Firefox seems to be getting bogged down for me lately, so thinking of moving to Chrome or Opera. Thoughts? Likes / dislikes for each? “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
I've used Opera since--I'm not sure--2000? I love it for a lot of reasons but it's a bit quirky. Pros: has a lot of customization. Often has features that end up on other browsers later. Cons: some websites don't work with it--I believe it's the java component, could be Flash. An example that comes to mind is the Canadian Broadcasting Company's website; I often can't get the streaming audio player to work. In those cases I launch Chrome. For a couple of sites (e.g. my employer) nothing will work except IE. But both of those cases are unusual. I use Opera 99% of the time. Opera has a weird setup structure. They have both Preferences and Quick Preferences, and they handle different things. It takes a bit to find what you're looking for. For a lot of things you have to do a websearch to find the answer on how and where to set a control. But that's becomming the norm for 21st century software. Some of the goofiness works in your favor. An occasional website won't work because it "expects" to see IE or Firefox. There's a setting where I can tell Opera to identify itself as either of those--and for that particular website only. I can also "mask" it, which is a higher level of the same thing. I forget which website I had to use that on. Those things are few-and-far-between, at least for me. Chrome is okay but seems almost the opposite--Google does its best to hide all the controls and make it easy. That's fine for a lot of things but I like being able to get under the hood if I want to.
I don't believe that Opera is generally tested for anymore when designing sites. I know as far as I got in IT they only focused on IE, Firefox, and Chrome.
I don't believe they do. But that said, I only occasionally find sites that don't work. Just found another example. I was on 60 Minutes's website and the online streaming video wouldn't go. But I do get streaming video elsewhere (I've got a YouTube video playing as I type). I've never figured out what truly chokes it. I'm sure I'm kidding myself, but I like to think I'm less likely to be hit by exploits because people aren't going to be bothered looking for holes in an obscure browser like Opera. It would be like having a revolution and taking over the PBS television station.
Logged on the Evernote site and got a blank screen (as usual). Since this thread was top-of-mind, I changed a setting to "Identy as Firefox," refreshed and voila: website loads and behaves fine. I'll have to see if that fixes some of my other problem sites as well.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - Apr 7 2014 : 10:30PM
Ues PaleMoon. Uses Firefox framework, but is focused on performance (the only real disadvantage of Firefox). It does perform better than Firefox and without Google amassing a file on all your web activity. I've used Opera as a second browser. It's great, but interface sucks compared to firefox (actually to even IE). I only use Opera when I have problems with Firefox or now PaleMoon.
I have a love / hate relationship with Google so I'm kinda trying to avoid Chrome (even though it does work very nice on my tablet). Anytime I use Google I keep having a line I think came from Warren Ellis go through my head about how Google is quietly conquering the world but at least the trains will run on time. I've been trying Opera on one of my systems and am having mixed feelings. I like a lot of it, but I REALLY miss having the menu bar and the search box in the upper corner where I can specify where I want to search (which is a pretty even split between Amazon, Google / Dogpile, and the IAFD) rather than only being able to search Google in a new tab. I hadn't heard of Pale Moon, but am going to try that on one of my other systems. Thanks for the input everyone! “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
Wow. First impression of Pale Moon is darn good! Love that I can migrate everything over from Firefox nice and easy... “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
I'm running Opera (on a PC) and I have the search bar in the upper right corner, with the drop-down so I can choose which engine to use. Am I misunderstanding what you're talking about ^^^^ ?
"You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10
Posted - Apr 10 2014 : 8:07PM
I avoid anything that has to do with Google. Period. Since I don't have or use a smartphone or tablet, and probably won't, Chrome doesn't even hit my radar screen. I'm sticking with Firefox. I will occasionally use IE, like when you're forced to for updating Windows manually, but Firefox generally works well for me. Sure, they sometimes release something quirky (and, I mean quirky, not dysfunctional), but it usually gets fixed sooner rather than later.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Is there an extension / add on that I'm missing to get that? I constantly use that search for the IAFD and Amazon. “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
"You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10
Posted - Apr 15 2014 : 11:16PM
^ I'm using Firefox, and it has the search box, with the drop-down menu to choose your search engine, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Go to View Menu > Toolbars and be sure Navigation Toolbar is checked.
Here's what my screen looks like (resized to make it fit in a reasonable space) If I hover the mouse over the address bar, right click and choose Customize -> Appearance, I get four tabs I can set. I'll screen print the two I think are relevant: The blue ghost is an add-on (widget - Opera calls them Extensions) called Ghostery, so you can ignore that. Looking at that last screen-print, it makes me think I probably added that. On that Appearance screen, on the Buttons tab, on the left side "Category" list, click on Search. Pick something, click and drag it up and drop it on your address bar. I just added the Wikipedia box. Now my screen looks like this Edited by - jayo on 4/16/2014 12:11:52 AM
That's exactly what I was wanting. I'll have to take a little time to play with that soon... “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
I'm going to be controversial.... I've used Chrome for a few years now, and generally like it, however it's recent versions have started to become bloated, so I am thinking of jumping over to FireFox, maybe Comodo IceDragon...
