My favorite browser – Opera

Check out Opera – it’s becoming my favorite browser. Has your default browser changed in the last 6 months? Mine is still Firefox – but Opera is good for many sites – I wish more programmers would recognize it when they write code!

Here’s how I use browsers on my PC with Vista:
1. Internet Explorer – this is my workhorse for complex or risky pages, but the security makes it fail to read good pages often

2. Firefox – used to be my favorite – and still is my default browser where I need rich functionality on complex pages, but it’s a bit slow because I use add-ons

3. Opera – this is my latest and favorite browser – it has all of the features I use in Google Chrome and is much more robust – it’s on release 9. It’s faster than Firefox or IE – so I have that open in a window for quick research and rapid news scanning. I like the way you can type a search term into the URL field – as you can in Chrome. I like the default page with miniatures of my favorite pages.

4. Safari – I tried this and it’s about the same speed as Opera – I use it on my Mac and iPhone as the default browser – it reads most pages – but it’s not compelling.

5. Google Chrome – is a work in progress and lacks features. I understand simplicity, but it’s just too minimal. I had to add a “send link in the mail” script -I can’t believe that this is still not a standard feature. I hate using the email buttons on pages as they don’t have names from my address book pre-loaded. So I always send the link in a browser – sometimes running it through a program that shortens the link.

Someone asked me if the browsers interfere with each other – the general answer is no. However, if you have too many windows open and a lousy graphics system then the system may freeze until you close a window. Another situation can arise where two browsers want to use the same file and it’s locked – but that’s a very, very rare event – it’s only happened to me once.