Opera 28/07/2005 Yesterday, John Evans of Syntagma posted about RSS in the Google Personalized Home Page (read his article called "Google RSS is here" - it's well worth it). I followed it up, remembering in the process that I had registered with Google a long time ago, and found that the RSS feed is far better implemented than in My Yahoo. Thank you, John, for pointing this out.But, while I was snooping around, I saw that Google had produced a toolbar for Firefox, something that I have wanted for a long time. Don't laugh, but I can never remember how to check my Google page rank and so periodically I fire up Internet Explorer just to check the Google toolbar for that information. At last it seemed that I could be free of IE forever; I installed the toolbar for Firefox immediately.Bad mistake. My machine is ancient and couldn't cope, the new toolbar extending Firefox loading time to a quarter of an hour. To add insult to injury, there were errors in loading and the toolbar did not display page rank when it finally appeared. Okay, I thought, a pity about that but I'll just uninstall it.That's when I found out that there's no uninstall for the toolbar. So I uninstalled Firefox and re-installed it but (you guessed it) it retained the toolbar. I uninstalled again and tried installing an older version of Firefox. And still it added the toolbar. My world collapsed about my ears; it seemed I had lost Firefox and would have to revert to the disgusting IE.And then I remembered my old friend Opera, the browser that Mad had converted me from (very reluctantly on my part) a few years ago. I remembered also that version 8 of Opera had arrived recently and was supposed to be state-of-the-art. It seemed fate had decreed an excellent and timely opportunity to try out this new version.So that is what I did and now I write of the delights of Opera. This is an amazing browser, better than Firefox (in spite of Mad's protests). It loads in far less time and then surfs faster. As well as having all the bells and whistles sported by Firefox, Opera has a few little tricks of its own.There is the "wand" tool, for instance. We have become used to browsers inserting username and password automatically so that we just have to click the Enter button. Opera's take on this is the Wand - a button that inserts the information when clicked. This means that you don't have to start with the information already inserted (make a typo in your first insertion of the info and suffer ever after in having to choose from a couple of options in Firefox). I hear you protest that this means two clicks instead of one. But no, the Wand not only inserts the info, it also hits the Enter button for you. Brilliant!Then there is the matter of icons on the buttons. I may be alone in this but I hate Firefox's huge icons. After much searching, I found out how to make it display small icons instead. But there's a glitch. The first instance of Firefox will have small icons, no problem. But load another instance and the program becomes confused, displaying weirdly truncated icons, some large, some small. That has irritated me for ages.Opera's default display also uses large icons. But the system for changing them is far more obvious (and in more than one place) and (get this, I love it) you can decide exactly what size you want them. I went straight for 50% of normal size and it's perfect. This may mean very little to most users but, to me, it's a big deal. I have to work on an ancient 14-inch screen and space is always my first consideration. The smaller the buttons and icons, the less space they steal from the working area.Having said all that, I must admit that Opera has one enormous disadvantage: the free version has a large and irritating advertisement as a header. This destroys all my work in reducing the icons to a sensible size. But the browser is so good that I am seriously considering buying the ad-free version. It's $39.00, a fortune in a world of free browsers, yet not so much that it would break the bank. And I'm prepared to pay for the privilege of not being forced to use IE...The net result is that I have to thank John for more than the news of RSS in Google Personalized Pages; my gratitude goes out to him too for unintentionally engineering the circumstances for my return to Opera. Good one John - thanks muchly!
Clive
Mad Opera has achieved approval with me recently for the speed with which is got past the ACID2 test but you can't beat FF and it's spiffy add-ons Date Added: 28/07/2005
Gone Away Add-ons, schmadd-ons - Opera rules! Date Added: 28/07/2005
John (SYNTAGMA) Ye Gods! what turmoil has my little post unleashed on the world! With your 14 inch screen and 15 minutes to load Firefox, you must be a hardened Stoic to take it all day after day! Still, at least you got a night at the Opera out of it.I know it's sacrilege to criticize Firefox, but I found it very buggy when I tried it out, and it kept telling me I didn't have all those things that my IE was already loaded with, like Java. The plug-ins seemed to be written by spotty youths in bedsits somewhere in Wapping. I didn't feel I could upload them onto my Aston Martin of a machine :-). Just because FF is "cool" doesn't make it better in my book. I know IE has problems, but it's like only having one leg ~ first you hop, then you hobble, then you don't notice it anymore. Date Added: 28/07/2005
Gone Away You sound like a potential Opera customer to me, John... ;) Date Added: 28/07/2005
Josh Tools > Extensions > Google Toolbar for Firefox > Right Click > Uninstall. :) Problem is, you see, your extensions are housed in your profile folder, so they are loaded no matter what you do with the executable. If you do decide to return to firefox, and still want to see your PR, get this instead: Google Pagerank Status (just PR) Opera? Well, it still has certain idiosyncrasies that drive development-minded people up the wall--though I admit its getting better. You can certainly feel the Norse heritage, though-- it really is the Saab to Firefox's Honda (The key goes in the center console? Wha?!?!?). Not to mention, of course, that Opera is better compared to the Mozilla Suite; with the RSS reader, IRC client, Email, Newsgrouper all built in, it is--much like Mozilla--the proverbial 20 lbs. of shoite in a 10lb bag. ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Ahah! I knew if I had a good moan, someone would tell me how to get rid of the thing. Thanks, Josh, excellent info as always. As regards the piles of shoite, however, you need to look at Opera 8 - these days there's browser with none of the shoite. ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
