Recorro à opinião de
Andrew Gregory para enumerar algumas das vantagens em navegar na internet usando o Opera. Não se trata de uma pessoa qualquer como podes comprovar pela sua biografia. Todas as suas opiniões são fundamentadas em factos e testes.
E acredita que apenas são apresentadas algumas características do Opera. Trata-se de um browser muito poderoso e altamente configurável.
Obviamente que mesmo depois de leres o que vem a seguir, tens todo o direito de continuar a preferir o Firefox. Como já alguém aqui no fórum referiu "
Gostos são gostos e estes não se discutem!" Espero é que consigas ver que, tecnicamente, o Opera é superior ao Firefox.
Why Opera?
A while ago I visited a web site that described the latest security flaw (long since fixed) in Internet Explorer. They even had a demonstration link I could click. When I clicked it, various windows flashed up on the screen, ending up at an open Command Prompt window which had just executed the "dir" command! That was horrifying. It could so easily have been "del /s c:\*.*" and wiped out my hard drive. Just from clicking a link on a web page!
I knew then that Internet Explorer just wasn't suitable for browsing the 'net. That particular fault may have been fixed, but I wanted a browser I could trust. For me, Opera is that browser.
Some other reasons why I use Opera:
Small - At less than 4MB for the entire download (not counting Java), it's smaller than just about every other browser out there. It's even smaller than most of the patches for Internet Explorer!
Fast Loading - It loads up much faster than Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox (on my machine anyway). It's almost as fast as IE, which is saying something since Windows keeps IE loaded all the time anyway.
Fast Back - Opera keeps recently visited pages in memory. If you've got 128MB+, why not use it? Hitting the Back button gives you the previous page instantly. This frequently gives people the impression that Opera uses and therefore requires huge amounts of memory. This belief is mistaken. While Opera does use large amounts of memory, it quickly lets it go when free memory is getting low.
Fast Downloading - When you click on a file to download, Opera starts downloading it straight away, even before the 'Save as' dialog pops up. It keeps on downloading while you're figuring out where to save it. If it's small enough, by the time you've clicked on 'Save', the download might have already finished! Sure beats IE which stalls the download while the 'Save as' dialog is up. Opera even has a 'quick download' command that automatically saves files into a configurable directory - no 'Save as dialog'!
Tabbed Browsing - Opera was the first browser I'd ever seen that did this, and it converted me (InternetWorks was the first, apparently). I often have five or more tabs going at once. It's very useful when you're reading a page and see an interesting link. I can wheel-click on it which I've set to 'open in background'. That opens the link in a new tab and doesn't disturb my reading the current page. When I've finished with the page I can check all the tabs I've opened.
Continue where you left - Opera can be set to automatically restart exactly as you left it. Let's say the power fails. Opera has automatically kept track of what pages you had open and when you start it next, all those pages and tabs pop up exactly as you left them. Brilliant! Works just the same when you have to rush out and quickly turn your computer off, and on those rare occasions when Opera crashes. Your web browsing is barely disturbed.
Security - While Opera still has security problems (just like every other browser out there), the difference is that once Opera Software become aware of security issues, the fixes are typically just a few days away. Recently Opera Software became aware of a serious security hole and a fix was released one day later. IE still has security holes months old!
Web authoring - For people doing their own web pages, Opera has easy access to HTML validators. If you need to find out what your web site looks like with JavaScript turned off, that's just F12 and two clicks away (if you're wondering why that's important, some statistics have up to 10% of web surfers with JavaScript turned off - a good reason not to rely on JavaScript).
Disable audio - Ever been surfing and bumped into a page that played music? This is particularly annoying in a work environment! Again, F12 and unticking "Enable embedded audio" works brilliantly!
Email security - By default Opera does not allow emails to load things from the Internet. This stops spammers from using an embedding image request to confirm your email address. Nor does Opera allow scripts in emails to run - for obvious reasons. Reading your email with Opera is extremely safe.
I haven't mentioned Opera's revolutionary email-client/newsreader. This addition has tended to polarise Opera devotees and new-comers alike! Either you like it or you hate it. I do like it. It does need some work, though. If you try Opera the browser, give the email a try, but you may prefer to stick with whatever email program you're already using.
Why Not Opera?
I can't think of anything! Seriously, there used to be two major objections to Opera: ads and money. As of 2005-09-20 Opera is ad and cost free. No ads, no need to pay a cent!
If you'd still like to contribute financially, then get yourself some Premium Support. Otherwise, just use the built-in Google search facility, as Google pay Opera a few cents every time you use it.
Firefox
Introduction
It should be obvious that my preferred browser is Opera. Not that there's anything wrong (much) with Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla. I just prefer using an internet suite. The best suite (in my opinion) is Opera. The Mozilla suite is just too big, fat, and ugly.
Opera vs Firefox and Thunderbird
Why?
A frequent dig by Firefox fans at Opera is that Opera is "bloated". Usually what is meant by that is that the default user interface is more complicated relative to Firefox. In the past this was true, but the latest version of Opera is much more streamlined in that area, so I thought it worthy of a test.
"Bloat" could also refer to higher resource requirements (memory, CPU, hard drive), given that Opera has so many more features built-in compared to Firefox. So I wanted to investigate that, too.
