Firefox 1.5 vs. Opera 9 - Round 2
UPDATE: Please Digg. Thanks!
I would like to thank everyone for their positive feedback on my Opera vs. Firefox article. I think there were some misunderstandings about the point of the article that I would like to clear up. I also feel there needs to be an amendment to the article, as I left out some key points that need to be put in the spotlight.
Over the weekend in the little free time I had between my brothers wedding and trying to catch up on sleep I tried to use Opera for all my browsing needs. This goal didn’t last as long as I wanted it to. There are a few select extensions that I live by in Firefox and not having those hindered my browsing to make me go back to Firefox. For more information on the Firefox Extensions that I use please visit my Firefox Guide.
I received several emails telling me about how this match up was unfair because Opera 9 was just released and Firefox 1.5 is from way back in November. Well this match up was for production versions only. I could easily go grab a nightly build of Firefox 2.0, but then I wouldn’t be comparing equal products so I decided not to go down that road. Once Firefox 2.0 is released I will do a match between the two.
Putting Opera up against an extensions loaded version of Firefox makes it almost impossible for Opera to win. There are countless add-ons available for Firefox that make it nearly limitless in its add-ons. I think that is what really separates the two browsers. I feel there are two separate audiences that these browsers are meant for. For an out of the box browser Opera wins hands down. For the power user, open source lover, and someone that wants to be able to customize their experience down to the last penny Firefox is the one.
Features
In Opera the user has the ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to any combination, I have started using this and it is a very cool feature and something that Firefox lacks completely.
True MDI - Users now have the ability to set different mini-windows in different arrangements; therefore eliminating the need to make new windows entirely. I am not totally sure how this feature helps because I believe having tabs eliminates the need to have windows within a window when the user can just switch tabs. Cool feature but I feel it’s unusable for most applications.
Drag and Drop Tabs - Both Opera and Firefox now have this feature, but Opera has taken it to one more step, allowing tabs to be drug between different windows.
Page rendering problems
In round one I didn’t fully understand how cool the fast forward button really is. I used Opera most of the weekend trying to give it a fair run for its money, even though this morning I am back on Firefox, I do miss the fast forward button. I did quite a bit of generic browsing, digging, and forum browsing and it seemed to speed up my experience as well as save some scrolling. Good job to Opera on this one.
RAM / Memory Usage
After a few comments about my RAM usage test being inaccurate which I will fully admit to, I have redone it. Using Opera 9 and Firefox 1.5.0.4, with fresh installs and no settings changed I went to Digg on both browsers and opened up all the front page stories. I started first with Firefox and it opened up all pages with no issues at all. Next was Opera, about half way through doing the whole middle click program to get each link to open in a new tab Opera started to leg on me big-time, when I got to the last link the browser legged for about 30 seconds and after that I had to click the link again to get it to open in a new tab. Once the dust settled the memory usage for Firefox was 79mb and Opera 76mb. They were bouncing around a few megs but from my findings there is no RAM savings between the two browsers in short term. Once themes, widgets, and extensions are added to their corresponding browser I feel this will tell a different story, but I am only trying to prove out of the box experience, other tests will be left for another day.
Monday morning I was updating software on my work computer. While downloading the latest versions of Opera and Firefox; I noticed that Opera’s installer size was larger than Firefox. There was a comment saying that they both were the same but I will argue that Firefox 1.5.0.4 is 4.9MB while Opera 9 is 6.17MB. This comes as no surprise to me, as I just wanted to make sure I have accurate data on here.
Rendering Problems
I’ve read a lot about how Opera has horrible page rendering problems. The most talked about problem is rendering most Google applications. Well I personally have tried GMail and Google Maps with no issues to report. It appears that some of those problems have been fixed. There are rumors that Opera also has issues with AJAX websites, I cannot personally confirm this but I am sure there are some problems. If you come across a website that has a rendering problem please leave a comment or shoot me an email.
Widgets
After messing around with widgets for a few days I feel that they are totally useless. I personally use Yahoo! Widgets on my Windows computers and the build in widgets in OS X 10.4 on my Apple Powerbook G4. Not only are they useless in Opera but not necessary. I think widget support was an attempt to compete with the extension support in Firefox, but was not well implemented, once Opera has an extensions system it will become almost unstoppable.
