Why FireFox and Opera are the top browsers

This blog post focuses on picking a good browser. At the end of this blog posts there are the conclusions and download links. Go directly there if you don’t care about my justification for the conclusions. Just get a result!

What’s in this blog post?
1. Which browsers do people use?
2. What’s my experience with browsers? (why do I write this blog post?)
3. Why use Opera?
4. Why not use only Opera?
5. Why use FireFox?
6. Why not use only FireFox?
7. Why not Internet Explorer?
8. Why not any other browser?
9. Guides for Opera
10. Why no guides for FireFox?
11. Things I’ve ignored
12. Conclusions
13. Go download!

My previous post was on removing the ads from this web site. Now that you’ve done that, it should be nice to see a way in which to visit the web site (which browser to use).

Why is it so important to have a decision on what browser to pick? Well, if you spend 5 minutes a day just with reading emails, perhaps any browser will do. If you spend hours a day on the Internet, speed and comfort is crucial. Picking the right browser is thus very important for those spending lots of time on the Internet.

1. Which browsers do people use?
According to W3Schools web site on browser statistics, Internet Explorer has a combined 54.7 market share for all versions (which is huge), FireFox comes second with 37.2 (average), while Opera has only 1.4 market share. Other browsers have market shares similar to Opera’s or below. I’d looks rather strange for me to say that Internet Explorer can’t really be defined as a serious browser (and you shouldn’t use it) and Opera can sometimes be considered the best browser out there. I’ll explain below. Please note that the W3Schools statistics refer to statistics on its own web site. The site users are generally Internet power users, mostly developers, and other than this web site FireFox has a lower penetration rate. Yet I consider the statistics relevant: it describes how the Internet would look like had it been filled with power users.

2. What’s my experience with browsers? (why do I write this blog post?)
Oh, only for about 10 years, and in the recent years my activities have mostly been based on the Internet.

3. Why use Opera?
1. Opera is fast display of web pages. See the Browser speed comparisons page (old test, but the data are kept up to date with recent versions of the browsers).
2. Opera is a very good browser for going a bit advanced. If FireFox has a add-on for everything, but that add-on must first be installed, Opera has some built-in plugins that make it easier to use (you don’t have to look for plugins, install them, configure them – they’re all in Opera, no tweaking necessary). While FireFox with no add-ons might be an excellent start for a beginner, after a while, when the user gets experienced and needs some extra features, Opera will provide those extra features very nicely (they’re integrated). More time passes and the user gets even more experienced and puts add-ons into FireFox. Of course, even an advanced user will find Opera’s default plugins useful (but unfortunately can’t install user-generated add-ons, since one can only install add-ons created by Opera team, and that is a small number of add-ons). Surely, even a beginner might find Opera’s plugins useful or if they’re to complicated, might decide not to use them. But by default, I consider FireFox with no add-ons to be a browser for complete beginners, Opera for a bit more advanced users, and FireFox with add-ons a browser for power users;
3. Opera is just wonderful in doing a lot of things fast. I can’t think of any other browser that lets me do this very fast: open a page with a lot of links, see a list with all the links in the page (and I can sort this list), open some or all of the links in the page very fast, view the pages, close all the pages except the generating page fast. FireFox has an add-on called Tab Mix Plus (see the install page for Tab Mix Plus on Mozilla web site) which allows you to have a right click menu to open the links from a selected portion of a page in New Tabs. I will ignore the fact that this add-on must first be installed, and the option selected (so it’s not a default feature of FireFox). Unfortunately, FireFox loads pages slower, it closes them slower, and when selecting links it doesn’t have any other options for opening a different set of links (so you can’t easily pick which links to open). See the “Guides for Opera” section below for details on this.
4. Opera is great when not having any tabs opened at all. This might look like a weird way of putting things (why would I use a browser when not having any tabs opened?), but look at it this way: you have a folder with some links you want to open from time to time fast (some no-good RSS forums, some news web sites with pictures and RSS is not good, overall just some pages you want to open rarely and RSS does not work for you or you don’t want to use it). How to open all of the links fast, view them fast, close them all fast? See the Guides section below. This is a wonderful thing on Opera, and it’s one of the main reasons I use it: open pages fast, view them quickly, close them in a snapshot. A lot of pages? Still fast.
5. Opera is the godfather of speed. Keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, fast loading everything. Sure, you don’t have all the options of FireFox, but it’s great to do a lot of things very fast. Have a look at Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers page on lifehacker.com web site to see some speed testing for Opera 9.5 and FireFox 3 beta.

