Take that, Bill

[tigertoy]

In response to the discussion that's been going on lately about how dangerous it is to use Internet Explorer, I downloaded Mozilla Firefox last night, and I'm using it now to read LJ. I haven't tried it for much of anything else yet, but it seems to be doing a good job here.

Comments

[alymid.livejournal.com]

if you are experimenting with off brand browsers - I couldn't reccommend Opera highly enough, I have been using it for quite a while and just love it to death. So far only 1 complaint (and a new one) is that gmail doesn't work in it.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

What does Opera have to recommend it specifically? The main reason I wanted to switch is to be using something other than IE; the reason I went with Firefox is (a) I'd just read a couple of strong positive recommendations, and (b) I knew where to go to get it without having to hunt.

Even as bad as I am at making effective search engine queries, I doubt I'd have very much trouble finding Opera with Google, but I don't know offhand where to go to get it.

The only complaint that I have about Firefox so far is that Shift+click opens a new browser rather than a new tab. Ctrl+click opens a new tab, but my fingers are trained to Shift+click. There might be a way to configure that, I haven't looked hard.

[alymid.livejournal.com]

wellI think it depends on HOW you like to use your browser - but IMHO Opera has much better support for its tab functions than Firefox - you can set it to default open new tabs or new windows depending on what you prefer.

It is completely standards compliant, and runs fast, and is fairly small. I run it on my pc with about 20-40 tabs open and it doesn't cause my system any resource issues. It has auto page re-loads for assigned pages (great for LJ) I keep an LJ window open all day with it auto-reloading every 15 minutes and then just go and do a quick visual check whenever I have a spare few minutes to check in on things.

I do lots of searches and link hopping and what I love is that it can save the history of every tab you have open. I frequently run with quite a few tabs open, shut down at the end of the day, and re-open the next day and am exactly where I left off at the end of the day.

It has lots of nice navigating mouse and keyboard options - like when I hold down the right-mouse button and left click it will take me back, reverse and it will take me forward. It generally recognizes next page links automatically and you can use your forward and back functions to access those as well. It is very very customizable. Includes a pretty nice mail, and IRC client (actually I don't use IRC. but I have been told it is nice).

In a cosmetic way, there are tons of nice skins and extensions built for it that you can get through the opera community.

I am sure I could say more good things - what things interest you the most?

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Being able to close the browser and open it again and have the same tabs come up would be enough to sell me on it, assuming I didn't find something else that kept me from using it.

My main gripes with IE are that it doesn't deal very well with sites that aren't responding well (like LJ has been a lot lately) and that it has very limited flexibility in terms of security settings. If I have Javascript off, for instance, and I go to a site that doesn't run without it, I want an easy way to turn it on just for that site.

Tell me where to go to get Opera, and I'll try it at work (where I have a broadband connection, and where I need the ability to remember the open tabs when I close the browser more than at home) as soon as I can.

[alymid.livejournal.com]

http://www.opera.com - I hope you enjoy it as much as I have ....

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

The Firefox sessionsaver extension can save and restore all the tabs. I don't know if it has been migrated over to version 0.9 yet. (All the (many) extensions will have to be slightly changed for the new version.)

There is another extension to add zillions of tab configuration options, for people who want to change how tabs behave.