Random Thoughts

Silly introduction: Opera is bloated because it have so many features, and is therefore bad, while Firefox is a great browser because through the use of extensions you an add features to make it even more bloated than Opera.

OK, with that over with, it’s the features I’d like to write a bit about here. It’s true that Opera does include many features, and maybe you don’t need many of them.But on the positive note, they don’t take up much space of the already small download, and won’t show up in the menu and make a clutter out of it if you want to avoid them completely.

Firefox on the other hand chose a different path; it is a featureless browser (well, not quite) that you can add the features you want to through extensions. This way, you can add features that you don’t (currently) find in Opera – and of course refrain from adding features you don’t want, so that you don’t clutter up the interface 😉

But what has any of this to do with time, which the title of this post implies plays a major part of the topic? Obviously, you need some time to actually learn to use the features you like. That’s the same no matter which browser you use, but there’s more!

In Opera you may spend some time to customise the interface to your tastes, if it’s not already so, but in all honesty that doesn’t take too much time. Second, you’re guaranteed that no matter which features you use and enable in Opera, they all works smooth together.

In Firefox the situation is a bit different, as you need to find the extensions that does what you want them to do. True, you do have some centralised pages which have collecti0ns of plugins or links to them. Alas, the job of finding which extension suits you, and which extensions are incompatible with each other, is mostly up to you. It may not be a straight forward task; there are several extensions that does the same thing, in slightly different ways. Which suits you best? Some extensions doesn’t work with other extensions, so there may be a trade off there. How smooth does the extensions work? Do some of them – or a combination of them – make the browser unstable? What about security? And what if one extension is updated – will it still work as expected, or will some incompatibilities have popped up? These are real problems Firefox users have experienced.

So you see, you may potentially spend a lot of time to get it right – that’s the negative side of the situation. The positive side is that there actually are some really great extensions out there.

Opera can’t be extended in the same way, but is it really that far behind? Ad blockers exist, useful side panels, a developer toolbar – or rather developer menu – exists. Truth to be told, you can edit the menus and add entries and features by editing ini-files. You can save the different setups and load specific ones depending on what you want to do. Opera users share the setups they’ve made, many through my.opera.com and some centralised web sites. Just like Firefox users, Opera users have to find the setup they like best – unless they edit the ini-files needed themselves. It may be easier than writing an extension. Unlike Firefox though, you don’t add external code that can make the browser unstable, the different setups aren’t really incompatible with each other, but can’t be used at the same time. You can however edit and combine the different ini-files to achieve that effect, though.

Now, it may seem like no matter which browser you choose, you have to spend time to get the browser like you want it. But of course: That depends. If you want features that neither browser offer by default you have to spend some time to achieve the desired result. How much time depends on which features it is and which browser it is.

However, the situations I hear most of, is when Firefox users is searching for extensions that achieve just the same as Opera offer by default, plus the Adblock. And the problem I hear most of, is that these extensions doesn’t offer quite the same quality and options as Opera, and that some popular extensions weren’t compatible with each other – the combination made Firefox unstable and even crash. It could be solved by using particular versions of the extensions, or alternative extensions, but it took more time than expected.

So the question I’m left with now is the one in the title: If you want the features that Opera offer, without the ad and without paying for it – how much is your time worth?

You may have seen in various reviews of Opera 8 that it is a great browser, but that it has a price tag attached. Here’s how to get the browser and use it – completely legal – for free:

First go to opera.com and download Opera 8, then install it. When you set it up, chose to show the relevant text ads (google ads) instead of the generic banner ads. If you don’t like how the interface looks, now it’s also a great time to change it: Just right click on any toolbar and choose “customize…” Remove buttons you don’t like, add the ones you want, place them on the toolbar you want, change the position of the different toolbars. Change the appearance by downloading a different skin. The text ads will be on the top toolbar, but ignore them for now.

OK, you’ve got the browser to look like you want it. Now, some features are still hidden, such as mail and rss feeds. If you set up a mail (and/or a chat) account, you’ll get another menu option – unsurprisingly called “Mail”. If you subscribe to an RSS/Atom feed, a menu option called “Feeds” appear. But if you don’t care for these extra bits in Opera, Opera won’t bother you with them.

Right, you’re ready for the next step. Start using Opera 8 exclusively for a week (or more.) Don’t worry about the text ads for now, just actively use Opera for everything. Try the different options you have in Opera; the notes, the download manager, maybe you’ll find the user javascripts useful. Just really explore Opera, and try Opera.

