We’ve been using Opera for a few years now. It was a real revelation (real tabbed windows, intelligent browsing, etc. etc. and so on) but had some deficiencies. For example, HWMBO and I read a variety of websites in varied encodings (including Chinese for him and Classical Greek for me) and Opera never seemed to be able to reliably auto-detect the encoding for a website. This may have been due to deficiencies in websites, but it resulted in a lot of gibberish, lost pound signs (I mean real pounds sterling, not octothorpes), and assorted weirdnesses around quotation marks. Our online banking website also didn’t work with Opera, nor did my BT webmail site. It was a pain having to revert to IE all the time.
So, I decided to try Firefox for a while. It imported all my Opera bookmarks (an important point), and it seems to reliably auto-detect everything. My banking website works well in it, and it seems to be a bit easier to use than Opera. HWMBO reports that his Chinese websites also render correctly.
I think that unless someone tells me how to fix Opera (and I don’t imagine anyone will) we’ll be uninstalling it and using Firefox as our default browser.
See ya, Opera. Nice knowing ya (most of the time).
How does your current houseguest feel about you banning Opera from your home?
the fewer valkyries and rhinemaidens and barbers from seville one has cluttering up the place, the better, would be my opinion.
I do quite well with firefox – our departmental geek recommended it about 6mo ago and I have no complaints.
kill the wabbit!
He seems to use Firefox himself. An off-hand remark made me reconsider my devotion to Opera.
Not only haven’t I banned Opera, I hear it, twice a day, when he practices.
I’ve just had enough of having to adjust myself to websites that do not render well or at all in Opera.
umm.. i thought “hex” is the word for “#”… 🙂 wow.. “octothorpes”