Firefox continues to do a great PR job, but does it really have that much over Opera? Let’s have a look (again) at their dubious claims of greatness.
Popup Blocking - Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks with Firefox’s built in popup blocker.
Yup, Opera does that.
Tabbed Browsing - View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they’re ready for viewing when you’re ready to read them. Find out more…
*yawn* Yeah, Opera does that too. Opera actually has a Multi Document Interface which is a lot more powerful than just tabs.
Privacy and Security - Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.
Huh, just like Opera. Opera lets you easily select information you want to keep or delete.
Smarter Search - Google Search is built right into the toolbar, and there are a plethora of other search tools including Keywords (type “dict” in the Location Bar), and the new find toolbar (which finds as you type and eliminates the annoying window that always seems to be in your way).
Opera has several search engines built-in (without needing extensions). You can add your own if you want. (Opera has had this for years, despite Firefox making it seem like a unique invention of theirs.
Live Bookmarks - RSS integration lets you read the latest news headlines and read updates to your favorite sites that are syndicated. Find out more…
Opera has an integrated RSS reader.
Hassle-Free Downloading - Files you download are automatically saved to your Desktop so they’re easy to find. Fewer prompts mean files download quicker.
Opera starts downloading as soon as you click the link. Take as much time as you want to decide where to save the file (or define where certain file types will be saved). There’s also the Quick Download option which lets you download without any prompts.
Fits Like a Glove - Simple and intuitive, yet fully featured, Firefox has all the functions you’re used to - Bookmarks, History, Full Screen, Text Zooming to make pages with small text easier to read, etc.
Of course Opera has had these for years, and also gives you the ability to edit your menus and keyboard commands right in the app without needing to get into editing XUL files or downloading extensions. Opera also gives you access to many settings via the F12 menu, and lets you turn image loading on/off with a single button.
S, M, L or XL—You Choose - Firefox is the most customizable browser on the planet. Customize your toolbars to add additional buttons, install new Extensions that add new features, add new Themes to browse with style, and use the adaptive search system to allow you to search an infinite number of engines. Firefox is as big or small as you want.
“Most customizable”? Hrm… I’m not sure about that. Why should I have to download extensions to get things to work like I want? Will they conflict with one another? Will they work in future releases? Opera is a smaller package than Firefox with a lot more features, without having to search around for a tool to make it work better. Opera builds better in from the beginning. And we’ve got customizable toolbars and buttons too. Plenty of themes at http://my.opera.com too.
Setup’s a Snap - At only 4.5MB (Windows), Firefox takes just a few minutes to download over a slow connection and seconds over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers - so you can start surfing right away.
Wow, they’ve done well to get the download to only about 1MB larger than Opera… of course Opera has mouse gestures, RSS, and a mail client built in, not to mention IRC. Oh, and if you don’t use Windows, the download is over 8MB.
A Developer’s Best Friend - Firefox comes with a standard set of developer tools including a powerful JavaScript and CSS error/warning console, and an optional Document Inspector that gives detailed insight about your pages.
Optional, as in “separately downloadable” so they could get that download size down to 4.5MB. Opera has a Java and JavaScript console built in, and also has a built-in feature to submit pages to the W3C validator (even local pages or pages inaccessible via the Internet).
Read Mail—Not Spam - Thunderbird is the perfect complement to Firefox.
Yeah that’s not really a feature of Firefox so much as a completely different program. Thunderbird is a 5.8MB download for Windows or 11MB for Mac OS X. Opera’s Mail client has an advanced searching system that takes seconds to search through thousands of messages (like GMail, except you get to control your own mailbox). That’s built-in too.
Well, we congratulate Firefox on their professional public relations campaign to draw attention to their browser. I’m not sure that’s where I’d spend $100k, but hey, it’s not my money…
12 Responses to “*yawn* More Firefox boasting”
on 24 Oct 2004 at 7:23 pm # Matthias Viehweger
Great writeup. I had a real hard time to get all the extensions I needed in order to have at least a little comfort. But then, after installing them, I went almost instantly back to my beloved Opera.
I don’t know of any other browser which is this customisable. Just try to move the Oh-so-great-and-ugly Tabbar of Firefox anywhere else than were it is. While Firefox really is a lot better than IE, it still can’t stand a chance against Opera. Even if they copy a lot of the features.
on 26 Oct 2004 at 3:01 am # Patrik Fredriksson
I’m still amazed of how much people love their damn Firefox so much… Do people even try other browsers?
The “please support Firefox win against IE by donating $10″ really bugs me. So, instead of spending $20 extra and get a boatload of features and free upgrades, you “GIVE” away $10 for something mediocre, for the sole purpose of beating down on IE? Great… that’s like trading cigarettes for nicotine patches - it’s not a cure damnit!
Might be because firefox is free of charge and noone wants a banner in their face - but there are cures for that, like supporting the project that makes you satisfied… Opera, anyone? ;) Or… just increase the window size and then move the window so that the ad is out-of-frame (works only in a window manager with easy-move, like flux/black-box).
