All browsers (even IE) can render webpages – ok some of them better (safari) and some of them worse (IE… some pages look better on IE because they are optimized for the marktführer, but that is another topic).
Firefox and Opera have their advanteges and peculieraties, I will try to compare them, in order to make it easier to decide which one to use in future.
| feature | Firefox 1.5 | Opera 8.5 |
|---|---|---|
| copy & paste (best would be full RTF, IE supports this) | ++ plain text, partly tables & graphics | 00 plain text |
| drag & drop | ++ no address out, links out, graphics out, others out (e.g. videos to player), links in | 00 no address out, no links out, no graphics out, no others out, links in |
| mouse gestures | ++ | ++ |
| sessions | 00 with plugin (buggy, not 100% crash-proof), snap back tabs/windows | ++ very nice, never had any probs, snap back tabs/?windows? |
| password manager | ++ | ++ |
| download manager | ++ no resume, nor with plugins (promised, but does not work) | ++ good, with resume |
| ads | ++ good popup- and adblocker, partly layer ads (plugin) | |
| image saving | ++ save to specific folder with right click (plugin) | ++ save all images from a page |
| skinning | completely skinnable, helpful DOM inspector | ++ well and easily skinnable |
| (felt) stability | 1/A | 1+/A+ |
| (felt) application speed | – | ++ |
| vertical tabs | ++ | ++ |
| use IE rendering engine | yes, with plugin IETab | yes, but difficult |
| unsopported pages | – some of our intranet pages | – Google Docs, Yahoo! Mail Beta |
| ftp | – viewing, manager with plugin (FireFTP), crude | – only viewing |
| search with address-bar | ++ with keychar and withou | 00 only with keychar (sucks a bit) |
| search in page | ++ on typing | after pressing “.” (sucks a bit) |
| 00 no | 00 yes, but buggy and uncomfortable, no rules | |
| GreaseMonkey | ++ | – |
| web development | ++ DOM inspector, FireBug (JS debuggin) | 00 nothing |
| fit to width (avoid horizontal scrolling) | 00 | ++ |
| result | 13 – 4 = 9 | 12 – 4 = 8 |
Mousegestures in FF only work with a plugin,
,
the fact that the Downloadmanager does not support resuming is pretty annoying
adblocker also avaiable in Opera (Block content),
Searching without a keychar… well, thats where autocompletition kicked in, makes sense to me.
The eMail client works pretty stable for me, eventho I rarely used it – would not want one anyways in my browser,
GreaseMonkey ofcourse does not work, since it is a FireFox extension. The Opera aquivalent is called UserJS and works similar =)
Okay, Opera 8.5 did not have dragonfly yet. But now, with O9 and further, the webdevelopment with Dragonfly kicks ass
Yes, I am an Opera fanboy =)