They better should upgrade the engine rather than interface... At first to give up JScript support (no matter if it works only when identify as IE), to give up MSIE CSS extensions (no matter they're turned off by default), to improve JavaScript support and so on...

And I would consider it a browser when it becomes free. BTW they're liers, they say on their OFFICIAL site that Opera fully supports Gmail, lol, like fun, damnet liers, I hate when users are considered idiots. Who are they trying to trick?

Try installing it again, and watch very closely what's happening while it throws up that "useless" feature panel at the start of the installation. Back behind that and the license agreement panel, it's unpacking the rest of the archive. Where we make you watch us back in the kitchen butchering a hog and verifying the integrity of the archive, they give you a pretty picture of pork chops to look at while they get ready. It doesn't fill me with envy the way the dropdown you get when you focus the addressbar does, but for the casual installer who doesn't know what to expect, it actually makes the installation seem faster, because there's less "please wait patiently while I churn away" time.

@gass512
Do you know anything about any browser engine in general? IMNSHO, you know nothing at all. Do not tell such things and pretend you are a geek and coder, ok? Somebody told you Opera engine is not Gecko engine and does not support some things, which Gecko supports, i.e. it is crippled.
What do you know about Jscript and Javascript? IMNSHO, you know nothing at all. Do not tell such things and pretend you are a geek and coder, ok?
Opera engine and the company policy do stick to the standards of W3C. Is it so bad that the engine partially supports some proprietary things from MS, like Jscript or some CSS? NO. For better compatibility with WWW it should support these things. Should I point you to some sites, which use Jscript, where FF is totally useless?
You'd better know which standards both browsers support and which they do not. If you fail to find any info, here it is: http://nanobox.chipx86.com/browser_support.php See it yourself and stop looking like a narrow-minded fanboy with red eyes.
You said you would consider it to be a browser when Opera becomes free. TANSTAAFL, which means - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Opera Software ASA is not a profitless organization, owned by open-source community. It is a Commercial organization, which should earn money. It has been existing for ten years and there were many offers to buy it, but it has had the same owner - does it say anything to you? If a browser is not free - is not a browser? ROFL!
GIMP is free, but Photoshop is not, but is used by more professional people, than GIMP. Feel the difference.
Gmail is supported by Opera, apart from one thing - rich text formatting. That's all.
So it is better reconsider your attitude and approach to alternative programs and stop looking and talking like a narrow-minded pseudo-geek.
@Phil Ringnalda
Man, are we talking about the installer or about a browser? Should I tell you about a stupid bug of FF uninstaller, which killed "Program files" folder?
We are talking about a browser, called Opera. I do not care if you like it or not. But stick to the topic. An installer is not a browser.
@Asa Dotzler
"Opera is moving in the Firefox direction." What!!?? Does that mean that it is the right direction? No. Every browser has its own needs and directions. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they differ. But FF direction is not the most right direction. It is not God-like. Opera is just moving in its own direction.

Nobody of you said about its high speed, easy customizability and high-level security and standards support.

2 T26NOV.ragnarok

I do not claim I'm a geek or an advanced coder, but what I know is what I know. I'm not a fan, I'm not a priest of Firefox's cult. I just see that Opera (trying to avoid swearwords) supports what she mustn't support -- proprietary MS stuff. And then it must go bankrupt, it is not free, then it's a unique commercial browser and then it must go bankrupt, I do know that it DOES support MS CSS extensions and Jscript and if you say it's not bad, you're completely wrong, it's like to feed trolls, the more browsers support WWW deviations the more webmasters use them!

[quote]Is it so bad that the engine partially supports some proprietary things from MS, like Jscript or some CSS? NO.[/quote]

Hahaha!!! Well, well then! Let's implement ActiveX, MS CSS Extensions and Jscript in Firefox and continue to turn the web into that garbage as it already is thanks to IE. You! How you dare, you know, you just hurt the people, you hurt everyone who uses Firefox then, cos when I visit a site and it's displayed incorrectly I know who's to blame, you and like you! You're the prophets of MS, you... Cos of you we suffer! Cos of you WEB is a big heap of shit by MS, cos of you... You know yourself.

