Opera 9.22 Int’l

Update: I would be glad to do comparisons between the two on my machine. I’ve been considering that actually, since load up times (for example, of Speed Dial pages) become extremely important for someone who opens new tabs as often as I do. Memory footprints are also going to be important for people like me without more than a gigabyte of RAM. I’ll get on a side-by-side soon.

Keeping my promise from before, I have decided to give Opera another chance to prove itself to me. I had ventured once into these strange waters but did not have anything to show for it except for a lasting impression of “This just doesn’t feel like my Fox.” I decided then that I would, given the right amount of time, try it out in earnest at a later date. Since I’ve upgraded from Blogger to WordPress, I also figured it’d be fitting to try out Opera at the same time. So what did I find out?

First things first, Opera by default is like Firefox + Standard/Extensions. I remember Herman going on (and slightly on) about how Opera comes preloaded with all the usual functionality that Firefox users would have to otherwise get through installing a whole suite of extensions.

This, as it turns out, is completely true. I’ve yet to install any widgets or make any changes to the application files (like “skin.ini” files) but I’ve already got things set up to run approximately like my Firefox minus the super fancy. All-in-One Mouse Gestures, Speed Dial, and All-in-One Sidebar are all unnecessary with Opera’s native set of functions that work exactly like (if not better than) the mentioned extensions for Firefox by third-party coders. Very nuts.

I do think that Opera’s downloadable skins are a bit weak/overcomplicated at times, but I must browse through more to be sure. So far, I’ve decided to use a rather simple “Tango CL” theme that is looking quite clean.

Again, so far the switch from Firefox (which I don’t foresee abandoning just yet) has been rather painless in terms of similar handling. The keyboard shortcuts that I used the most often in Firefox (such as Ctrl + T for new tabs) do the same things here in Opera. I also have the ability to customize the previously mentioned mouse gestures so that I can flick and draw all the same here to open and close pages, as well as go back and forth in the history. Lots more can be done with gestures, but there is little need to list.

One complaint I must make against Opera is the stupid way of actually editing the mouse gestures. Instead of allowing me to draw a sample gesture to give a function, I had to type out what the sample would look like in the form of ”Gesture[Direction]“ where “[Direction]” would be Up, Down, Left, or Right. It’s a stupid way of setting things, but once it’s set, there’s no more need to worry about it.

Another hassle comes with dealing with cookies. Firefox has a cool way of doing it, and I had set it to ask me whether to accept of reject every time. Once I had a collection of all the cookies I would need, I set Firefox to “Never accept cookies” meaning that I would no longer get any “Do you want to accept…” messages to reject and keep all the cookies I needed in use without any perceivable difference. Opera doesn’t seem to be able to do this (or I just haven’t learnt how yet). I can choose to have Opera ask me every time, but I also end up constantly rejecting the same cookies after my good list has been made. If I set it to never ask, I am treated as if I did not have any cookies saved. This is the suck.

This problem can be “remedied” by creating a list of good cookies, and then selecting both “Acceot cookies from sites I visit” and “Delete new cookies when I exit Opera” but it doesn’t seem like as efficient a way to do things…

Nevertheless, Opera 9.22 International is shaping up to be a fine browser that I will have to get to know more intimately in the days to come.

Note: I doubt I would ditch Firefox for the life of me but Opera may win out in the end. With all these sudden switches, I must seem pretty unfaithful. Well, all I can say is, “Tough luck.”