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Opera: Firefox’s Better? Top 10 List
Well, here we are. The last post I made was about why Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. And its true that Firefox may be the best browser. May be.
The fact is, Opera has been around for far longer, and incorparated features far ahead of Firefox. It had tabbed browsing before anyone, and is still faster than firefox.
So why is it so unknown?
For one, Opera was originally supported by having a banner at the top of the page for all users. This was quite frustrating, and led to many rejecting it entirely. However, this banner allowed opera to pay developers great amounts of money to make nice features, like tabbed browsing. Another reason Opera is not well known is because of low advertisment. They do not go to any great effort to advertise themselves, or really encourage users to do so. Why? Well, I dont know. I do know that the users they do have are a loyal bunch at that. Opera even has a blogging function on their site that is rivaled by few. Let me give you a list of 10 of the options that are present in Opera that are not in Firefox (not taking into account addons of course)
1) Above URL bar tabs. If you have used this before (like on chrome) you know its better.
2) Integrated Bit Torrent client. One of the best.
3) Task bar on the side that is not intrusive, but easily accessible.
4) Community and Opera made Widgets.
5) The single BEST mail client built in. Support for any email host.
6) Download manager. Better than any seen on Firefox.
7) Built in advertisement/popup/flash ads prevention.
8) Simple quick note taking ability.
9) Great speed and compatibility of web pages.
10) Built in webpage shrinker/resizer.
And trust me when I say that these are just a few. Most (if not all) of these options are available from the sidebar mentioned. The interface also is far better in my opinion.
Now after all this, you would probably think I use this as my standard browser. I don’t. I use Firefox. Now before you opera fans crucify me, allow me to explain. Opera incorparates enough things to get me to use it instead of Firefox. Unfortunately, in order to really take advantage of all the nice features, you need to only be on one computer. Things like the built in chat, mail client, and RSS feeds are cumbersome if your consistently use more than one computer. Such is the case for me. When I secure my own laptop that is half decent, I will use Opera standard, but for now I will use Firefox. However, I encourage all of you to at least give it a try and download it!
What do you think? Do you prefer Firefox, or Opera? Why? Comment below, you dont need to register, and you can be anonymous.
-Trenton Stahl
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Notice
Advanced Apathy by Trenton Stahl is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. In addition, all moral rights are reserved.
Advanced Apathy 
Firefox Vs. Internet Explorer
Too often I have had a friend, or a friend of a friend, contact me asking for help with a computer problem. Usually this has to do with viruses getting into their system because of poor protection. I also get complaints because of slow internet, and decreased system performance. To all of these, there is a simple answer: Firefox.
Firefox is the brainchild of Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. They wanted a browser that was not proprietary and closed off to the public. They believed that an open sourced-model for a browser would promote a community to benefit itself by making and maintaining add-ons for the program. They were more right than they imagined. Firefox is now the leader of innovative and powerful feature-rich browsers. Many of it’s competitors see what it offers, and copies the features to win over Firefox fans.
But now down to what we all want to hear, what does Firefox offer that IE doesn’t? Here is a list of things:
1) Open Sourced Programming
In the world of big business, most companies prefer to keep their source code closed off to the public. Microsoft does this with IE. With Firefox, you can get a multitude of good add-ons. And with the community as devoted as it is, YOU CAN GET ANY INTERNET EXPLORER FEATURE YOU WANT WITH FIREFOX.
If you use Firefox, you can be assured of your safety. It offers multiple niceties including: effective pop-up blocker, malware shield, flagged website warning, and data encryption options to name a few. IE claims to have the most secure browser, but if you do a simple Google search, you continually get these and these. Also, with IE being the most widely used browser, it is the most targeted by hackers and virus writers.
3) Speed
In the most recent release of IE, Microsoft claims that it loads pages faster than Firefox. An interesting thing to note is that this test was made just after installing, which doesn’t take into account the massive amount of slowdown Internet Explorer experiences over a very short period of time. Also, it’s easy to see why IE 8 can be so fast, it’s stripped down to the bare bones of security and features.
There are many other issues involving the two browsers. However, the gist is stated here. Questions, comments? Leave them below.
-Trenton Stahl
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.