The only one engine must be the standard -- Gecko, it is the "true engine" and it renders pure HTML. All the rest are just deviations, especially Presto. All intelligent people over the world should join the holy inquisition to wipe all the litter and to withdrawn the heretics out of Internet.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, chap! If opera dies, we'll rejoice!

to gass512:

> supports what she mustn't support -- proprietary MS stuff.

like innerHTML, document.all and the style object (yes, MS came up with that first)

> it is not free

True, Opera admits that it is not totally free. But every company needs to make money, otherwise they cannot pay their programmers. The Mozilla foundation is no different. It either gets sponsors or asks for donations. However, this has no effect whatsoever on whether it is a browser or not, and if you believe it does, then you have a screwed up idea of what a browser is. Is OmniWeb also not a browser? It uses the same engine as Safari ... Or maybe Safari itself, since you have to pay for the Operating system that it runs on?

> Well, well then! Let's implement ActiveX

You already did.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mozilla+activex+site%3Amozilla.org

> MS CSS Extensions

oh yeah, because you don't have any CSS extensions at all do you:
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/propindex/extensions.htm
(out of date, there are more)

> Jscript in Firefox

Oh yeah, didn't you notice? you support document.all - yes you do.
document.all['mydiv'].style.color = 'red';
And wouldn't you know, it works in Firefox!

> The only one engine must be the standard -- Gecko, it is the "true engine"

troll!

> and it renders pure HTML.

and it also renders garbage HTML, just like any other browser. They _all_ implement error handling of one kind or another, and Firefox is no exception. Should browsers like Opera and Firefox refuse to render anything that does not validate?

And to be honest, your attitude is simply insulting. You insult the work that Opera, KDE, and yes, even your precious Mozilla have gone to to be compatible with both the existing mess, and the future mess that makes up the Web.

> You ought to be ashamed of yourself, chap!

likewise.

Opera, the good:
- pause/resume downloads actually works
- F11 really gives you a full screen
- links sidebar not a bad idea
- no need for extensions, since e.g. the excellent mouse gestures and ´undoclosetab´ functionality, which I think is essential, is built in
- RSS functionality; better than live bookmarks

Opera, the bad:
- Standard View with the Main bar (cascade, tiles...) is useless
- Pop-ups are anounced with a pop-up in the right upper corner
- Why does this thing crash when I try ´check spelling´ from the edit menu????
- Why does it say ´Opera 8.0 Final build 1095´ in the title bar? I got the Mandrakelinux 10.1 version from the opera.com site... I guess the ´Final build 1095´ is not on the Windows builds. In any event, it shouldn´t be there
- Why do the menu´s mention ´import Netscape bookmarks´? Imagine a Firefox user that doesn´t know this will work for him; he won´t have his bookmarks.
- when you start typing in the address bar, e.g. ´wiki´, the dropdown menu will mention ´wikipedia´ if that´s in you history, but to use that dropdown menu, you need to use the arrow keys; the tab button will not do!
- no ad-block

Conclusion: Going the Opera direction would be a good idea for Firefox in some areas, but all in all, Firefox is better.

> like innerHTML, document.all and the style object (yes, MS came up with that first)

document.all is nearly a standard, no matter who implemented it first, above all it is admitted.

> But every company needs to make money, otherwise they cannot pay their programmers.

Browser isn't that kinda software which can be proprietary. Or why does Opera have so little usage share? :)

> You already did.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mozilla+activex+site%3Amozilla.org

I mean by default and in standard distribution.

> oh yeah, because you don't have any CSS extensions at all do you:
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/propindex/extensions.htm
(out of date, there are more)

And what?

> Oh yeah, didn't you notice? you support document.all - yes you do.
document.all['mydiv'].style.color = 'red';
And wouldn't you know, it works in Firefox!

I already mentioned above...

> and it also renders garbage HTML, just like any other browser.

It renders no Jscript, ActiveX and MS CSS.

> And to be honest, your attitude is simply insulting.

I'm sorry, but Opera can be considered a public enemy. It corrupts the community, why not to blame it for that? When they remove all those damned deviations, it'll be okay.

Although...

Aaaaah....... why??? why you all so crude, so short-sighted. Instead of registering claims against Opera and MSIE you SUPPORT them? The world's falling to hell. We'll all die... You don't see the obvious, MS will rule the world and you all will become slaves if you don't struggle and resist. It's all incorrect! You must spread the word, you must run down IE and Opera to avoid the world's meltdown, you must turn Mozilla into the Web's master, you see, Google is cooperating, they're wise guys, they know the truth, they know! God give you enough wisdom to comprehend what's coming on...