Page Zoom
If anyone is running a super high resolution like I am there is always a website that is hard to read, due to some part of it being too small. In Firefox and Internet Explorer it’s really easy to make the text bigger, Opera has gone the extra mile and included the page zoom feature. Instead of making the text bigger, it just zooms in on the whole page.
UserJS vs. Greasemonkey
Many die-hard Firefox users are familiar with Greasemonkey scripts. Opera has built in support for javascript add-ons that do similar functions like Greasemonkey. I think native support for an add-on scripting system is necessary and a big thumbs up to Opera. For Opera scripts check out userjs.org and userscripts.org .
Complaints
The search box in Opera is very cumbersome and unusable. For everyone that uses Firefox and loves the find in page search style, please scroll down to the tips and tricks area of this article for find in page options in Opera.
One feature that I use on a daily basis in Firefox is form history; Internet Explorer also has this feature. I am quite shocked that Opera doesn’t have this feature when it includes everything else.
I am also very shocked the Ctrl+H doesn’t open the history by default, but instead hides all windows, this is a basic shortcut function that has been around in web browsers sense the beginning. This is of course an easy fix because the user has the ability to map keys in Opera.
Google Browser Sync is probably the best extension to come to Firefox in a long time. If (when) Opera ever gets this feature it will be a very happy day in Opera land.
Tips and Tricks
Turn off the Context Menu when Double clicking on text via Tools - Preferences - Advanced - Toolbars - Uncheck “Double click to display context menu.”
Remove the close button on the tabs, and place it to the right via Tools - Preferences - Advanced - Tabs - Uncheck “Show close button on each tab.”
Change the tab close button location via Tools – Settings – Tab
The “Close Current Page” button at http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons can be dragged into the top right if the user wishes to retain both buttons on each tab and one at the right to close the tab.
Activate the Thumbnail Preview function in CTRL-TAB via opera:config - UserPrefs - UseThumbnailsinTabTooltips
Web Developer Toolbar For Opera: http://operawiki.info/WebDevToolbar
When using the ctrl-tab menu, you can hold down the right mouse button and use the scroll to very easily scroll back and forth in the list. When your hand is already on the mouse this trick will save time by allowing the user to select the tab he wants faster.
Hold Ctrl while using Alt-Tab to scroll backwards aka Ctrl+Alt+Tab
Undo closing a tab with Ctrl+Z
To navigate between tabs I use the keyboard numbers 1 and 2 (previous and next tab).
To go back or forward in history, depending on the direction you want to go, click either left or right-mouse button followed by the opposite mouse button slightly after, i.e. back = right+left mouse button, forward = left+right button.
Find in page options for Opera, very similar to Firefox. Opera will also search inside of text boxes unlike Firefox.
- Ctrl-F gives a dialog as is familiar in most software packages, with options like match whole word only, and only searching when you click “Find”
- There is a Find-in-page entry on the search box next to the address bar, which finds as you type (it can also be added to other toolbars)
- Pressing ‘.’ or ‘/’ will popup a thing in the corner, sort of like FF, also find-as-you-type
- Pressing ‘,’ will find links containing the searched text, although this can be done differently from the Links Panel (Ctrl-9) or its expanded version Ctrl-J.
Customizing Opera: http://www.pallab.net/2006/04/12/extending-opera-the-ultimate-guide-to-customizing-opera/
Conclusion
Between this article and my last article it’s a very hard decision to declare a winner between these two awesome browsers. I feel that as an out of the box experience Opera wins hands down. For the user that wants to fiddle to no end in customization, and have the ability to build on an already awesome program Firefox wins, but Opera is not far behind only lacking extension support and a few other small features. Therefore I must say it’s a draw, to make Opera work the way I wanted to it required lots of unnecessary tweaking that in the end wasn’t worth it because I went back home to Firefox. I will still be using Opera for a side browser to try to learn more tips and tricks and maybe soon write a guide like I did for Firefox.
Hi Will,
I’m a die hard Opera user since version 5.0 and must comment on some of your topics here.
RAM usage
I’m a hardcore tab user and have at least 20-30 tabs open in Opera. In Firefox this would be impossible due to its high RAM usage and laginess. It could be that Firefox uses just a bit more RAM when having no extensions installed but to compensate the tools you’ll get in Opera you have to install at least 10 extensions.
