DISQUS

Ace on Tech: The Opera Browser Revisited

  • DrLaunch · 2 years ago
    I can't remember having that much trouble with Opera before.

    I can't remember AJAX being particularily slow in Opera. I don't know about earlier versions but flickr's organizer works like a charm and is pretty fast with Opera 9.50 Beta 2 build 1709 on Ubuntu 7.10 ( http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/ ). I don't think the slowness is normal. Try asking in the Opera forums about it ( http://my.opera.com/community/forums/ ) . You can also get lots of help to tailor Opera to your needs there. You should also check out alternatives to the top 150 Firefox extensions in Opera: http://my.opera.com/Rijk/homes/blog/extensions....

    If the widget has a "rolled up"/minimized mode, right click it and select Always on top. Or leave it in your task bar and click it when you need it.

    Opera displays images in speed dial after it's done loading the speed dial preview. If something starts loading after opera assumes the page is done loading, it's not going to be updated in the preview image.
  • Ace · 2 years ago
    I like the main principles of Opera and would like to use it as my main browser, since Firefox seems to be failing on me lately. But the version I tested (9.24) seemed to have quite some issues with Linux. I remember trying Opera under Windows some time ago and I didn't bump into the aforementioned issues. Perhaps it had something to do with my setup, I'll need to check up on that later.

    Thanks for the interesting link on extensions. It seems they've got most counterparts covered, but I still can't seem to get over the way widgets work. Maybe it's due the fact that I'm so used to the way Firefox' extensions work. Maybe I just don't like the way widgets float around.

    I could try the Beta version you're referring to, as well. Thanks for your advice! I'll be sure to report my findings back after having tested the latest beta version.
  • Michael · 2 years ago
    I've been running Opera 9.24 on Ubuntu 7.10 for a while now. I'm not experiencing the lagging issues you've described, although I don't use AJAX much that I'm aware of. My experience is that it's been just as fast as Firefox, hasn't demonstrated any memory leakage, and is running very nicely on an older system with 512MB RAM. Reviews I've read of the upcoming 9.25 update have been largely optimistic with regard to better memory usage and performance. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.
  • Travis · 2 years ago
    "Widgets are the only means of customization"

    Although I don't know what features were dropped from the Opera's version for Ubuntu, Opera for Windows, is very customizable. Extensions are not the only mean by which something can be customized. There are skins(similar to Firefox themes), custom buttons that can add alot of functionality, ability to change all keyboard shortcuts(w/ interface), User Javascript (similar to Firefox's Greasemonkey), ability to easily move/delete current buttons and toolbars, and Opera allows many of the files it comes with to be edited.

    I don't actually consider Widgets as customization of Opera(they are mini applications that don't directly affect Opera itself). I do consider the above as customization.