NOW I wash my hands of it...

@gass512
>"what I know is what I know.">
Your knowledge is wrong. The point is that you say it is a bad engine. How can you assess it without knowing any coding. Opera engine, imho, does not have, at the moment, any limitations to implement some more things, which FF supports. So it is not bad. Do you know that since Opera 7 - the engine is a brand new rewritten one, which has a lot of power and capability to progress. If any functionality and standards support was limited by the engine itself, it would mean it is crippled. It only takes some time to implement the support of some more standards. It is limited by time only.
>proprietary MS stuff...it must go bankrupt, it is not free, then it's a unique commercial browser and then it must go bankrupt, I do know that it DOES support MS CSS extensions and Jscript and if you say it's not bad, you're completely wrong, it's like to feed trolls, the more browsers support WWW deviations the more webmasters use them!>
Let's all turn our asses to MS proprietary stuff, with this approach.
If you ran a business and you were more wise and cared about your customers, you would have to support some proprietary stuff. Web consists of many sites, including many of those, which use this stuff. And they are banks, serious commercial companies, on-line shops and so on. Being a moron, who turns his ass to these sites, YOU will be a bankrupt then.
Gonna take the web back? Go and take it with this approach.
> Let's implement ActiveX>
You know that there is a way to make ActiveX working in Mozilla. Opera is not going to implement ActiveX in any way. It is a potential security risk.
> How you dare, you know, you just hurt the people, you hurt everyone who uses Firefox then, cos when I visit a site and it's displayed incorrectly I know who's to blame, you and like you! You're the prophets of MS, you...>
Ok, if I visit with Opera the site of your Ben Goodger, when he blocks the content from browsing with Opera, whom ot blame? Myself? Moronic approach. Yours and Ben's.
>The only one engine must be the standard -- Gecko, it is the "true engine" and it renders pure HTML.>
Gee, how narrow-minded and sto-o-o-opid this teenboy is. Do you anything about other engines? HTML happens to be not so pure as you think BTW. To render pure HTML - means to show the HTML code, imho, but any browser's task is to _decode_ and render HTML markup in an appropriate way and understandable form according to the proper standards.
>All intelligent people over the world should join the holy inquisition to wipe all the litter and to withdrawn the heretics out of Internet.>
Intelligent people will never do it. But some illiteral fanatics like you will do.
> I'm not a fan, I'm not a priest of Firefox's cult.>
Boy, you contradict to yourself by saying: "The only one engine must be the standard -- Gecko, it is the "true engine" and it renders pure HTML. All the rest are just deviations, especially Presto. All intelligent people over the world should join the holy inquisition to wipe all the litter and to withdrawn the heretics out of Internet.". Nothing is perfect in this world. Stop flaming.

@gass512
FF is going to rule the world of web - do not cast shadow over the FFcommunity by your childish and fanatic words.
TROLL!!!!

> Your knowledge is wrong. The point is that you say it is a bad engine. How can you assess it without knowing any coding.

To understand that GeForce Fx5800 is better than Ati 7000 one needn't to be a geek in videochips.

> If you ran a business and you were more wise and cared about your customers, you would have to support some proprietary stuff. Web consists of many sites, including many of those, which use this stuff. And they are banks, serious commercial companies, on-line shops and so on. Being a moron, who turns his ass to these sites, YOU will be a bankrupt then.

So what's your advice? Let's give up Firefox and come back to IE? Of course, whhat for any alternative browsers, let it be IE the only one, it shows almost all sites perfectly :) Stupid approach.

>To understand that GeForce Fx5800 is better than Ati 7000 one needn't to be a geek in videochips.
How can you assess a videocard? By special tests, and not by figures near its name actually. You read the spec. If you do not understand what it says - you cannot understand which card is better.
Incorrect example then.
>So what's your advice? Let's give up Firefox and come back to IE? Of course, whhat for any alternative browsers, let it be IE the only one, it shows almost all sites perfectly :) Stupid approach.
I am not going to advise anybody, especially you, 'cos you are just an illiterate $#@%$#%# troll, without any technical knowledge, who uses the words, he heard from guru. Go and read bugzilla if you are able to understand what is written there.
Your advice - is to use red panda everywhere and it should be the only browser in the web. To be a monopolist of the WWW. Your approach is just like the one of MS. Neither IE, nor Opera, nor FF show WWW 100% properly.
Go and learn one of the programming languages used in WWW and then come back and continue trolling everywhere, but having some technical background with some evidences, proof and test cases . Dixi.