Page-Rendering
I would say this issue was solved with the release of Opera 9.0. I haven’t came across a site that has a faulty rendering so far, if so let me know.
Greasemonkey and UserJS
Opera has some compatibility with Greasemonkey scripts, there are some restrictions but most of them work in Opera, too. You just have to name them *.user.js
http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/examples/
Best regards
Patrick
RAM usage
Laginess is something which you shouldn’t experience with Opera. However, Opera doesnt make any effort to reduce RAM usage. Its devs have stated in the forum that nowadays most of the systems have 512mb-1gb RAM. Hence, if there is free RAM Opera will use it to enhance performance. However, if you run it on a low end system its RAM usage will automatically be reduced.
Page-Rendering
Almost all websites work with IE and Fx because while designing webdevs made sure that they work with these browsers. Opera which has a smaller share is often ignored by webdevs.
However, I agree with your conclusion. Both have it’s strong points. Opera is my primary browser due to features like “Fit to Window Width”, Built in good Text 2 Speech engine, and also its smoothnes. On the otherhand I have to use Fx on websites like Writely which doesnt work in Opera, or due to extensions like Stumbe Upon.
It’s funny that the things you notice and are attracted to now Opera users have been playing with for 3+ years. The MDI is historical: Opera was never interested in windows, and the norm was to use tabs for MDI. Only in recent times did Ctrl-N stop being “New tab/page” and instead shortcuts conformed to Firefox. Still, MDI has its uses. Similarly, dropping between windows.
Install file sizes: www.opera.com/download offers MSI @ 4.7MB and classic at 4.0. International installer is larger.
AJAX support is pretty good in Op9 and so the Google pages work. Things will still be broken if the site is scripted poorly, or sniffs out all but Opera.
Widgets are only a partial response to extensions. The other was UserJS which is slightly more powerful than GreaseMonkey. Many Opera users also haven’t found reason for widgets, but it might yet come, and they’re neat, still. I can imagine creating some that might be useful to me, but most could have been made as panels in prior Operas. I guess the nice thing about widgets in comparison is they’re easier to package and share.
You shouldn’t need a close current page button if you switch off “show close button on each tab”: it should give you minimise, maximise, close buttons like in MDI.
And the person who commented on Ctrl-Alt-Tab was wrong. It’s Ctrl-Shift-Tab (like Alt-Shift-Tab in Windows).
As to which browser to use, I’m highly biased, because I was using Opera long before Mozilla was worth looking at in comparison (since 5.0). I haven’t made the effort to customize Mozilla, but have found in previous versions that it is useful for looking at a single page or handful of pages every now and then. When I want an internet experience, I use Opera. I know everything is there, with my 30 tabs safe and all my options and features accessible. Now with my laptop, I just leave it open all the time, and when I reset it’s the same anyway. I got Mozilla and started trying to customise it, but the extensions search is just that same hassle you have when you need to look for software- you can’t be assured of anything, and have too many options that you then need to look for reviews, or try them all, or try one and hope you got the best. I found Mozilla out of the box too lacking, though (particularly hitting the back button was slow and had the POST issues that earlier Moz/IE do; no mouse gestures, which I got hooked on in Op5), so as I said I use it, but rarely. Ultimately, most copies of Firefox AREN’T customised. It’s probably available on every public computer at my University without a single extension, and I’d take the navigation tools (keyboard, mouse shortcuts) of Opera anyday, then (and often do download and install it). But ultimately Opera has always been my power-browser, but I don’t have to fear that that power will be gone when I install it somewhere else / in another OS (which, btw, can share the profile settings in dual-boot).
[…] read more | digg story […]
I really agree with you Joel.
Have a nice day
Patrick
The reason why the Opera installer is bigger than Firefox is because you were downloading the international installer, which contains 30 or so languages.
If you download the English only installer it’s smaller, and if you download the Classic installer, it’s even smaller still.
After checking I will agree that there is the smaller download file. But what I was really comparing was going to the site, in this case opera.com or getfirefox.com and clicking the first download link.
[…] Read part two of this article here. Thanks! Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
Having commented on the first part of this blog, I won’t go into the gory details… suffice it to say I was not convinced about Opera and having speed and performance issues. Finally after further a thorough searching and scouring of settings, I found out what the problem was, and am now getting speeds rivalling Firefox. And all of this without one single memory leaking extension, addon, plugin or conflicts.
