So I take it you shelled out the money and registered Opera?

Do you ever find that windows which don't have Status Bars seem naked? :)

I notice that you wrote in your "just give me a back button" post about a theme that I've commented on (in your blog) before. I just wanted to point something that this screenshot has but a default Firefox profile doesn't: an easy and obvious way to create new tabs.

"Tabbed browsing" is something that's often boasted about, but which is hard for regular users to discover. With popup blocking becomming a non-issue for users who can upgrade to the latest version of IE in July, Firefox should do everything it can to prove that it's more than just a slow rendering engine that happens to support the few pages which brandish a "CSS" logo in preference to working for 90% of web users.

James, but there is no "close page" button in Opera...
If you think missing a button is no good, you'd better use Mozilla Application Suite, which have *both* "new tab" and "close tab" buttons.

(just for fun :-P)

When I first saw the screenshot I was going to ask you what Firefox theme you were using :)

Seriously, I agree with James that Firefox should have a "new tab" button somewhere. Most of people are missing the tabbed-browsing (I even saw Opera-convertees who complained about it).

Maybe if new windows were opened as tabs by default then people might realise Firefox had tabs? My cousin used it for a few months before ruminating to me that you can have several pages in one window; yesterday my mother had five Firefoxes open without realising it. The current (default) implementation of "tabbed browsing" really doesn't count.

minghong...
of course there is a "close tab" button, since Opera's interface is a MDI (instead of a tabbed one), the close button sits on right hand top corner.

(hmm, sorry for the terrible english)

Ah! rubens, you're right. I found it.
But then it is inconsistent with the tab bar. (I knew Opera supports 3 modes: MDI, SDI, and tabbed interface, so it is just confusing... Just as confusing as the double navigation bars... @_@:)

Minghong: tabbed browsing *is* MDI. ;-)

Do any of you actually use Firefox? It *does* have a new tab button. Right click on a toolbar (not the bookmarks toolbar) and hit customize. Drag your new tab button onto the toolbar. Hit done. There is your "new tab button".

Sure, arguably it should already be on the toolbar, but it *is* available.

jeez!
Having just installed Opera 7.5... The skin is pretty (but it has excessive padding as noted by some), but I have to select Qute as the default skin (for standarts sake since I share this computer with my relatives).

It's not that difficult to set the toolbars (once you figure where it's set).
But the point in having two identical toobars as default (in both function and looks) is out of my understanding...

Robert Morris, they are not really the same according to Opera's terminology: http://www.opera.com/products/user/ (Jump to "Window management")

Neil Paris, I use Firefox only (Opera and IE for testing website only). And oops... I've never customized the toolbar... ^^:

minghong, no worries :-). I wouldn't (and don't, in fact) use a New Tab button, but I can see why maybe it should be included by default.

It's a shame you can't drag the New Tab button to the actual tab bar in Firefox. Should be as easy to fix as adding toolbar button support on the menubar that was introduced in Phoenix 0.3.