Hahaha, when one doesn't have arguments remaining, he becomes personal. I hate this manner of arguing ad hominem, so I won't discuss anymore. You, namely, you don't have any arguments, only insults, so get away, pitiful microsoft's employee.

Open source doesn not necessarily mean its better. Going with that ... both Firefox's and Opera's engine are good. If you think either one is bad, you are just a fan speaking. I don't see where all this hate is coming from. Opera 8 is a good browser and so is Firefox. We can all find faults on each browser.

We can at least agree on one thing and that is that Internet Explorer is not a good browser mainly because it lacks features and is security prone. Now everybody stop acting like young kids and just accept that there are other good alternative browsers. There I said it ...

"opera moving in the firefox direction"

That is just a silly statement. You can say that about anything. You can say Firefox is moving in the Opera direction by adopting tabs. I mean come on, its silly.

@gass512
Sorry for making any insult to your side. Omit it. And read carefully, what you wrote and what I wrote afterwards. Do not be a child, but be more mature.

P.S. Sorry for any insult in my posts, gass512.

I mean, that FireFox and Opera philosophy are so far from the other. They are
both much better than the other in some features.

FireFox better in:

- Cleaner layout just after installing
- Less icompatible sites for Gecko engine
- "Do it yourself" feeling (in good mind) with extensions
- Free

Opera better in:

- Eleganter appearence after a few customizing
- More feaures connected with the engine (Fit to Width, Author mode...)
- Smooth rendering
- Extremely customizable interface
- Complete Internet suite (browser, chat, e-mail, newsfeeds,...)
- More helpful community, very much "extension-like" elements
- Very small size for the whole suite

And everyone can choice, what is for him/her more important and convincing.
I hope, the lonely common between Opera and FireFox will be the sticking to
WEB standards.

Dude who wrote the first comment...man chill out. I think that Asa is right in every-way. Who wants a browser that has ads. Come on...really. Firefox is the best, safest, and faster browser there is. Opera put Google Adsense in the freakin program. If you read the Google Adsense Program policy it points out you may not post any of the code into a program. And if Opera supports Google's Gmail why can't they soppurt themselves? Opera does offer free E-mail, if you want 4 MB! You Opera fans need to rethink how you think about Firefox. Firefox has taken way more share than Opera has. Us Firefox users bit 5% of IE's market share with Opera not even reaching 1%. So which one is better...

I'm still a Firefox fanboy but I've been won over by Opera 8's:

Faster page loading
Faster back/forward
Immediate use of mouse gestures, sessionsaver, etc
Nice undoclosetab
Lower memory footprint and very quick to load
Nicer feel for tabs, menus, colour scheme
I love the bar on the left side
Just generally it seems tweaked to a graeter degree than Firefox, especially the features on the left

If only I could figure out how to use live bookmarks and stumble upon on Opera I'd love it =)

Both Firefox and Opera are great. Opera has an edge at this point, but not really worth the money.

> Firefox is the best

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/06/04/

> safest

http://secunia.com/product/761/
http://secunia.com/product/4227/

> and faster browser

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

@Robert Wiblin
>If only I could figure out how to use live bookmarks and stumble upon on Opera I'd love it =)

Use built-in RSS-reader.

That's big improvement in interface and usability. Simple and quick installation.
I like multiple panels view which help my web page development comparsion. I am also excited about the "voice" feature, but when I click it. It tell me "sorry". I got a little confused here. It's speedier, but still have few rendering problems.

I like how you turn to a Mozilla Foundation employee's blog and call Firefox fans trolls here.

Also, nobody said that because Opera isn't a browser because it isn't Free. I stopped reading halfway through the comments because they were ridiculous. Oh sorry, I guess I'm trolling here at MOZILLAZINE.org. Sorry.

Anyway, I tried to get Opera 8 but the website wouldn't give it to me, so I don't want it anymore.

2 Poop

> http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/06/04/

You can find many magazines that called Firefox the best. :) Anyway everyone has his own truth.