I must say, I am honestly impressed, and officially I have made the jump to Opera, and am not looking back!!
Not only am I using Opera for browsing, but for mail and RSS as well, since anything can be better than Outlook IMO, and while the RSS reader interface could be better, it gets the job done. Perhaps the next version of Firefox will have some of the functionality normally available only through extensions and tweaks actually built into the browser, at which point it may give Opera a run for it’s money.
The one thing I will miss about FF are the skins, which IMHO are better than Opera’s from what I’ve seen… but that’s just me. I will also miss the adblock feature, which I believe is still more intuitive than the content blocker functionality of Opera… when blocking ads in FF, you have the option to collapse the blocked portion, so that the space is not wasted. However, in Opera, that is not possible, unless I’m missing a setting that allows the blocked section/frame to be collapsed… Anybody know??
I’m still getting small numbers of sites that do not render correctly with Opera, and while it’s annoying, I am using the mask as option when necessary, and it seems to resolve the issue. Web developers really REALLY need to drop the archaic coding of IE and adopt to standards, as people aren’t going to visit sites that don’t work, not to mention the obvious frustration.
I will still keep FF on my system as a backup just in case, as I wouldn’t touch IE with a ten foot pole. As will pointed out, both browsers have their niche and their advantages, and what’s right for one is not necessarily right for the other… but it’s another choice, and that’s what matters. That being said, Opera has managed to convert a long time FF user, and it looks as though the grass is even greener on this side.
Thanks for another great article on the seemingly never ending battle between these two browsers, and for the unbiased information to help people make a decision.
[…] Between this article and my last article it’s a very hard decision to declare a winner between these two awesome browsers. I feel that as an out of the box experience Opera wins hands down. For the user that wants to fiddle to no end in customization, and have the ability to build on an already awesome program Firefox wins, but Opera is not far behind only lacking extension support and a few other small features. Therefore I must say it’s a draw, to make Opera work the way I wanted to it required lots of unnecessary tweaking that in the end wasn’t worth it because I went back home to Firefox. I will still be using Opera for a side browser to try to learn more tips and tricks and maybe soon write a guide like I did for Firefox. From:http://willlangford.com/2006/06/27/firefox-15-vs-opera-9-round-2/ […]
Who is lying here??? Opera still can’t render Yahoo! Mail Beta yet! I haven’t tried 9.01 because it’s a beta, not an official release. All I can confirm is that Yahoo Mail Beta renders useless in Opera 9.
Paradox: what setting did you tweak in the end?
Yeah, Paradox, what was the setting that caused the problem?
Joseph: Yahoo Mail Beta works fine in Opera 9. There were a few issues caused by Yahoo specifically blocking Opera, but I believe Opera added some download patches to fix those.
What problems are you having with Yahoo Mail Beta? Maybe your Opera didn’t download the site patches that work around Yahoo’s blocking.
@ Joel and Blummah:
One of the main problems it turns out was my anti-virus app… obviously I need a new one, or to turn off real time protection which is probably unnecessary if you are diligent and secure enough. I set Opera up as an exclusion from realtime scanning, and it instantly went from lagging to lightning. Beyond lightning actually… FF is now SLOW in comparison, which is scary.
And now moving back and forward is instantaneous, unlike before where it was still reloading pages even though they should have been pulled right from the cache.
I also changed the memory cache from automatic to 60MB, since I have a gig of RAM. I’ve been trudging through so many other settings in the opera:config and opera.ini files that I honestly can’t remember now what I tried or changed that helped… I know I turned off synchronous DNS lookup, and one other, but I don’t recall what.
Like I said, the biggest difference was bypassing the a/v app, which I’m surprised I never ran across in my endless search for the cure! Anybody else having speed and performance problems should try the same thing, and I’m sure their jaw will hit the floor when they see Opera light up like I did!
Thanks for the info Paradox! A couple of friend had the problem, but now we may be able to solve it
Odd that it didn’t affect FF though!
BTW, turning synchronous DNS off is a Windows 95 compatibility thing, and will actually slow things down, AFAIK.
Thanks Blummah, I wasn’t aware of that fact with the synchronous DNS setting, maybe I’ll turn it back on and see if I notice any additional speed difference. It didn’t say anything about it being a Win95 issue on the site however, or at least I didn’t see it… appreciate the info.