josh That's the thing, see... With CSS concerns, it is not always the best move to upgrade browsers -- you really need to see how pharked your page can get, and letting them fix the bugs for you is cheatin' :P Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Josh, I kiss your feet and bequeath you my worldly goods - it all worked exactly as you said it would. I now have Firefox back with my page rank sitting demurely in the bottom right corner (PR 5 - read it and weep, you wannabes! :D). Thank you, thank you, thank you. :) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Which means, of course, that this post is somewhat misleading - for which I apologize. But I stick by my comments about Opera; it is a very, very nice browser. If they would hand it out for free without the advertising, I think it would soon be competing with Firefox. But I'm gonna go back to Firefox. All my links and stuff are in there, you see... Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer Ive never got round to messing about with browsers. Is it really worth it???? I used to use netscape years and years ago when it was the number 1 browser (yeah that long ago!) and then IE came installed on everything and i never bothered to try any other. Is it truly worth the time to download any of these browsers? How different can a browsing experience be? IE seems pretty fast to me (but then i have nothing to compare it to) its reliablish (if thats not a word then it ought to be) and it surfs the web....what more do you need????? Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away What I require more than anything else, Keef, is speed. And IE is excrutiatingly slow after you've tried some of the other browsers. Netscape I never liked and used IE from preference back in those days. But Opera and Firefox make you realise just how slow and clunky IE is. Give either a try - you could get to like them. There are also things that the new browsers understand (like RSS) that IE doesn't but, to be honest, I don't use them a lot. Let the developers tell you about that... Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away I also notice that very few of you bothered to comment on the final part of Accelerate. I take it then that you didn't like the ending? Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer I'll give one a try when i have my pc up and running in a week or so. RSS? repetitive sock strain? ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Really Simple Syndication. Now that makes it a lot clearer, doesn't it? ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer Is that like corporate business for dummies? Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away LOL Basically it's a system that notifies you of updates to sites or blogs you're interested in. :D Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer I can see that becomming irriatating very quickly. This tinterweb thingy will never catch on Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Funnily enough, you're absolutely right. When I first discovered RSS, I installed a feed reader to pick up the RSS notifications. It interrupted me so often that eventually I got fed up and went to the web-based Bloglines - it doesn't update nearly as often and is less obtrusive with its wake-up calls. But you didn't answer my question about Accelerate. It must be really bad... Date Added: 29/07/2005
Rick Clive, you may want to try Maxthon- I love it immensely! http://www.maxthon.com It is much better than using Firefox. Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away I've never heard of it, Rick, but I'll try anything once! Thanks for the link. Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer On the contrary Gone, i think its one of the best pieces you've written. If i had my way someone else would pick up the tablets and we'd be heading off on a wild ride to somewhere else. Although i did at one point wonder if the effects really were due to the tablets or somthing unrelated and the tablets were going to be found to be doing somthing else that Lucky hadnt noticed in his superfast life. But then i have an over active imagination (its a good job im not head of MI5 i can tell ya) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Ah, Keef. To me, the tablets were merely a vehicle for thinking about time; for you, I think they may have been the whole point of the story. But, as you say, we can always have the person who finds Lucky's body take the tablets... Date Added: 29/07/2005
Josh Don't fret, all you IE klingabouts. IE7 is slated for release sometime this fall, and it will have tabs, RSS, and hopefully the CSS support it should've had 5 years ago. Date Added: 29/07/2005
PR Parade Rainer Numero Uno By the by: The arrow denotes the focus. See what I did there? :P Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer see MS will steal the good ideas eventually Date Added: 29/07/2005
Josh Well, I'll be a hornytoad. Right before my eyes! I figured it out, gone. Google shows you as a 4 on the RSS permalinks (though I thought it was smarter about querystrings), but scores this index page high. Curious! ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
John (SYNTAGMA) IE7 has just shipped with the beta version of Windows Vista. But, guess what, it zaps the Google and Yahoo toolbars. So now we have the Wars of the Browsers. Great!!! More about this on my new blog Windows Vista. Clive, I must have missed that last bit of Accelerate. I'll dig it out sometime today and have a read. I've been looking forward to it. Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away It's quite strange, Josh - the PR indicator has me at 5 on the front page and it stays at that when you come to the comments page. But, make a comment and it drops to 4! No wonder PR calculations have the experts scratching their heads. Actually, I reckon it's really a guy at Google who does nothing else but surf the net looking at pages and saying, "Hmm I think I'll give this one 4 and that one 5. That'll confuse em..." Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away A new blog, huh? John, you old mercenary - anything to grab the traffic! ;) What surprises me about IE7 is the way everyone's talking about it as though it will be the death of Firefox. It's really only catching up to things that FF has had for ages so why would we change? As for Accelerate, I'd be very interested in your thoughts on the ending, John. I get the feeling that a lot of people were disappointed in it. When I'd finished it, I was very happy with the way it sorted itself out but now I'm not so sure... :> Date Added: 29/07/2005