> http://secunia.com/product/761/
http://secunia.com/product/4227/

Nonsense. Opera has about 1% of market share, noone needs it, noone interested in it enough to look for vulnerabilities in it. Firefox is the most secure solution, patches are released in time. If someone creates his own browser and uses it alone, it can claim it the most secure browser in da world, actually, it isn't so. Or you truly think Opera is bulletproof? :) And its developers are gods to make ideal code?

> http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

1 or two seconds count? :))))
And it's very vague, according to my tests Firefox has won the race, who's right? Nobody is.

@Neil Paris

I called this boy a troll due to obvious reasons:

1. He trolled in myopera.net forums by giving some strange reasons why he does not like opera and why its engine is crippled and bad, providing no technical background. Just words. He also trolled at linux.org.ru and forum.mozilla.ru. I know this guy.

>Also, nobody said that because Opera isn't a browser because it isn't Free.
2. He said "And I would consider it a browser when it becomes free."

3. And the last thing, which really disappointed me was - "The only one engine must be the standard -- Gecko, it is the "true engine" and it renders pure HTML. All the rest are just deviations, especially Presto. All intelligent people over the world should join the holy inquisition to wipe all the litter and to withdrawn the heretics out of Internet."

Of course, I had to avoid to call this fanboy a troll, being a visitor of a blog on mozillazine.org, the alma-mater of FF community. That is my mistake. Sorry about that.

gass512, at least we both agree that you are not right! :)

All (actually most of) you peeps are a bunch of babies. Firefox is really cool. Opera is kinda cool too. No need to start a flame war over it. Sheesh.

@tccforme
Wise words, man. Let's stop flaming and insulting each other and browsers.
Respect!

2T26NOV.ragnarok

Sorry, audience...

Chto-je ty srazu ne skazal, chto ty russki, a to ya tut pisal takoy fanatikovy bred, pytayas' pokazat' svyaschennuyu voinu (inkvizitsia i vse takoe) (vse posty krome pervogo), i dumal toka amerikosy chitat' budut :))))) A tut russki zatesalsya. :(

Blin, mog by srazu skazat' i ne lomat' komediu ;)

Sorry for russian translit, people!
@gass512
Vse ravno eto ne delaet tebe chesti. No bred ty nes poryadochny.... ;)
Ladno proexali... Izvini, chto ya sam povel sebya nemnogo glupo i po-detsky.
No Operu v obidu ne dam!! Ya seryezno!
P.S. a ty otkuda uznal, chto ya russky?

"Nonsense. Opera has about 1% of market share, noone needs it, noone interested in it enough to look for vulnerabilities in it. Firefox is the most secure solution, patches are released in time."

Had you more carefully read the referenced documents, gass512, you would have noticed the following things:

1. More notices were issued for Opera 7.x (35) than for Firefox 1.x (15). This may, however, simply be because the 7-series of Opera is much older.
2. Fewer vulnerabilities remain unpatched in Opera (0) than in Firefox (4).

Thus we can conclude that entities are indeed interested in finding vulnerabilities in Opera, and they do get patched in a timely fashion.

@Alex Morganis:
> Opera put Google Adsense in the freakin program.
> If you read the Google Adsense Program policy it
> points out you may not post any of the code into
> a program.

Heh. Google has partnered with Opera for adsense. Do you really think Opera would do something like this without consulting with Google?

> And if Opera supports Google's Gmail why can't
> they soppurt themselves?

Nonsensical question/statement. Rephrase please.

> Firefox has taken way more share than Opera has.

Because it was released as 1.0 at the right time - right when everyone warned about MSIE. Opera 7.54 had been out for a long time by then - not exciting news compared to a "new" 1.0 browser.

> Us Firefox users bit 5% of IE's market share with
> Opera not even reaching 1%. So which one is better...

By your logic, MSIE is the best browser.

@Neil Paris:
> I like how you turn to a Mozilla Foundation employee's
> blog and call Firefox fans trolls here.

gass512 *IS* a troll. Many of his statements are completely untrue and inflammatory.

Oh, and Mozilla DOES support loads and loads of IE-proprietary extensions.

EOD.

Opera is nice, they did a good job fixing much of it. I like the fact that opera lingers on asking for money to remove the ads. And if it really bothers you I am sure there is a cracked version out there that you can use instead.