Well, that was my view all wrapped up in a few sentences.. ;)
on 27 Oct 2004 at 2:41 am # J. King
In all honesty, I haven’t really tried Firefox that much, so I can’t say too much about their claims. I can say, though, that it certainly seems to be an effective campaign. I can also say, though, that I haven’t use Firefox much because its preferences dialogue is sparser than Internet Explorer’s. Software I can’t configure is software I can’t use.
Your last point was particularly well placed, I thought. Thunderbird is not a feature of Firefox. Indeed, for someone like myself, Thunderbird is a mis-feature. I like—nay, I love checking my mail from a persistent sidebar in my Web agent. It’s as natural as breathing. I love being able to start a mail message, grab a reference URI, do some fact-checking, do a quick dictionary look-up and then finish typing my message all in the same UI, and all while watching for activity in three IRC channels. Application integration is binary crack, when done well.
on 27 Oct 2004 at 10:49 pm # S. Hartmann
Somehow I ran into this site and after reading it, I decided to try out opera - again. I had tried it years ago and found it just didn’t feel comfortable - don’t remember why.
Well this time, it seemed at first to be really nice stuff. After using for a day, it seems to start having squirrelly behavior. Sometimes, it just seemed to start rendering previously viewed pages one-after-another. It doesn’t seem to render my yahoo mail correctly. Once in Yahoo mail, it kept starting to render a page, then go blank, over and over until I finally had to exit the program. Sometimes wand would remember my passwords, other times it wouldn’t. The last straw was it’s inability to render Microsoft’s Outlook webmail - which is a must have for me. Also, it can’t seem to follow an mms:// link
After all these years, Opera is still to buggy to be useful. It’s really a shame. I really like the layout, and it has alot of nice features, but if it can’t render pages correctly, it’s not useful to me. I’m back to FireFox.
on 28 Oct 2004 at 5:48 pm # TjL
mms:// support can be added (preferences > programs > add).
As for the complaint about rendering… well, any browser can have problems rendering one page. It’s hardly a realistic assessment. If you want to try and use it over a period of time and let me know that it works/doesn’t work better than something else, that’s one thing.
If we’re going to give up on one try… well, I just tried to install an extension in Firefox and was told it wasn’t compatible with my version (PR1). This extension is listed as the #3 most popular extension on the official extensions website, yet it doesn’t work with the current version of the browser?
To me that’s the fatal flaw of depending on extensions… you never know when they will break, and then all of a sudden you’ve lost functionality.
Opera has what I want built-in.
on 28 Oct 2004 at 9:34 pm # TjL
Firefox talks about how much more secure they are than IE because of ActiveX.
That’s true, but Firefox extensions may have security risks. Anytime you have something that auto-updates, there’s a security risk. Any time you let someone else’s code into your computer, there’s a security risk. Extensions give you both. Sure, Firefox users can take a secure track, and IE users can set security zones, but they don’t.
I fully expect to see an exploit of this at some point in the future.
on 31 Oct 2004 at 3:01 am # Daniel
You forgot to mention that Opera does not support XSLT. XML is on the rise, and the fact that the idiots up at Opera decide XSLT is harmful prevents others from seeing Opera as a viable browser. It doesn’t matter what features it has. If it can’t match Firefox (or even IE for crying out loud) in TRUE functionality, then it’s inferior by default.
on 31 Oct 2004 at 3:22 am # Big Papa
You fail to mention that unless you pay for Opera, you get a stupid ad on there. LAME Thus, FF > Opera
on 31 Oct 2004 at 4:21 am # teh lol
calm the fuck down angst puppet. FF > Opera
on 31 Oct 2004 at 2:42 pm # Spug
Sadly, those two last comments sum up the aggressive behaviour of the “grassroot” Spread Firefox campaign - childish guerrilla fanboys bashing anyone who speaks lowly of their beloved browser.
on 31 Oct 2004 at 6:00 pm # Matt
I’m a big fan of Firefox and have never liked Opera. As they’re both high quality products and a preference is subjective (depends what you expect/are used to in a browser). Anyway, just thought I’d point out that Firefox is pre-release and thus expecting extensions to work flawlessly right now isn’t fair, as it’s not final and the extensions weren’t frozen from 0.9.x->1.0PR
on 31 Oct 2004 at 6:27 pm # TjL
I’m so tired to hearing how Firefox is pre-release. It’s been pre-release for years now and its supporters keep talking about it like it’s a new program.
The reality is that 1.0 will be short lived. There will always be ongoing development with it, and if they can’t figure out a way to keep the extensions up with it, they will always lag behind.
1.0 final will not be a silver bullet that solves all these problems. Will all the extensions be compatible the day it is released? I doubt it.
Notice the 3 Firefox comments include “idiots”, “lame” and an expletive. Excellent representation.
XSLT has no practical usage on the net at this point. Show me one major site that’s using it. Supply and demand. On the other hand, ESPN and other sites use WAP with MIME type “text/vnd.wap.wml” which Opera can render, and Firefox and IE cannot. There’s a major site using a real implementation of a real standard. Opera’s the only browser that can access it. During the baseball playoffs, I used Opera with its “Reload Every X second” feature to track several games at once over a dialup connection.
We’ve heard from both sides, and we’re not likely to make any converts if comments continue, so I’m closing them before the spammers start in.