John (SYNTAGMA) Clive, I'm going to get onto Accelerate right now. I've been distracted all morning by this jihad raging across the blogosphere about IE7. The Microsoft man, Robert Scoble, must have been up all night fielding posts. He landed on SYNTAGMA about 4am EST. God, they work them hard at MS!BTW your PR is 5 on my toolbar and has been for a while. I don't know what it was before the recent uprate though. It's generally the case that once you get off the first (or home) page, the PR goes down, often to zero. You have 28 incoming links, according to Technorati, compared to my 25, and I have a PR of 4. Still, I've only been going since April 7. ;-) Yes, I'm trying out a few AdSense blogs on Blogger, until the end of the year, to sharpen my skills, whence I may launch a full-scale blog network with Wordpress (I've got a lot of learning to do there as well). I've just launched another, called Christmas Things, which speaks for itself, I think. Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Sometimes I think this whole PR thing is just a red herring. Still, it's sorta nice to know where you stand as far as Google is concerned. Technorati is a different matter - they reckon on 28 links for me whereas Google finds 185. And my Technorati ranking is on the slide at the moment... :( A blog network, hey? What's one of them, I ask myself. ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
hterry I love Opera. I'll give credit to FF though, some of those plugins are right handy but until they can at least fix two things that annoy the heck out of me I'll stick with Opera. 1. Loading times suck big time. 2. Scrolling on any page takes forever even when the thing is loaded using your mouse. As for the icons at the top, Gone, I've got mine to 60% :) I like em small too. Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Well, I'm back with FF now that Josh has shown me how to get rid of the Google toolbar, but it's mainly because FF has all my links and favorites. It was taking an age to transfer everything over to Opera. I suppose that it's personal preference in the end but anything's better than IE! ;) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Josh For what its worth, Gone, I enjoyed the whole Accelerate shebangabang, from beginning to end. It has nothing to do with the quality of the prose, which is impeccable as usual. Thing is, though, when you serialize something, people tend to forget its a short story. ;) "You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society." -Moammar Sizzlak Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Thanks, Josh. You're right, of course - it requires more stamina and commitment from the reader to wade through one of my "long short stories". I suppose the perfect thing for a blog would be a serialization in which each episode is self-contained and could be read on its own. Hmmmm... .oO(Where does he find those quotes?) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Josh I don't think it has anything to do with your ability to hook a reader -- I am not by any means a fan of fiction, but I find your writing quite compelling. What I was getting at is simple: Reader expectations. They have come seven times, so there is invariably a deflation when they can't look toward an eighth. Its all pychological, really. Midget and broom and whatnot. I just realized that you don't use single window mode with FF, Gone. I wonder how you can handle it without tabs. I had to use a 98 machine with IE 5.5 the other day, and after about the fifth window opened, I thought I was gonna cry. I also have a feeling that tabs would go a long way to improving your load times as SWM cuts down on the overhead caused by the chrome. Not to mention how much easier it makes your workflow once you become familiar. :) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away Interesting thoughts, Josh. I'm just grateful if they stick around for all seven episodes. ;) But thanks for the compliments - water in the desert for all writers! Now how did you know that I don't use tabs? But, strangely enough, my little adventure with Opera has made me think about tabs anyway (they're the default setting). And, now that you've confirmed what I was beginning to suspect (that they save on resources), I will have to convert to them. .oO(They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I reckon I don't do so bad - with a little persuasion...) Date Added: 29/07/2005
Ken I can't remember the last time I felt so completely speechless! Date Added: 29/07/2005
keeefer The Simpsons hmmm actually thats pretty cryptic on its own Date Added: 29/07/2005
Josh Cryptic? Nah. Its just a cliché awkwardly rearranged within a poorly structured prepositional phrase. :) And if you know Moe, it is even funnier. Date Added: 29/07/2005
Gone Away What are you guys talking about? Date Added: 30/07/2005
Josh Come on, Gone! You act like this is :P Date Added: 30/07/2005
Gone Away I just wondered how the Simpsons managed to get into this... Date Added: 30/07/2005
Josh Moammar Sizzlak is the AKA of Moe, the bartender on the Simpsons. :) Date Added: 30/07/2005
Gone Away Ah, all becomes a little less fuzzy... Date Added: 30/07/2005
Ken Sorry. Not for me. it doesn't. I need a tutorial! Date Added: 01/08/2005
Gone Away I was exaggerating, Ken - I don't really understand at all! But hey, they seem to speak the same language... ;) Date Added: 01/08/2005
Back to the main blog
You may use HTML in comments. A carriage return is <br />, use two for a new paragraph. For bold text use <strong></strong> and for italic text use <em></em>. If you know what you're doing feel free to use more complex mark-up but please no deprecated tags or JavaScript.
Name * Comment * Email * URL Commenting has closed for this post