Test Environment
Test machine was a VMware 4.5.2 virtual machine running a clean installation of Windows 2000 (SP3) in 192MB of memory and video set to 1024×768 and 32-bit colour. Host machine is a 1GHz Athlon, 512MB memory, nVidia GeForce 4 440MX video card, Windows 2000 SP3. Tests were conducted on 20th April 2005.
...
Summary
Download and Storage Requirements
Opera is a smaller download, definitely still important for the many people still on dialup. Particularly when browsers are regularly updated.
Once installed, Opera uses 9MB less space than Firefox. If all you consider is the size of your hard drive, that doesn't sound like much, however, many people install a browser onto their USB thumb drive (~128MB) or onto a mini-CD (~50MB). In those situations, every MB counts, and Opera delivers.
For email storage, Opera requires about 15% more space than Thunderbird, presumably for the indexing used for the lightning-fast text searches.
Memory Requirements
Opera requires a little more memory than that required by Firefox to surf the 'net. Firefox releases much more when minimised, which has resulted in some complaints that Firefox takes too long, sometimes over a minute, to "wake up" when restored. Restoration seems to be a mixed bag with a variety of results.
CPU Requirements
Firefox was much faster than Opera when loading the 20 test sites. This was the only significant difference between this and my earlier tests last year. In those tests Firefox was similar to Opera.
Since this was such a big change, I looked a little closer using Ethereal:
Código:
Item Opera Firefox
Between first and last packet 131.714 sec 66.090 sec
Packets 16341 11017
Avg. packets/sec 124.064 166.698
Avg. packet size 395.872 bytes 575.514 bytes
Bytes 6468941 6340439
Avg. bytes/sec 49113.598 95936.788
Avg. Mbit/sec 0.393 0.767
It looks like Firefox is able to better utilize the available bandwidth, with a fairly constant fast transfer, while Opera was not only less consistent, but slower as well.
Update: I've been contacted by some other Opera users who have been unable to replicate my thoughput issues. Their experiences were that Opera and Firefox were basically the same. I'm investigating. Possibilities are that my internet connection is through a Linux box acting as a firewall and that I'm using a virtual machine and that those could be doing strange things. However, I would have thought that those things would influence Opera and Firefox equally.
Another issue that clouds the speed issue is the fact that many web sites do not compress their data for Opera, but do for IE and Firefox, in spite of the fact that Opera is just as capable of handling it. Google, Amazon and Yahoo are three popular sites that have this issue (see also this Opera Forums thread). It's unlikely to be deliberate, more a white-list of browsers that support compression, as opposed to a black-list of browsers that don't. However, the end result is that due to the lack of compression, Opera is forced to download a lot more data compared to IE and Firefox, which naturally enough, makes things slower.
User Interface
Opera Software have significantly improved the default user interface from their previous versions. The starting state of both browsers is now comparable. In terms of display area, Firefox squeezes in a few extra pixels.
Conclusion
Opera does not display any evidence of "bloat" of any sort. Apart from the throughput issues (which may be just my setup), it appears to be smaller, lighter, and as fast (if not faster) in all respects.
A Brief Try of Thunderbird
I thought I'd just give Thunderbird (v1.0 final) a quick try, but I couldn't be bothered actually using it as my email client - I have no intention of giving up Opera Mail - and trying to manage the same email using two clients is just asking for trouble.
The answer was to try out its RSS newsfeed functionality.
The installation was painless. "Don't import anything". Next. "RSS News & Blogs". Sounds good. I then right-clicked on "News & Blogs", selected "Manage Subscriptions" and then the "Add" button. I filled in my website newsfeed address and clicked OK. I was informed TB was downloading 15 articles.
Bug #1: only nine showed up! Not a good start. One bug already less than a minute into the trial. And they weren't the most recent nine of the fifteen either. It got the first three, skipped one, got the next four, skipped one, got the next one, skipped two, got the next one, skipped the remaining two.
Yes, the feed does validate, thank-you-very-much.
Whatever. I clicked on an item. The relevant web page appeared in the mail view! That wasn't what I expected. In hindsight, I realize now that I missed the "Show article summary" checkbox, but I expected TBs reader to work like Operas. Still, it should be simple to change the configuration, no? Manage subscriptions, edit the subscription, tick the box. Done.
Bug #2: nothing changed! It was still loading up the web pages. Perhaps I need to restart TB "for the changes to take effect". Not that either. OK. Delete subscription, change the default to "Show article summary" and resubscribe. "Downloading 15 articles...".
Bug #3: only one article now appeared! Where are the others?!
Test over. Three bugs in under five minutes is not good. I think I'll wait for version 2...
Bloat
Ah yes, bloat. The classic anti-Opera excuse used by Mozilla fans. Comprehensively disproved earlier on this page, my Thunderbird test made it clear to me that "bloat" can appear anywhere.
How about placing virtually an entire web browser in an email client? Implementing HTTP, HTML, XML, CSS, RSS, JavaScript, and DOM support, we have ... not Firefox, but Thunderbird!
Let's face it: these days an email client that can't handle at least showing HTML emails is pretty poor. (Composing and sending of such is an entirely different debate!) That means putting in an entire web browser.
For any email client to be taken seriously, they have to be a superset of a web browser. If you have to build a web browser into your email client, it doesn't make much sense to have a standalone browser anymore, does it? For just a little extra chrome, the email client can be a web browser!
Having your standalone Firefox web browser, then duplicating upwards of 95% of that functionality in Thunderbird, well that's what I'd call bloat!