4. Why not use only Opera?
1. If a site is complicated, Opera will look at it and say: Huh? Rich text formatting is with troubles; copy & paste with formatted text – not possible (this is actually an advantage sometimes); some ads in Flash can interfere with web site navigation; Most pages are OK to view in Opera, but when they get tricky, switch the browser
2. (somehow related to 1.) Gmail and Opera don’t mix. OK, you can use it, you have all the functions, but it’s slower, and it’s got no formatting;
3. No add-ons created by users, just the default ones; You can’t have Login with BugMeNot if you want it.

5. Why use FireFox?
1. Compatibility with Internet Explorer from the web sites perspective; It may sound strange to put this as a primary advantage, but if you’re switching from Internet Explorer, you will see FireFox is much better at compatibility than Internet Explorer; Also, web pages are generally designed for Internet Explorer and FireFox; Opera is fine, but those two browsers, having the largest market share, are generally to be accounted for when creating a web page; thus, you are more likely not to have a compatibility problem with a web site when viewing a page in FireFox;
2. Compatibility with Internet Explorer from the users’ perspective; There are a lot of options that are in Internet Explorer and are quite functional in FireFox (most In Opera you get no rich text formatting; In FireFox this is even better than Internet Explorer, and good enough in other cases; If you are expecting a feature in Internet Explorer, you are more likely to find in FireFox than in Opera; You can even get FireFox to look just like Internet Explorer with a some tweaking (see Make Firefox Look Like Internet Explorer page);
3. Even if compatible, the browser is, in my opinion, much better than Internet Explorer; beautiful, wonderful browser; Not as fast as Opera, but almost as compatible with any web site as Internet Explorer, and in most cases more pleasant to use;
4. Good for absolute beginners (you need to install nothing, don’t care about anything in the browser, just make it work), and also for power users (you can even design your own add-on for your own taste, though it is more easy to find one that suits you in the huge list of add-ons);
n. A huge list of small reasons called add-ons; Add-ons are THE feature for FireFox; You can’t like FireFox for one single reason if you have a lot of add-ons; You’ll just love FireFox for more than one reason; There are about 2,000 extensions on the Firefox Add-ons: Browse all Extensions page; You will like some, ignore most; But that’s what makes FireFox special: you can have your own, very special, unique-in-the-whole-world browser; They are that different; If I were to say two common things for these add-ons, these are: they make FireFox better and when having a lot of them they make it run slowly (so that’s a good reason for careful picking them up before installing); Most add-ons also take some time to be configured, so they’re a bit time consuming; It should be noted that you can save the installed add-ons and their settings if you reinstall the operating system (please see the Profile backup page); You just have to move some directories, or restore from a previous back-up;

6. Why not use only FireFox?
1. Hadn’t been for Opera speed, there would be no other reason; it’s just that it’s a bit slowly;
2. There are some web sites that are only for Internet Explorer.

7. Why not Internet Explorer?
To keep things simple, I don’t consider Internet Explorer to be a browser. Sure, you must and you are forced to use it to view some pages that require only Internet Explorer pages (online antivirus scanners for example; some banking web site, for another example) . But generally, you can live without Internet Explorer just fine.

I will not give in reasons for you not to use it, other than “it’s not a browser in my opinion”. I’ve created this blog to show you what you can and should use, not on what you can’t and shouldn’t.

8. Why not any other browser?
I have in my PC right now Apple’s Safari (for Windows) and Netscape Navigator. I’ve worked with Flock and also with some Linux browsers. I personally didn’t consider them to equal FireFox and Opera (even on Linux). I recommend that you use Opera and FireFox for a while and then use other browsers if you wish to compare them. More than one browser is fine for this reason: different logins. You can be logged in different browsers with different accounts on the same email address, for example.

The answer to the question “Why not another browser?” is simple: because you have a better option – FireFox and Opera.

9. Guides for Opera
1. How to open a lot of links in a new page in Opera? The simple solution is: right click a link, and Open in background tab. But that’s so incredibly slowly for more than 10 links. My solution? If you have big a set of links as text format (just a set of links in Notepad, for example), first convert the links from plain text to HTML (self-send an email; create a forum post with the preview page – both of these solutions will convert your text from basic text to clickable links). After you have a natural web page with a list of links in them, go to Tools Links (Ctrl + Alt + L is a handy shortcut for this). Sort your links the way you want them (click on the links columns). Select links using Ctrl (for links that are not a long consecutive list, but just random occurrences), or with Shift (for a consecutive list of links). Right click and “Open in background tabs” or press Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Close the Links window. Now you will have the originating page and a long list of tabs. Navigate through tabs using 1 and 2 keys (or clicking on the tabs). When done, select the originating tab and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + W (close all but active). Voila! The procedure may look a bit tricky to use, but please remember that I consider it to be the most important feature of Opera browser, and after some use you’ll certainly learn the keystrokes. This procedure is, in my opinion, the number one feature of Opera. Simply irreplaceable;
2. How to open from time to time some links in a folder? First of all, organize your bookmarks: there might be links you will open daily (news), weekly (blogs), or at a different time frame. Organize them via this criteria into folders. Place the folder on the Personal toolbar (you can view this bar on View => Toolbars => Personal bar; to display a folder on the Personal bar, go to Bookmarks => Manage bookmarks => Right click on the folder => Show on personal bar). Now left click on the folder on the Personal bar => Open all folder items. Navigate between tabs with mouse or 1 and 2 keys. When done, hit Ctrl + Alt + W (Close all).

