While playing around with Mozilla (and Firefox), I noticed that it has a search field, a popup blocker, SVG support, fast-back and fast-forward, as well as a bunch of other features potentially ripped off from Opera. They may be from Opera, they may be from another browser. All I know is Opera had all those features before Mozilla did... long before Mozilla did, in fact. It doesn't neccessarily mean that you ripped off Opera.

To tell you the truth, perhaps it was maybe because, you know, IE, that browser with 80% marketshare is calling them "tabs" and using the RSS feed icon that Firefox uses. Opera simply wants to make things less confusing for people switching from Firefox and IE. It's more IE than Firefox.

I'm waiting for Firefox to throw in Bittorrent support, mouse gestures, build in a mail client and a full RSS client, get fastforward and rewind, widgets, a crapload of other features, and rename itself (once again) to Opera.

Wow, that didn't take long...

Asa, you really are a piece of work. I've never known someone who wears their blinkers so well, who toes the corporate line with such gusto. Firefox hasn't really innovated anything - they have taken the best features from Opera and repackaged them. It's because IE is modernizing - not because of what Moz has done.

Firefox is a great browser, but for once can you give credit to some other software developers? You are a laughing stock. I actually feel quite sorry for you.

Of course, Opera has stated explicitly that changing nomenclature (Pages to Tabs) and shortcuts were done to ease migration from Firefox and other browsers.

Remember: when Rijk says it, it's OK. But when Asa says it, he's dissing Opera.

What about all the things Opera's ripped off from Konqueror, eh?

Mozilla with SVG dates back to 2000.
Opera, 2005.

Opera fans just need to chill out - just 'cause their browser isn't as hackable as the Gecko, they get all defensive whenever someone tosses an Opera feature into Mozilla - especially if it took them all of half an hour to modify the XUL to add, say, a little search bar - or maybe 30 seconds to add CSS to extend the width of the search bar. :)

And yeah, I've used Opera for years, just not as my primary browser anymore. And hell, don't worry that folks use Firefox, Opera guys. Doesn't mean Opera will just stop providing their browser - they still have a great market in embedded devices.

Kelson: Asa implied that Opera's just following Firefox. It's to ease migration from ALL other browsers. Calling them "pages" was fine when Opera first implemented them because it was the only browser that had them besides Netcaptor (which isn't a browser, it was a shell). Now, since all the other browsers are calling them tabs, it makes sense to call them tabs.

ant: What'd Opera rip off from Konqueror? Last I checked, Opera was around longer than Konqueror.

I don't know why I even bother, but... this bit too.
"I'm waiting for Firefox to throw in Bittorrent support, mouse gestures, build in a mail client and a full RSS client, get fastforward and rewind, widgets, a crapload of other features, and rename itself (once again) to Opera."

Sounds like you want Seamonkey with the Optimoz stuff thrown in. Personally, I preferred the Optimoz pie menus...

Oh. And the chill out bit still applies.

Konqueror is still much faster than Opera or Firefox. And don't mention pre-loading Konqueror into memory, disable that feature and it still loads faster than either, and renders pages faster too.

Anyway, I have a feeling Konqueror praise isn't so welcome here. So I'll give Firefox points over Opera for the simple reason of being Free Software. (I have to run Opera via binary emulation, while both Konqueror and Firefox packages are built as native OpenBSD binaries ;)

nemo: Opera's had SVG under development in labs for a very, very long time. It's the same as how Mozilla had it under development, except publically because of it's open-source nature. Opera had it in a public stable release sooner. Oh, and don't get into SVG Tiny vs SVG Full. Tiny's just as functional as full, and Opera 9's getting SVG Basic anyway. There's no reason to have SVG Full, and Mozilla's support isn't even complete SVG full anyway.

I'm perfectly chilled out. I know that once Opera 9 comes out, all those people who are just using Firefox because it's supposedly "more secure" than IE are going to go to Opera, and Opera will be more popular than Firefox. It's already starting with the Beta. The final will have many more features.

By the way, when's Firefox gonna get Acid2 support? I hear some builds of Mozilla have support, but when's Firefox itself going to get it? It sucks to see an open source browser (yes, I'm a fan of open source software, I just use Opera simply because it's better and I'm not an open source zealot like some people I know) lagging behind open standards. There's already talk about Acid3.

Mike: Konqueror's not faster than Opera on my computer. It takes ages to load, I'm using XFCE4. Both Opera and Konqueror are Qt apps, so it's obviously not that, and I'm on a 64-bit Gentoo installation, so Konqueror's native and Opera's 32-bit, and it's STILL faster.

