Opera vs. Firefox

I've been trying out the latest version of Opera 8 (Beta) for about 2 weeks now in order to get a better personal feel for the browser feel, advantages and disadvantages. I've been a Firefox user for about 1 1/2 years and have written about my reasons for favoring Firefox.

Overall, my impressions of Opera are extremely favorable. It is very well suited for power surfers, but is even better for first-time non-IE users than FireFox.

Keyboard shortcuts: It has a few really nice keyboard shortcuts for those of us who dig that sort of thing (space bar scrolls the web page down / shift-space bar scrolls up), it supports continuous page scaling to increase or decrease text size (use 9 and 0), and has nice keyboard shortcuts for switching tabs (1 and 2). Tab support and keyboard shortcuts are very similar to FireFox, with the addition of nice touches like undo close built-in for those times when your Control-W gets out of hand.

Tab behavior: I wish Opera gave me a choice after closing a tab to move to the adjacent tab left or adjacent tab right rather than directing me back to the original tab from which it was opened in the first place. FireFox's Tab Browser plug-in enables you to choose.

Built-in RSS reader: Very nicely done in Opera - much better than Sage or "active bookmarks" for FireFox. I've also used Onfolio with FireFox, which is a killer combo. Unfortunately, Opera and OnFolio are not integrated. The interface in Opera is identical to that of it's built-in email handler. The quick-search feature is very nice - just start typing in the search box and the results are immediately filtered. The effect is similar to that of several of the desktop search engines (X1/Yahoo! Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search toolbar, Copernic).

Speed and stability: I found the start-up speed, shut-down speed, and browsing speed to be outstanding, although on broadband, the difference is probably imperceptible to most. It also never crashed or even hiccuped at all during my trial period, even after browsing for hours and hours and hours and hours.

Pop-up blocking: Absolutely perfect in my brief experience with Opera. FireFox is good, but occasionally fooled and seems to be no better than IE SP2 at stopping pop-ups.

Session support: Opera comes built-in with easy session management. Save and retrieve tab sessions. I definitely prefer this to needing a plug-in, as with FireFox.

Built-in Email client: I played around for a bit with Opera's built-in email client and it is fantastic. If I were not an avid and extremely satisfied Gmail user, I'd definitely use Opera Thunderbird or Outlook express. The program nicely supports flat or threaded (conversation) views, uses labels, offers quick search to instantly find items you're interested in, enables saved searches, attachment search, has contact lists, filters, and a spam filter, and supports POP and IMAP.

Web site compatibility: My main problems with Opera are really with its compatibility with certain third party products and web services. For example, I can't edit posts on Blogger with Opera. I don't get access to rich text editing in Gmail. OnFolio -- a superb product for information management -- doesn't plug into Opera. These problems almost certainly stem from its very low market share, which I believe is under 2% of the overall market. Granted, with FireFox, inexplicably, some sites simply refuse to open at all with no visible error message. I never have that problem with Opera, which never had a rendering problem or a problem displaying pluggable content (flash, real media, windows media, etc.).

Download management: The download manager is very good, although I'd like the ability to delete downloads if I don't want to keep them, rather than simply removing them from the download list. I'd also like an easier way to access where downloads are saved. It's a bit buried to access and the first time it is used, Opera should prompt the user where to save future downloads.

Other features: I'd like Opera to be a bit more flexible in setting up search shortcuts. I couldn't find a way to create a Yahoo! search shortcut, for example. Also, I absolutely LOVE the way that FireFox, by default, begins highlighting web pages for string matches as you begin typing on any web page. This makes keyboard navigation very simple - just start typing the first couple letters of a link you want to nav to and they're instantly highlighted. Hit your return key and you're off. Hard to describe, but great for power surfers. Opera does have a nice "scroll up or down" from link to link feature by simply pressing Q or A to scroll up or down through the links on a page, then you hit ENTER. But it's not nearly as fast or elegant as FireFox's behavior.

Voice features: Although I haven't used Opera's new voice features to input voice commands, it's ability to read web pages to me is sometimes handy if I want to clean my desk or do other things while listening to a long article. Just highlight the text you want to hear, right click and hit Speak. I haven't used it frequently, but it's a very nice addition.

Bookmarks: Opera's bookmark manager readily imports from IE, Firefox, and other sources.

Plug-ins: Although skinnable, Opera lacks serious splug-ins, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand - I like many of the plug-ins offered by FireFox. On the other hand, I hate the fact that my plug-ins break every 3 months whenever I need to update my FireFox browser. I then have to track down all the new versions, reinstall them, reconfigure my preferences, etc. It's a complete buzzkill. I'd prefer that my favorite features are simply built right into the browser. Opera does a very good job of integrating most of these features (althouh voice is a 10MB download) right into the browser. For me, this is preferable to having tons of plug-ins to download and manage, as is the case with FireFox.

Memory/system resources: Opera seems to be about the same as other browsers I've with respect to memory use and management, which is to say, they are all massive resource hogs. After a full day of surfing, reading RSS feeds, using email, etc. my memory use is around 100 MB with up to 200 MB of virtual memory used. However, Opera seems to be able to release from virtual memory much faster and more efficiently when I quit than FireFox, which seems to grind away at the hard drive for several minutes when closing after a long day's work.

Bottom line: Opera is a very close second behind FireFox as my favorite browser. I could live quite happily with Opera by itself if it were to do four things:
1. Integrate a tool that enables me to quickly capture the web page I'm viewing to a local saved directory - similar to Slogger plug-in for Firefox or Onfolio's capture function.
2. Offer an "Up" button that enables me to navigate up a level on a web server's URL hierarchy.
3. Offer the ability to browse in "fast search" mode where you just start typing letters and the selection moves to the first matching string on a page -- similar to FireFox's built-in search behavior. Make this toggleable on or off by a keyboard shortcut - like Alt-F.
4. Since it can't always control what features are supported on their browser, offer a right-click link to open the page in IE -- similar to a FireFox plug-in that does the same thing. This will help when we need it. It won't hurt our usage or loyalty to Opera - it simply gives us an easy way to deal with the problems we face living in an IE-dominated world.