Now, at the end of the week (or longer) the ads will still be there, but ask yourself the following two questions: 1) Have the ads really bothered you? and 2) Have you paid anything for Opera, or did you get it for free, with all options available?

I know the answer to the last question is, that you’ve got Opera for free. As for the first question only you know the answer, but if you are one of the few that not only notice the ads but are bothered by them, you can choose to pay the price (half price for students) to remove that feature. If you think the browser’s worth it.

No matter how we choose, however, it can’t change the fact that Opera is free!

Microsoft makes a browser going by the name Internet Explorer. You may have heard of it. Now, many of us will never use IE (maybe except for testing or some such) but what Microsoft does with the browser still matters to us all. We know this is so because IE is the browser most people use due to being the one included by default in Windows.

So we know why the development of IE7 matters, but what should we hope for, first and foremost? Looking at the IE Blog, it seems like it’s a situation of “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” there – if they write about how they’re implementing features like tabs they get criticised for doing that and not the standards. If they write about how they finally support transparent png images they’re swamped with comments about wanting more features. Can’t remember right now what they’ve written about bugfixes in their standards support, but there has been some. And comments from non-satisfied readers. Not easy being an IE developer, eh?

But roughly speaking, there are three options: Implement features that users want, implement more standards support (that is, at least to the same level as the alternative browsers) and combining these two options, doing both.

Focusing on the features will give the users who won’t switch to other browsers a nicer browsing experience, but… Other browser makers won’t be resting on their laurels, but continue to make their browsers better, with both more support for standards and more and better functionality in the interface, making the browsing experience better and better for their users. In the browser or as plugins, IE will be playing catch up in this field no matter what.

Focusing on the standards will also be a catch up game, but to a lesser degree; while there may be suggestions for new features here, standard definitions doesn’t add up that quickly. The problem by focusing on standards is of course, that using the browser doesn’t really get any nicer by it. Combining both would be the best – if the resources are there. But Microsoft too has limited resources, so what should be done by them? Where shuld the focus be?

The main focus should – IMHO – be on standards support, with some implementation of the “must have”-features, such as tabs. The browser features to make it nicer to use the browser itself, of course, but not spending too much time on it, because there are more important matters. This being the implementation of (bug free) standards support, of course. This will help everyone; IE users will start experience what users of alternative browsers already experience, and more importantly, it will be easier for web developers to make web sites that takes advantage of what is possible, without leaving IE users out in the cold. A win-win-situation. What the IE team actually will do remains to be seen – we can only cross our fingers and hope for the best. And maybe they write something in their blog…

Twice have I heard the argument now from friends that Opera use a lot of memory, and that this was a reason to prefer Firefox. Last time today. (Or well – yesterday, it’s late.) Now, I don’t mind anyone preferring Firefox over Opera, but as I was sitting next to him today, in front of the PC, I showed him how he could set the cache himself, easily. In Opera, he is in total control over how the cache is handled.

And I showed him how RSS worked – a feature he wasn’t aware of. And while he was shown the difference between how the two browsers treated RSS, he wasn’t too convinced – he didn’t think he’d use it anyway. Maybe.

But a major reason for him to stick with Firefox anyway, was due to pages not working in Opera. Not by any fault of Opera, but that didn’t help him. Especially since the web mail he was using wouldn’t work with Opera. It wasn’t the time to test if completely hiding Opera by masquerading could help, though (broadband from Lyse if anyone can test.)

Doesn’t sound like a positive post for Opera this, eh? But, I know that more and more designers are aware of the correct way to implement web sites (write for standard, the one hack for IE, instead of writing for IE and then many hacks for the other browsers. Most economically sound method, too) – even if there’s work to do to make everyone aware of this. Secondly, if I didn’t win him over, he is more positive to what Opera can do now than before we met.

I guess most of us use the bookmarks feature in the various browsers to keep the sites they like readily available. Some sites are bookmarked because of their theme, and can be categorised. Other times there are specific things you enjoy, so into the bookmarks with those pages.

The list of bookmarks grows. How long do you remember where you found those interesting bits? Do you spend a long time to find something specific? Here’s where Copy to Note in Opera is very useful: Mark the text you’re interesting on a site, or just part of it to remind you what it is about, right click and choose Copy to note. Unsurprisingly this copy the text into the built in note book, but the neat thing is Opera know where you copied it from. Just double click that note from the list of notes when you have the panel available, and you’ll visit the page it were taken from.

Neat? Not only can you use the note book at you normally would do, but it also doubles up as an advanced bookmark manager (of sorts) – a clever feature I’m using more and more. Also, Opera is the only browser I know of that has this useful feature. Great browser. 😀