were they the basis of an excellent modern and standards compliant web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open source projects. Your clean design was also a plus. And the small size of your code is a significant reason for our winning startup performance."

Translated through a de-weaselizer, this says:

"Even though some of us used to work on Mozilla, we have to admit that the Mozilla code is a gigantic, bloated mess, not to mention slow, and with an internal API so flamboyantly baroque that frankly we can't even comprehend where to begin. Also did we mention big and slow and incomprehensible?"

Quote from: catwritr

See, I don't need that all-in-one garbage. In fact, I'd prefer to not have it all bundled together. I like my email program separate from my browser separate from my chat client, etc.

I agree. For email I use Ximian Evolution, and for chatting, well, I don't chat online much, but when I do I use either gaim, or X-Chat or Bitch-X.

I don't even know what Mozilla's mail client is like, and I don't use Opera's at all.

reimero · « **Reply #7 on:** July 06, 2004, 11:04:54 AM »

Thunderbird (the Mozilla-based standalone partner to Firefox) is pretty darned sweet, but still rough around the edges. For geeks, it's quite usable, but we're not going to implement it institutionally until it hits 1.0

Also, on a completely different note, I think a major reason that Linux geeks prefer Mozilla/Firefox to Opera is that Opera is a for-profit company with a solid product, whereas Mozilla/Firefox are Free and open-source (unless you're RMS, in which case it's not Free because it doesn't use the GPL - although I believe he wasn't morally opposed to the latest iteration of the Mozilla license.)

Demosthenes · « **Reply #8 on:** July 06, 2004, 11:29:11 AM »

I think this is one pretty clear example that illustrates that "open source" doesn't automatically equate to "better".

reimero · « **Reply #9 on:** July 06, 2004, 11:36:27 AM »

Quote from: Demosthenes

I think this is one pretty clear example that illustrates that "open source" doesn't automatically equate to "better".

Mozilla-wise, I agree. I've never had a problem with Firefox, and I find it superior to anything else I've used (save Safari, and even there, I prefer some of Firefox's behaviors.)

The_FOO · « **Reply #10 on:** July 08, 2004, 12:51:11 PM »

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,64085,00.html?tw=wn_5techhead Nifty Wired article about expanding FireFox with extensions.

hackess · « **Reply #11 on:** July 08, 2004, 12:54:45 PM »

Quote from: The_FOO

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,64085,00.html?tw=wn_5techhead Nifty Wired article about expanding FireFox with extensions.

Quote

Also check out the Reload Every extension, which lets you right-click on a Web page to reload it automatically every few seconds or minutes, as you choose. It's great for those who are checking news, sports scores or stock prices.

Or for us forum addicts.

Anonymous · « **Reply #12 on:** July 08, 2004, 12:56:17 PM »

So people wrote an entire program in order to eliminate the burden of tapping the F5 key? Nice!

The_FOO · « **Reply #13 on:** July 08, 2004, 01:03:45 PM »

Quote from: TheJudge

So people wrote an entire program in order to eliminate the burden of tapping the F5 key? Nice!

It's probably only a line or two of code. If that. But people are lazy.

I'm so lazy that even though I'm using FireFox right now I didn't actually get any of those extensions even though a few of them sounded really useful.

12AX7 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 09, 2004, 07:10:15 PM »

Have you seen this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/02/06/msn_deliberately_breaks_operas_browser/

xolik · « **Reply #15 on:** July 09, 2004, 08:23:34 PM »

Quote from: 12AX7

Have you seen this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/02/06/msn_deliberately_breaks_operas_browser/

Yeah, that's a bit old. Opera hit back with the Swedish Chef "bork" version of Opera Browser. It translated MSN.COM into the way the Swedish Chef talked on the Muppets.

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/

12AX7 · « **Reply #16 on:** July 10, 2004, 01:08:13 AM »

Quote

Published Thursday 6th February 2003

Duuurrrrr... found that through a link from another site, and didn't even bother looking at the date...
I don't use Opera, so I have no idea what version is current, either.
Sorry folks!
Nothing to see here... move along....

xolik · « **Reply #17 on:** July 10, 2004, 01:10:06 AM »

It's cool. It's still a funny read. 'Sup almost-midnight-posting buddy?

12AX7 · « **Reply #18 on:** July 11, 2004, 05:41:19 AM »

Ahh! I missed ya. Had only popped in for a second to check replies...
Catch ya later, gator!

News:

Recent Forum Posts

Shout Box

Author Topic: Mozilla 1.5 Versus Opera 7.50 (Read 3549 times)

Anonymous

12AX7

12AX7

12AX7