Firefox is great in all the ways Opera is not. Usability, I mean jeez, I am a geek and I take a long time to find new stuff in opera. I think mostly due to it being a "suite". Don't know, didn't check.. But does opera suite have a Firefox type version... I mean Mozilla:Firefox Opera:(browser only).. I just am not interested in all the crap shoved in there. The BROWSER is really good. I LOVE the fact that pop ups are maintained inside the ONE Opera window, (c'mon firefox.. I have an extension that SAYS it does this but seems to work about 70%{High fig} of the time).

Not being an ubernerd and knowing everything about ins/outs.. I would say that anyone with any knowledge of statistics could say that if only 1% of a population COULD be tested that to compare it to a population much larger than that test section would be somewhat rediculous, right?

Secure/unsecure
I have YET to find either of these aps allowing anything I wouldn't normally want. (except the maybe 5 second delay in startup)** WHy does FF take so long to load? I mean Opera is a "suite" and it pops up like a jack rabbit when I click on it.. I am sure there is a reason, and I probably won't care long run until its fixed.

Speed of rendering
Opera 7 did some WONKY stuff, but I am not seeing it in 8. Which is good, but for whatever reason ( you coder wackos will know I am sure) when I go to my banks website, it tells me my browser (opera) isn't supported and will not allow full functionality.

***** If your aim is to gain marketshare please continue, but I truly believe that whichever one of the name callers was talking about taking back the web.. blah. The web will ALWAYS be a mess, so long as M$ is running it, mostly due to even while more people get BB web access, they stick with defaults, not running Firewalls, etc.. So even with technology advancing people STICK to what they started with or know better. More pages need to say "sorry joe, your busted browser won't work here.. Use this". Lots of things on the web, for big business, require a "go between ap", if thats all they know of for FF, or Opera so be it. Maybe some trickery to have the installer of these programs set to "default" automagically.. Hmm.. devious yes.. but once they get started, I doubt they would stop..

Food for thought kids..
(I am not here for an arugment and won't be back, my email should be posted correctly.. If you have a point.. send it)

"Don't know, didn't check.. But does opera suite have a Firefox type version... I mean Mozilla:Firefox Opera:(browser only).. I just am not interested in all the crap shoved in there."

Though Opera Software doesn't provide the Web browser portions of Opera as a stand-alone application, a default installation of Opera 8 will show no evidence of its mail, news, newsfeed or IRC functionality until you go to 'Tools >> Mail and chat accounts' or follow an irc: or mailto: URI.

Decoupling the non-Web functionality would supposedly yield no performance improvement, so why do it if everything is otherwise hidden?

"More pages need to say 'sorry joe, your busted browser won't work here.. Use this'."

That's user-hostile and counter-productive. All you can do is try your best to accomodate as many people as possible.

*sigh*

Asa himself said, "If Opera can continue to improve usability at this pace, and decides to offer a free version that isn't adware supported, I might consider using it some." As far as I can tell (at least, that was the impression I got from reading it initially), he meant the same thing.

I don't condone trolling on the Opera forums, in fact I think that's pretty low. However, these aren't the Opera forums, so what is your point? Stop confusing fanboyism/zealotry (whatever you want to call it) with trolling, as they are different things.

Some of his comments might be silly and not have any real merit, but there is no reason for this bickering and fighting.

Wow... it's beginning to look like the simple act of Asa posting about Opera is enough to generate a flame war.

On the other hand, now I know I can turn on the status bar!

About the User-Agent string: ever since they started half-spoofing IE, I've always made it a point to switch to "Identify as Opera" as soon as I install it. On Win2k that gives it a more accurate "Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en)" which is sufficient for sites that just do stats. I do agree that these days, Gecko would be a better choice for default spoofing, for exactly the reason you state: Opera probably deals with Gecko-aimed code (which one hopes will be more tailored to the standards) than IE-aimed code.

> By your logic, MSIE is the best browser.

Troll here is you most likely if you admit to issue such a silly statement. IE is not the best one even if it's on the peak of usage share, it's provided with Windows in-the-box that's why he's got many users.

Damnit TreeGo, STOP SPAMMING.

Clicking on his link gives him damned affiliate points. Apparently Opera costs money, and he's too cheap to buy it?