I’m surpised my a/v didn’t affect ff either, but I’m scrapping real time protection anyway, as I just don’t think it’s worth the processing power, I do regular scans of my system as it is. Good luck with solving the probs for your friends!
Other thing is that Opera doesn’t support SOCKS!!!!
Too bad…
[…] <브라우저 전쟁의 내용> 전쟁이 외국에서는 시작되었지만 우리나라는 아직인가 봅니다. 주요 사이트들 은행, 포털 등이 IE가 없으면 활용을 못하기 때문일지도… -브라우저 [browser] 정의 -네이버 백과사전 -세계는 웹브라우저 전쟁중 ‘한국만 무풍지대?’ -IE 7에 대한「좋은 뉴스와 나쁜 뉴스」 -IE 점유율 서서히 갉아먹는 파이어폭스 -Firefox 1.5 vs. Opera 9 - Round 1,Round 2 -All The Lovely Browsers! […]
Hi will,
though I agree with your article most of the time (what’s kind of a miracle, since I’ve been a hardcore Opera user since one of the early 6.0x versions), I don’t understand this statement:
“The search box in Opera is very cumbersome and unusable.”
Why? You say it’s because of the Find-In-Page, but then you say there’s a better way to do so - so just don’t mind the search box for find-in-page.
Quite contrary to your findings I think the search engine customization is much better in Opera. I never could add search engines easier as in Opera 9: Just right-click into the search box (on the website you want to add) and click “Create search”. Now you can add a shortcut (let’s say “wen” for wikipedia in English) and that’s all it. Then you can type “wen Opera (web browser)” into the adress bar and there you go. Once again, I never found a feature that useful in Firefox.
But as you say, everyone needs something different. I use Firefox sometimes as a side browser, but as I use all the other programs integrated in Opera (IRC, mail) very heavily I could never switch. And for me the RSS display couldn’t be better.
But otherwise a nice review, especially from a long-time Firefox user
Smashing article. After using them both myself I like the feel and operation of Opera best, although Firefox does have it’s advantages so for the shake of argue, I would also say it’s a draw. Again, great article.
…hello dude, you have such a nice Comparison between Opera and Firefox, and to tell you i am a big fan of OPErA…yeah Opera ROcks!!!…..your article helps me a lot of infos to debate against Firefox Users, i had a forum debate about Firefox vs Opera so i use your article for that…thanks for an awesome article!
I loved the review!!!
You said that Opera did not have the history feature…
Ctrl-Alt-H or Tools->History…
Just my 2 cents…
I really agree with wupperbayer.
The search engine feature is much more customizable and ESAY OF USE than in Firefox! (I’m totally biased, I aknowledge it)
Waiting for the third row!
Hi guys,
I have read through the article and comments. I admit you guys mentioned some important points. FireFox and Opera have good and robust cores and both are top browsers. Use whatever you want… while it’s not Internet Explorer.
I mostly use Opera and sometimes use FireFox. Imho, a great feature Opera brings by default is the mouse gestures support which lacks in FireFox. Actually you can download a plugin for FireFox to provide the mouse gestures support but it ought to be a default plugin. Again, it’s only my point of view since lots of people use keyboard shortcuts for browsing. But you quickly get used to this functionality because it’s simply convenient. In fact I even happen to accidentally try mouse gestures to go forward/backward in explorer.exe while browsing my folders after using Opera for a while
By the way, try this test: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html. Opera 9 passes, FireFox 1.5.0.6 and 2.0b2 fails. I hope FireFox 2 will be able to render this test correctly in the final release.
Take care.
Woops, sorry for the previous link, I placed a useless dot… try this instead: http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html
Great page Will!
First of all, I must say that i have been using firefox for about 2 years and i was pretty happy with it cause i didn’t know you could get better.. a friend of mine recommended me Opera and i decided to try it.. I am stunned, it is so much better! I have a really old pc so i guess i’m the right person to rate which one is faster and that is - opera, hands down. I’ll cover some things that i especially like in Opera:
- like i said, very very fast, much faster than firefox, especially when there are a lot of tabs opened. When i installed few extensions in FF (and those were really simple and small ones) Firefox was slow as a snail compared to Opera, and since my pc is really slow this is really important to me.
