Opera 9.5
 

I just upgraded from Opera 9.27 to Opera 9.5 today and I am impressed.

It is so fast! Everything is even more responsive than before - and I though it was fast then (vs IE) - you should see the animated GIFs on this site (them smilies)... they do a complete loop in around five times a second.

The only down side(s) is that when I upgraded, previous history entries that I had deleted came back. I think that has got something to do with the new history search feature. Another minus is that the tool bar that shows the tabs looks Vista inspired - not a good thing when you use Linux.

How does it compare to Firefox?

I tried Opera years ago when it was 3 or 4 something, thought it was pants, is this one worth a look?

Cheers

Chris

Hmm. Hard to say how it compares to Firefox. They both load in about the same time, but everything else (loading, browsing, interface) in Opera seems a bit more faster.

Memory usage is around the same, although Opera uses a lot less CPU time on my box than Firefox does - but that's just becuase my box is old.

As for features - Opera has a lot of them, Firefox not so much, but Firefox is every expandable. The current Opera email client also doesn't support HTML emails yet (due for version 10), which can be a disadvantage (I don't like HTML email, so its good).

Overall, I think its worth trying. I've used Opera since version 8 - which is was 2 or 3 years ago. Opera 9.5 is a vast improvement.

I was just curious, so I tried the Acid 2 test, which tests if the browser can render standards compliant HTML. And Opera 9.5 passed without a hitch. It would be interesting to see if IE7 does - last time I heard it still has trouble.

Here's the link if anyone wants to give it a go: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

just tried it with firefox, all I can say is...
Oooops!:shakehead

I think I'll give opera a go just to see

Cheers

Chris

Just downladed opera 9.5, yeah I have agree it's nice and it passed the acid2 test:cool:

I'll see how I get on with it over the next few days

Cheers

Chris

Just tried the acid2 test on Firefox and you're right, it doesn't work. Tried it with Konqueror 3.5.8 and it got 99% of it working, but the top of the smilie isn't in the right place.

A comment on Opera 9.5: After a while, the black bar that shows the tabs hurts the eyes if the site you are on has a light colored background... I might mod the interface... :)

:beer:

Well I got macintosh native skin up and thats ok on the eyes

Quite safari lookish:)

So far its nice

Will let you know How I get on

Cheers

Chris

I downloaded a Safari skin... much better on the eyes... :)

I have to admit, after being a critic on that whole brushed metal look, it isn't really that bad. In fact, it's actually very nice. It would probaly look better on a Apple display, cause the monitor is made of brushed aluminium whereas mine is cheap plastic with silver paint. :)

Yeah brushed metal does look better with a brush ali screen:D

Chris

Just found the safari skin, yup opera is faster than firefox.

The more I use opera 9.5 the more I like it :beer:

Cheers

Chris

Same, 9.5 is awesome! :attn:

Hang on a minute

Have we just started an Opera 9.5 appreciation club or something, cos if we have we'd better get some more members:p

Chris

I use opera on my pc
it deserves to be much more popular than it is

IE8 is supposed to be much more compliant than 7, and apparently Microsoft is soon going to stop supporting 7.

I read a whole article on 8. It sounds like they hired some smart programmers, but they ended up overthrowing their smarts for microsoft stupidity yet again.