Maybe it's an OpenBSD thing... Opera provides FreeBSD, but I don't know if it's the same as OpenBSD. I've never played around with any type of BSD, except on servers, which was FreeBSD.

That's nice. Maybe one day Opera will actually Look like a Qt app too!

I love it. Every time Asa posts something about Opera there are Opera fans here immediately to refute it. Is there some sort of alert system built into Opera that tells all the users that Asa has made a new post referencing Opera and they should take it upon themselves to make a comment? (I wouldn't be surprised, given all the other random features it had last time I tried it.)

Don't you like Internet trolls? ;-)

Jeff: Yeah, it's called RSS :)

Louis,

http://flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/

This will eventually be merged into the Firefox 3.0 alphas.

Wow. I wonder, if one day Asa writes in his blog "Opera is the greatest browser ever invented" - how will the Opera trolls explain then that this Opera bashing is absolutely unjustified?

While I support Opera's decision to refer to "pages" as "tabs", I the think the terminology is incorrect.

A "tab" refers to the small rectangular flap (or strip) which is located above the "page". According to answers.com the definition of a tab is "A projection, flap, or short strip attached to an object to facilitate opening, handling, or identification."

People misused the term "tab", and it has now become natural to refer to a "page" as a "tab" (which is incorrect).

http://flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/

that should get nerds panties wet.

(which is incorrect)

It's correct because it's common usage. However it is also inconsistent with previous uses of the word "tab". Remember, language is mostly arbitrary.

You guys just got trolled. Way to fuel the fire.

Asa could have phrased this post any number of ways. The way he chose could be interpreted as bashing Opera.

I really wish all members of both sides could get on though; Louis is doing Opera's side as much harm as some believe Asa is inflicting on the Mozilla side.

LOL. Asa is not trolling Opera. He said Opera did something which is similar to what Firefox did. He's not saying Opera ripped off Firefox.

It's obvious that people love their browsers on a very personal level. Is it wrong? Is professional "detachment" better? I don't know. It's a wash to me.

you know what you are?

kiddies playing in a sandbox!

I'll tell my daddy ...

I do admit- chuckled at this:

Jeff-
"Is there some sort of alert system built into Opera that tells all the users that Asa has made a new post referencing Opera...?"

Louis-
"Jeff: Yeah, it's called RSS :)"

Come on everyone- that *was* funny.

I still think it's funny when a comment is longer than the post. Especially when the comment is from some Opera or IE fanboy attempting to bash Asa. :)

mdew: thank god, but isn't Firefox 3 a long way off? I guess it must use cairo or something to render that so it wouldn't be able to be merged into Firefox 2, correct? The mozilla team should consider adding Acid2 support in Firefox 2... the sooner the better.

Wladimir Palant: Don't be rediculous, that wouldn't be bashing Opera.

BtEO and Leo: Nobody said that Asa was bashing Opera except you guys, and personally, I'm not bashing Asa. I'm just correcting him, as he needs to get his facts straight. It appears like he thinks that Opera is revolving around Firefox. If Opera development is influenced by anything, it's probably mainly the upcoming IE7. I have nothing personal against Asa, it's just whenever he posts about Opera, he makes it sound like they keep ripping off Firefox, which is simply not true.

Hey guys, check out IE7. They've ripped off the address bar from IE6.

Louis, Theres more to web browsing than passing Acid2. Opera may pass it before Firefox, but it fails on simple things like Gmail Calender, and other heavy AJAX-based sites. Its all about priorities.

YAY! Another never-ending Mozilla fans vs. Opera fans bashfest! Let the feast begin!

Just because, here is Rijk's post from 6 months ago about the change.

http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/show.dml/46881

Is Opera still fully MDI or has it actually switched to tabs? If the former is true, I don't see why the "tabs" label is any better than "pages". Standardisation on terminology is only good when the terms are intended to mean the same things.

The RSS and keyboard shortcut things just make sense though. Firefox adopted keyboard shortcuts to make IE -> Firefox migration easier, so it's reasonable that Opera would do the same to make Firefox -> Opera migration easier.

Come on Asa.. stop teasing the Opera guys, this doesnt do any good to neither of project.

mdew: I never said that the top priority should be passing Acid2, I just said that the Firefox team should consider Acid2 support in Firefox 2, mainly because pretty much every other browser but IE has it now, and it makes Firefox look bad. By the way, Google Calendar works fine with Opera 9, you just have to click the cancel button when the dialog pops up telling you you're using an unsupported browser. The only thing wrong with it that I can see is that the calendar doesn't fill up the whole window, it's a little squished, but it's not bad. I'm sure Opera'll have this fixed by the final.

