h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday I upgraded to the newly released Opera 8.0

At the moment I'm still getting used to it. But I have to say, at first sight it is a great improvement over 7.54. The layout is much cleaner, and much more intuitive. Also it now fully supports GMail, which is going to make my life so much easier.

Hmmm...I'm fully Mozillarised now, but I might take a look when I finally buy a new PC at the end of the month.

B

Coo. Must download it when I can get my home PC back online. Which might be today, or equally might not.

Ah, the unpredictablity of life.



Geggs

How does Opera compare to Firefox?

Opera - fastest browser on earth

Firefox - cycles through tabs in a better order - every time you close one it goes to the next 'unread' tab, rather than back to the one you've just read as Opera does.

Opera - has 'close tab' button on tabs, which is really annoying, as it's too easy to hit it by mistake.

Opera - allows you to open a duplicate window, Firefox doesn't.

Opera - allows you to open links in a tab in the background or on top. Firefox also allows you to do this, but with Opera you can chose each time, Firefox makes you choose one or the other and stick to that.

Firefox - easier to manage cookies, especially if you have it set to 'ask me every time'. The opera drop down menu is a pain in the backside.

Firefox - no adverts - free!

Firefox - h2g2 footnotes pop up if you hover over that link, Opera doesn't.

Opera - allows you to 'paste and go' which is bloody marvellous.

Firefox - allows you to get Google.co.uk as a default search, on Opera you're stuck with Google.com.


Neither of them allow you to hover over a link and see the URL which is so strange that makes me think that it's the way I've got them set up.

Obviously I can only speak for me, and the way I use them, but I do prefer Opera because it's so quick, but Firefox has some features that I really don't want to do without.

And I forgot - on Opera you can close all tabs and have a blank browser, you can't on Firefox.

And you can't minimise tabs on either of them.

Hovering over a footnotes and links does work in Opera. So it must be the way that you've got it set up.

And talking of setups: there are so many different ways of laying out your Opera browser, I doubt whether two users anywhere have the same settings. It seems that you can add or subtract stuff from any toolbar, panel, what ever. Then you can move it all around the screen and dump it where ever you fancy.

The other difference that Mina left out of her list is that Opera comes with its own inbuilt mail client and newsgroup reader. And very fine they are too.

Ultimately the whole thing comes down to personal choice. To my eyes Opera looks and feels more polished than Firefox, and for that reason it's my chosen preference.

I hate to quibble wiv Mina but I prefer the way Opera handles tabs, and Opera is not the fastest browser on earth, in that in that it is a graphical browser & a text only browser will always be faster than a graphical browser (I know opera has a text only mode, but that it still downloads the graphics)

The big issue I had with the last version of Opera I used (6.7 something, I think), was that it regularly crashed when I was cycling or scrolling quickly through hootoo. This wasn't too much of a pain, thanks to the 'restore last settings' part of Opera, but is was an inconvenience.

I gather this has now been fixed. I don't use Firefox, just Mozilla's regular browser, which is more than adequate for all my needs.

B

Mozilla (not Firefox) is my browser of choice too, but one feature of Opera I do miss is being able to set a window or tab to automatically refresh at a set interval - very handy for your MP page

Mozilla (the suite, not Firefox) also has an excellent mail client.

My conversations in a sidebar/panel for Mozilla & Opera Mozilla A786251 Opera, Adding a convrsation list is as simple as right clicking on a Hotlist tab such as bookmarks and selecting Add panel. You will be prompted for the name/title of the panel and the URL of the web-page panel (Enter "http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/MPxxxxxx?skip=&show=&s_type=pop&s_upto=&s_target=_blank"

Fantastic! I feel very thick for not having sussed that before.

B

I should add you can also add it to FireFox but the conversations open up in new window not new tabs (Mozilla & Opera both score on this one over FireFox).

and for thr bookmarks URI posted for Opera change the xxxxxx for youe "U" number