- I love that you can drag-and-drop tabs, i always missed this in FF
- tab forward/backward with right+left and left+right mouse click
- i have no problems with funky page loading/rendering (gmail, yahoo mail) like some here mention
- mail client is excellent! I abandoned thunderbird and Opera is now my default mail client, while i’m surfing pages i just press ctrl+k and it automatically checks my email!
- i don’t understand how i lived without save sessions and ctrl+z (undo tab close) options before..
- block content works great
- great that you can add buttons as shortcuts for your drives (harddrives, flash drives, cd/dvd etc.)
- thumbnail preview of a tab when you hover over a tab - great option
- links menu is also pretty nice and can come in handy
- i always like to modify keyboard shortcuts and this is done really good in opera, you can modify most of the shortcuts…
here are some things that i wish were done differently in opera (does anybody know if this could be done?):
- i would like if i could use the scroll-button click (you have to use shift+click) for opening bookmarks in new tabs (like you do when you click on a “normal” link), also for buttons
- i would like if each tab had it’s own load progress “icon” or something (like in FF) so that i can see the load progress of all the tabs in the background without selecting them
Anyways, these “flaws” are really minor to me, i would never go back to Firefox
Opera is also a web browser for the power user. You just don’t know it yet. There is a lot of issues with Opera that I can see you haven’t discovered jet.
I’m a webdesigner too, and if someone took Opera away from me, I would hav been as naked as you would have been without Firefox.
Extensions can bee nice, but actually you don’t need anyone if you are used to Opera. And another thing, the extensions may not working 100 %.
If you want a product with good working functions, then Opera has it all.
jalljalla wrote: “Extensions can bee nice, but actually you don’t need anyone if you are used to Opera”.
Well, tell me how I can copy formatted text in Opera? HTML, RTF - any format? As far as I can tell, it just isn’t possible. A lot of Opera-users claim that this feature is not needed. I certainly need it - and Firefox is much more useful to me for that reason (although I much prefer the userinterface of Opera).
To me, the Note-feature in Opera is plain silly because of this. Most of the time the text copied to the Notes-panel is horribly jumbled. Firefox has a extension which does everything the Note-feature in Opera does - and much, much more. First and foremost it will copy text formatted. You can also highlight copied text in various colours, add annotation-boxe’s etc. It’s called Scrapbook.
Hey
what about if we talk about the download speeds of browsers? Which of browser is faster in downloading a file over net?
Hi Will, good article, and necessary, I haven’t seen anyone compare Opera and FF like this before, and I’ve been looking. I was SHOCKED by your statement that the close tab button on the rightside (FF) was pref’d to the close tab button on the tab (Opera). I could not disagree more. Also, I happen to be someone who can’t afford to waste huge heaping gobs of time finding downloading updating tweaking extensions, it makes me crazy, when Opera just works out of the box. Thanks for this great article! I’m gonna be sure to keep it around!
P.S. Will you said you like to double-click on words so you can copy the text, and disliked the pop-up menu. But that’s specifically what that menu is for. I am accustomed to double-click the word, right-click to get the menu, left-click Copy, so I find that menu saves me one click, and I don’t have to touch my keyboard to hit the CTRL+C.
P.S. Will you said you like to double-click on words so you can copy the text, and disliked the pop-up menu. But that’s specifically what that menu is for.
Try out Opera 9.5 now. It’s in it s alpha release. I heard it was fast, so I’ll try it when I get home. You should too.
“I am not totally sure how this feature helps because I believe having tabs eliminates the need to have windows within a window when the user can just switch tabs.”
I find this very useful when comparing two web pages and preventing pop ups (which are not always unwanted) from opening a new window. One example is blogger.com comments, they will always open in a new window in Firefox or, if forced, the tab will not have the appropriate dimensions.
The characteristic of Opera which I find the most addictive is the ability to click on a tab in the tab bar and de-select it, switching to the previously selected tab. It is incredibly useful yet simple and it’s sad that there’s no way to get this functionality in Firefox.
What surprises me about Opera is that it makes you feel that it was designed by people who actually spend lots of time using lots of websites.
Firefox is great in many respects, and I think it’s easy to forget that it is intended to be a simple and pure browser, which also happens to act as a platform if required. I think that extensions are unique to Firefox, the same way that additional “applications” already bundled (like mail, rss reader, irc…) is unique to Opera. Personally I would love to have the power of expandability and support from Firefox mixed with the subtle details from Opera.