Running Opera 20 and right clicking on the address bar (or anywhere else I try) I can't get a Customize option, let along Customize -> Appearance. Hell, I can't even get the Help link to work to search for Appearance. “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session” - Mark Twain
Wow--I didn't know they'd rev'd it to 20. I'm using 12.11 (though Update is rev'ing it to 12.17 in the background as I type this). I believe 12 was the last major release before 20. I haven't even seen 20, so I can't comment on it. If you want to try 12, you can download it here: http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/1211/en/ Various other versions are available as well. Opera 12's help files are here: http://help.opera.com/Windows/12.10/en/index.html There's also "advanced documentation": http://www.opera.com/docs/ I don't know if that's good for Opera 20 or not.
I have considered moving to Chrome also. But I find them both unreliable when it comes to websites using flash. Perhaps that is really a problem with Adobe Flash plugins. While back Mozilla started releasing Firefox updates more frequently in order to compete with Chrome and I found the result was that Firefox became more unreliable. In particular it will hang when laying videos sometimes. Not all the time but sometimes. But Chrome sometimes has problems with particular websites that Firefox works fine with. For example, Dominos.com (yeah the pizza guys). They have this update status bar thing. That hangs Chrome everytime for me. I think a lot of web and app developers now use Chrome because it has better debugging tools than Firefox.
I don't like things auto-updating. I'm not a huge control freak, but that's something I turn off every time. I hate having my system bog down and find out it's 10 programs all trying to check their latest versions, auto-updating, etc., in the "background." Meanwhile in the foreground, it's WTF is going on??? Once upon a time I used to look forward to new versions. Now I'm very leery because most major new versions seem to be retrograde, IMO. I'm trying hard to remember the last program or website that was truly "improved" by their improvements.
Bingo! One of the reasons I am considering defecting to FireFox, is partly down to the fact that you can't switch Chrome's AutoUpdate option off in the most recent versions (at least not I presume without a bit of unofficial tweaking)
"You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10
Posted - Apr 27 2014 : 8:08PM
New Vulnerability Found in Every Single Version of Internet Explorer TODAY 4/27/14 According to a confirmation by Microsoft late last night, a new zero day vulnerability has been found to affect every version of Internet Explorer. In other words—over a quarter of the entire browser market. Attacks taking advantage of the vulnerability are largely targeting IE versions 9, 10, and 11 in something called a "use after free" attack. Essentially, the attack corrupts data as soon as memory has been released, most likely after users have been lured to phony websites. Microsoft explains: The vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated. The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website. Microsoft is currently investigating the issue and will likely release an out-of-cycle security patch to take care of the problem. Let's just hope it comes soon, because according to security firm Fire Eye, this means that about 26 percent of the entire browser market is at risk. And since Windows XP users won't be getting the patch for this fairly threatening bug, anyone still running the now-unsupported software is going to have to cough up some big bucks to stay safe. Anyone like—oh, the IRS, for instance. [Microsoft via Cnet] ----------------------------------------------- Remember, Internet Explorer is highly-integrated into your Windows OS -- like XP -- so be careful. That's why you can't delete IE, only not use it as your "default" browser. Switch to another browser as your default browser.
My past is a foreign country. Most things are different there, including word usage. 503 Posts 12/06
Posted - Apr 27 2014 : 9:03PM
I misspoke. I agree. What I meant to say was that I have Opera automatically alert me to the fact that it has a download and have it ask when do I want to download it and then install it. I like the feature that doesn't require a re-boot after installing the new version. My daily avast! anti-virus information does an auto-update, but not the new versions of the program itself. One of the things I hated about Windows XP updates was the need to re-boot. It would ask every few minutes if it could re-boot and if I was away from my PC, it would just go ahead and do it, usually right in the middle of a video download and I would have to start over. To paraphrase Mark Twain - "No Windows PC is safe, when Microsoft decides to make it better."
Agreed--I do that. It's still auto-checking but I retain some measure of control.Abso-fucking-tively. Ask me once and then leave me alone! Just been reminded of one of the things I truly dislike about Opera: the password reminder prompt doesn't work. If I go on a password-entry site, Opera will ask me if I want it to remember my pw. On places like here I say yes. On other places I worry more and say NO. Fine--until the next time I log in and I get the "do you want me to remember your password" question again. Checking the "don't nag me" box doesn't make any difference.
"You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10
Posted - May 1 2014 : 9:05PM
5/1/14 Microsoft has released the "use after free attack" update fix. AND, they have issued the update fix for XP, too (just as some of us predicted they would have to)
Just an update.... Installed Firefox 29.01 yesterday and was pleasantly surprised. The new interface design doesn't bother me (I know some folk hate the new Australis interface) Definitely zippier than the latest versions of Chrome / Chromium The main reason for swapping over, was that Chrome seems to have become a real bloater in recent times and was gobbling my memory. I had quite a few tabs open, and according to the Windows Task Manager, I was using 2.6gb out of my 4gb of RAM (of which only 2.9gb is usable according to the 'System' Control Panel applet). I closed Chrome down, and recreated all the tabs in Firefox, total memory usage 800mb..... Methinks Chrome is doing something wrong.....
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - May 10 2014 : 7:15PM
^ last time I tried Chrome on my PC (a non-beta version), it was running 4 instances of GoogleUpdate .exe. I know this is a nice easy way to phone home, but com'mon, 4 instances at one time? Edited by - BYOB_Kenobi on 5/10/2014 7:15:57 PM
