Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 06 July 2008 20:25
Opinion and Analysis
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I’m using a relatively modern machine, dual core processor, 2GB memory, Vista, but often IE and Firefox just seem to slow down after a while. It’s quite annoying.
Especially so if you have a tabs open, as I am often wont to do, clicking between tabs can eventually take an age and I’m not even using any add-ons in Firefox 3, although for Internet Explorer 7 I am using the rather excellent and free IE7pro
add-on, something every IE7 user should download and use.
It offers an easy way to re-open tabs you’ve accidentally closed, it can block ads if you so wish, it can even show you a list of tabs you previously had opened if IE7 crashes.
Yes, some of these are things that Firefox does natively, but both IE and Firefox do seem to slow down quite a bit as you use them, opening and closing tabs throughout the day.
So I decided to make the new
Opera 9.5 my default browser, and so far, I like what I’m seeing. It’s nice and fast, but before I can say with certainty that it too doesn’t slow down over the course of the day’s usage I’m going to need to try it extensively over the next week to find out.
In any case, if you like Firefox, you’re sure to like Opera. It too is a safer browser than IE7, has many features built in that Firefox needs add-ons for, and even has voice command inside should you wish to use it to navigate the web by voice, although I haven’t had the time to try that particular feature out yet.
The biggest difference between Firefox and Opera is that Firefox is an open source project, while Opera, although free, is closed source.
There are probably more add-ons for Firefox but Opera has add-ons too in the form of widgets.
Ultimately a browser is a browser – you just want it to work fast, display websites properly and have all the main modern features to hand.
I’ll write another report on using Opera as my main browser instead of IE or Firefox in about a week or so.
Although funnily enough, I have found something odd as I was trying to post this article in our Joomla content management system, which I had started in Opera 9.5 but am now doing, ironically enough, in Firefox 3 instead.
Continued on page 3.
