Opera, for those who don't know about it, is a very nice browser, and for years you had to pay to use it, or get the free version without the ad-banner. Well, no longer, sonny! Get the free version!
Opera is awesome. I should use it more often, but I keep forgetting to. Good reasons to use it:
- It's fast. Often able to render things quicker than IE or Firefox.
- It's more secure than IE (definately) or Firefox (I think...).
- Built in support for gmail.
- email and rss client.
- Probably other stuff.
Let the good times roll. Advertisement over.
2 comments:
I'm a long-time advocate of Firefox. While some people were anticipating the Nov. 9 release of Halo 2, I was anticipating the Nov. 9 release of Firefox 1.0. Anytime somebody wants me to rid their computer of spyware, I do, but then I give them Firefox, because, well, I could. It's safer and, in my opinion, easier to use than IE.
It is true that you can speed up Firefox with the tweaks. I've used them. However, tweaks do nothing to render webpages faster. You need better algorithms and *then* better optimizations of those algorithms to do that. Which is why I'm so excited about the to-be-released-in-November Firefox 1.5, which is currently in beta. The things they've done there are really neat.
The Firefox extensions and plugins are great. For those who don't have the extentions, I suggest getting ForcastFox, AdBlock, View in IE, Tab preferences, and Gmail notifier. Just Google: firefox extentions, and I'm sure you'll find what you need to. Google even has their very own homemade Google bar for it now, good stuff.
The security point is a little different. Just because it's Firefox doesn't make it immune to the problems at the core of Mozilla, especially with their Gecko engine. More critical security flaws have been found in Firefox this year than those found in IE. It's a good thing that the Firefox team is much more quick to respond and fix the problem than the IE team.
One of the security selling points of Firefox was that the majority of the people don't use it. Although that's still the case, there are enough people using it now that it could become a viable target for hackers.
Another point made toward Firefox security is that it is open source: Anybody can find the problem and fix it. The truth of the matter is that not many people using firefox know how to program for it. Of those that do, you have to be of the elite firefox programmers to be able to pass the fix onto the people that manage Firefox, effectively closing down the point that anybody can fix it.
Opera is closed-source. Nobody can see the code unless Opera wants them to. Does that make it more secure? Well, it certainly doesn't hurt.
The overall point I'm trying to make is this: Don't be a playa hata. Don't tie yourself down to one browser, one OS, one car manufacturer, etc. You can have your Firefox and your Opera. I do. You can have your Windows and Linux, or even your Fedora Linux and Gentoo Linux. Fords and Chevys both have their merits, but they cost money, so I should only have one car at a time for that situation.
Of course, if you're married, perhaps you'd better stick to that one mate. I'm talking about free products here, people. Hmm. Except Windows.
Interesting, I'll have to consider this. I've seen Firefox.
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