10. Why no guides for FireFox?
FireFox is based on the community. If you have a question on FireFox, it’s probably been answered before in the MozillaZine forum. Go read, go find.

I will tell you some tips & advices, though:
1. The list of extensions on the Mozilla site is huge. How can you find the top extensions? On the Firefox Add-ons: Browse all Extensions page, you can sort extensions by Popularity or by Ratng. Still no good? Use this Google search to find some lists made by Internet users. You can also search for lists on special fields or activities (like developers, sports, movies etc. etc. – you can also search like this in the FireFox Add-ons page);
2. I personally love these extensions: AdBlock Plus (to block ads, in combination with Adblock Filterset.G Updater, which updates the filters for ads), Auto Copy (copies text automatically), BugMeNot (for easy login to popular web sites, so you don’t have to create an account, just use an account already created by a nice human being), ColorfulTabs (just adds color to tabs; did anyone said carnival?), CustomizeGoogle (tweaking Google search; lots and lots of options), Download Statusbar (improved download features), Gmail Manager (able to access multiple Gmail accounts at once), Google Toolbar for FireFox (features by Google), Tab Mix Plus (a lot of add-ons on tabs).

11. Things I’ve ignored
I can’t say anything on security but refer to past results or professional testing. If I claim to know what a secure browser is, you might still get an attack from this browser. If I give you a professional test, your one browser’s fault might be the one that will hurt your PC. To put it simple: no browser is secure. My personal choice for tricky web sites is Opera, because most hackers are likely to attack a more popular browser (also because it can’t deal well with very complex web sites, so it will not be attackable). But instead of focusing on what browser is more secure, you should focus on security to all browsers with an Internet security application (see my blog post removing the ads from this web site for some tests on those applications). You should also use this Google search on security tips as a basic start to know more on Internet browsing security. Navigating safely should a bigger priority for you than for the browser.

I’ve also ignored a lot of features. FireFox has a not-so-bad RSS reader, Opera has a basic torrent file handler. FireFox comes with a separate email application (ThunderBird), while Opera even has a chatting system. Why I ignore these? Because for RSS there are better Internet applications (I like Google Reader), and offline applications (see this list: News Aggregators for Windows). For torrent files there are external applications, most of them being better than Opera’s internal. There are (questionable) better email solutions than Mozilla’s ThunderBird (some even web based, like Gmail), there are better chatting features than Opera. I will not install Opera to chat, I will install it to browse fast. I strongly believe that there is no universal solution for every problem, and that specialized features are best to describe a browser. I just don’t care about the extra features of FireFox and Opera. A browser should, in my opinion, do just this: browse. And do that browsing extremely well.

The last thing I ignored are system resources. I considered it’s more efficient to buy some extra RAM for memory-hungry applications than use just one browser, or be bothered by memory leaks. If you care on system resources, it’s more efficient to buy a better piece of hardware (like RAM or whole PC), than care on what browser requires less resources (or at least that’s what I think).

12. Conclusions
I’ve shown my reasons. My conclusions are simple: use both FireFox and Opera. From time to time use Internet Explorer, when special installs required. If you want to, you can use some lesser popular websites, but it’s best to first test FireFox and Opera. My computer starts with a music software (WinAmp), two browsers (FireFox and Opera), an instant messaging software and a plugin to register what I listen to (Last.fm’s widget). So whenever I start the PC, two browsers pop up. 95% of the time they’re both opened and I used them both. Complementary.

13. Go download!
This is the download link for Opera (I earn no money for this link). After install, you can customize it with skins. Go download.
This is the download link for FireFox (I earn no money for this link). After you install it, it presents you ways to customize it with add-ons and themes.

What’s your thinking on my blog post? Please leave a comment below. It helps my web site’s Google Ranking, it helps my readers, it creates a bond between you and my blog. Leave a comment now.