Opera 8 gained support for XmlHttpRequest. That is really useful and also some sort of "Firefox direction" (or at least Gecko direction). From a web developer's point of view it is also nice that ff is moving into the "Safari direction" (canvas element support).
Anyone moving into the msie direction? Yeah, it was called Restscape or something alike...

Yes, Opera are moving in the FireFox direction, like FireFox gone in the IE direction.
More exactly, both move in the IE direction.
As I said, most great job of Firefox was the simplicity of layout. Remember, Mozilla
had much less succes, than FF. The reason: bloating of functions in the eye. Opera
stepped the same error in Opera7 against the more succesful Opera5 and 6. It became
very bloat. FF had a good idea: not to make more different, but to make an IE-like
appearence.
An IE user can think: I can switch very easy because of likeness, and later I can make
a super browser with extensions.
(Most user will never use extensions except of Adblock) And just now I have the
tabbed browsing and more secure. And I am satisfied without tiredness and much learning.
Yes Opera has a similar direction. Simple first look after install, and much
features behind the curtain. It's the Opera8

A simple fact: it is good to have a choice, and it would be a nightmare if we had only MS-IE in the world :-)

"> safest
http://secunia.com/product/761/
http://secunia.com/product/4227/"
Firefox also has open bugs. So does about every major application. Firefox and Opera are equally safe. It's not /that/ hard to make a browser safe.

"> and faster browser
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html"
Anybody who says Opera is fast is talking about the perceived interface speed, which is something no benchmark can test is highly subjective. A key example of this is opening a new tab. In Opera, it appears instantaneous. In Firefox, there is this slight random flicker that makes it appear slower. And so on.

XMLHTTPRequest is not moving in the Firefox direction. It was invented by Microsoft and the only thing Firefox has done to is is make it non-ActiveX. Saying that Opera is moving towards a "Firefox direction" is indeed highly arrogant. Many non-power users do use Opera and many of those do not find the same faults in Opera that you do. Opera continues to innovate and Opera 8 includes User Javascript, which still only exists as an extension (Greasemonkey and a few other ones) for Firefox.

"One other thing I'm already starting to dislike that Opera advertises itself as IE 6 [Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.0] and so gets handed quite a bit of IE specific content which it doesn't seem to handle all that well. Given how strong Opera's standards support is, wouldn't it make sense for it to identify, as Safari does, as "like Gecko" rather than like IE?"
Opera does this for the end-user, since many large sites still only detect for IE and non-IE browsers. Advertising that it's like Gecko would be a purely philosophical decision that would impact its users in a negative way. Anybody who would be concerned with detecting Opera can still do so. Opera, cognizant of this, includes the word "Opera" somewhere in its user agent string.

Each browser has its merits:
- Firefox is an excellent browser for newbies (secure, less options than Opera than could annoy them), and for lets-tweak-the-browser-code geeks (XUL, making extensions...). You can extend it the easy way, and it's free and cool as in beer. And in the FSF/GNU/Open Source way, too. It started catching up with IE (XMLHTTPRequest) and Opera (tabs, popup blocking, search box, half of the extensions), but it's starting to bring up new ideas, too.

- Opera is an excellent browser for advanced web users: the best things about Opera are all these little things that it does out-the-box, you can take or not, but they don't bother you (linked windows, user CSS and JS, adjust page width to window, true full screen mode, trashcan, fast forward, and the little but powerfull RSS, chat, news and mail clients, which doesn't take more than half MB of your disk). And it is fully customizable: Don't like the mail client? Delete it, and use Thunderbird or whatever you want. The XYZ bar annoys you? Kill it! Wanna have X in the Y bar? Drag it there. Don't like the 'popup window' warning? There is an option to disable it. It's all about choice. And they don't mind taking features from other browsers (XMLHTTPRequest, cleaner interface), it they find them usefull.

- Explorer is a lame browser for lazy people who can't be bothered with installing a good browser, or doesn't know better. Main advantage: a lot of intranets require ActiveX or VBScript -which says a lot about their IT staff choice of tools. Cons: outdated, poor&wrong CSS and JS support, poor security, bloated but lacking features, senseless OS integration, poor user interface...

There are other browser families (KHTML, for example), but I don't know them as much as these three. They are now promising some features Firefox and Opera got years ago, but it's all wait and see.

They finally moved JavaScript options, now it is Content instead of Multimedia. Not the ideal solution but MUCH better. And it got simpler to find something in this UI - there is progress, definitely.