Ben Basson: It's still an MDI, but there's a tabbed mode in Opera 9 as well, which is the new default. I personally still use the MDI.

Wow, who would have known..

Louis is a 16 year old opera fanboy..

http://benignthoughts.com/aboutme.php

well.. i'm 5'11 and i dont have a girlfriend either, so i guess hieght doesn't matter.

i cant believe how late it took for me to officially become a geek.. when i was eight i was doing average kid stuff, now i'm 24 and just starting gaining some knowlege in computers..

i dont really care what opera calls them.. just as long as thwey remiasn free like firefox

It really doesn't take that much to piss of the Opera folks, and each time's a good laugh!

What is this Acid Test 2? Why does this Acid Test 2 matter? What will this Acid Test 2 do for Joe & Jane Average's browsing experience?

Seriously, Firefox is about the average person's experience. If Acid Test 2 doesn't do anything for this user demographic, then why should Mozilla waste time including it in Firefox 2 when it won't make any real difference and can just as easily be included in Firefox 3.

kwerboom: hey man, my friend got a computer just friday, he's never touched a keyboard before and he was made as hell that Firefox didn't pass the acid 2 test, he called me up and said something was wrong with his browser, and I told him to use Opera instead, that tells you acid 2 is all that important.

The Acid2 test is primarily of interest to web designers and web standards evangelists. It tests a number of mostly-unused parts of the standards that have little impact on the web as it is today, but when the major browsers all treat these cases the same, developers will have more tools for building reliable cross-browser websites.

If you think of a browser's standards support as a carpet, Acid2 checks whether it fills out the corners. Most people will be walking around the middle of the room, but if you want to put a shelf in the corner, you won't want to set it on top of an edge.

Personally, I have no idea why someone who had "never touched a keyboard before" would have even heard of Acid2, never mind be "mad as hell" that Firefox didn't pass it, unless he has a very skewed impression of what the test is.

As for why passing the Acid2 test is targeted for Firefox 3 and not Firefox 2, it's not a matter of whether Acid2 is important, it's a matter of where Firefox is in the development cycle.

Firefox, like Mozilla, Seamonkey, and Camino, is built on a rendering engine called Gecko. That's the part that processes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. and converts it into a web page you can look at. Development of Gecko is more-or-less synchronized with Firefox these days, but it still has its own versions.

Firefox 1.0 was based on Gecko 1.7. Firefox 1.5 is based on Gecko 1.8. The decision was made that Firefox 2 would focus mainly on the application, so it would continue to use Gecko 1.8 with minor, "safe" improvements (as Gecko 1.8.1). Firefox 3 would use Gecko 1.9, which is where they could work on bigger changes.

At the time Acid2 was announced, Gecko 1.8 was already frozen in preparation for the release of Firefox 1.5. That left 1.9 for anything major, and some of the cases tested by Acid2 turned out to be fairly involved to fix in Gecko.

Today, Firefox is more-or-less where Opera was a year ago: working on a major overhaul in the background, and preparing a stable release based on a tried and tested engine.

MUAHAHAH OPERA ADOPTED THE NAME "TAB", A SHORTCUT AND AN ICON!!11! THEY ARE CLEARLY FOLLOWING FIREFOX LEAD!1!!1one1

Wait! And what about all the Opera features adopted by Firefox? Like: tabbed browsing, search field, fastback, RSS reader, SVG, clear private data, close buttons on tabs, rearranging tabs and a few more. And Firefox users are still waiting for sessions, zoom, fit to width, widgets, voice, Acid2, Bittorent and other cool things available in Opera. Even IE7 looks impressive when comparing it with Firefox.

Thanks God Opera didn't adopt RAM consumption from Firefox.

Thanks God Opera didn't adopt RAM consumption from Firefox.
Posted by: Firetruck on May 11, 2006 09:18 AM

which they should ;P

I always love it when Asa post something that mention Opera.. I always have a few good laughs from reading Opera fanboy respond :D..what a great way to spend 15 mins of bored time at work.

I use and like both Firefox and Opera. And I'm always amused at these spitball contests between the partisans of both applications. But hey, if Firefox were to disappear, I'd use Opera. If Opera were to disappear, I'd use Firefox. No sweat.

It has to be said, though, that Asa Dotzler isn't exactly doing Mozilla any favors with his pronouncements. It might be time to muzzle the attack dog. I'd hate to think that this is really the face of Mozilla. I'd always thought it was a little classier.

"It has to be said, though, that Asa Dotzler isn't exactly doing Mozilla any favors with his pronouncements. It might be time to muzzle the attack dog. I'd hate to think that this is really the face of Mozilla. I'd always thought it was a little classier."

Couldn't be said any better.