Let the Fat Lady Sing
So I’ve jumped ship. After about two hours of using Opera (including rewiring my already-rigid brain to include mouse gestures, slight alterations in hotkeys, etc.) I’ve uninstalled Firefox. Perhaps two hours is a little hasty, but I don’t think I’ll regret it. I’m sorry, Firefox—it was good while it lasted.
While I typically hate change, and anything that requires relearning a fundamental part of something I do all the time—I spend an average of 14 hours a day online—Opera’s quick loading times and smooth display of each page was worth it.
I haven’t gone on to install any widgets yet, because I like keeping my systems minimal, but having almost everything I did in Firefox right off the bat on a clean install, I have to say a learning curve of half an hour or so isn’t bad at all.
The only thing I dread right now is having to go home and repeat everything I did on my work terminal, from setting the preferences, to getting the right theme, to customising my toolbars, bookmarks…Opera has enough customisation functions to keep the average anal user happy–but tired, mirroring all the settings on two systems.
Two hours isn’t enough to make me an Opera crusader yet, but I can’t say I won’t be soon enough.
Update: Two days later and I’m still happy with Opera. I know it’s a lightweight browser (though fairly robust on functions), so I was prepared for it not to have one or two frills. Unfortunately, I figured “view selection source” wasn’t a frill, nor was in-line spell check—I’ve grown accustomed to the two functions in Firefox, which I use for work a lot.
Manually coding stuff in isn’t my idea of fun, but I’m glad there is the option to do so. Get the “view selection source” script. I’m still deciding on which in-line spell check script to use.
Interesting. IE just won’t work on my laptop anymore, no reason given, and I’m slowly falling out of love with Firefox. My mobile phone/PDA uses Opera and it works just fine there. Interested to hear how you get on, might make the change too. Though the hassle of change just ain’t appealing!
On my home laptop now, it took roughly twenty minutes to set up, including finding the right skins and widgets I wanted, getting the bookmarks right, etc?
It renders fonts so nicely. A subtle but noticeable difference for one or two pages for me, which is a nice touch.
I know what you mean about not liking change; but I have to say it seems quite worth it. Its mouse gestures saves the day, too.
I love Opera, especially “Notes”. So convenient.
Nearly converted, how do I get it?
Ignore last comment, I’ve got it. Downloaded and looking good. So far so good. Thanks.
i finally saw ep 19 of studio 60 the flashback fight btw matt and harry was soooo good!
I AM SO PROUD OF MYSELF! I KNEW THAT THIS POST IS ABOUT WEB BROWSERS~ WITHOUT MY BOYFRIEND HAVING TO TELL ME
*pats myself on back*
i am sooooo smart.
jody> hahah I’m proud of you too; I realise I didn’t make much mention of them being browsers, so I think this whole you and technology with your BlackBerry thing is taking you places. :D
cakeboy> I’ve stopped watching after the ‘break’ in the season, though I have the other episodes. Okay, you’ve made me want to watch it again…maybe tonight…
I’m still in love with my Firefox. I have that hate for change too, which is of course one of the factors no doubt. Firefox has been good to me, has all the functions I need via extensions, stable and I have it identically setup between my Linux, Windoze and Macbook with bookmarks and extensions sync-ed across them.
I do admit that it is a little fat on memory usage and a little slow as a result. But I can live with those flaws. See no reason to change or leave it.
HELI-CHOP-TER TIME!
Opera seems to have a few issues with blogger.com. Still got one foot in the Firefox camp.
:( I know what you mean; I get problems with some sites, too. But I hope this will be fixed in version 9.5, which I hear has significant differences (only that it’s in Alpha now so I won’t be downloading it yet).
welcome to the opera community.
Thank you! :)