LinLog

Opera features I never tried

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

Today I "discovered" a little feature in Opera that I didn't know about before. That was a nice feeling. It's always good to find something new in an application that you use every day. Even if you're not sure how useful it will be.

This particular feature is an item in the context menu for web page tab: the "create linked" command. This has the interesting effect of creating a new tab that receives navigation for the selected tab. So if you click a link on the original tab, it will remain unchanged but the new "linked" tab will go to that location.

By itself, this doesn't seem particularly useful. However, when combined with Opera's MDI, you can do side-by-side navigation, which could be usefule for checking references or documentation. The "linked" status of the tab also survives detatching into a separate window, so you can use multiple windows rather than the MDI if you're so inclined. In fact, this is probably better, since the MDI just doesn't feel right since they switched to the visual "tab" appearance.

Discontent in Firefox land

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

It seems the three big news sites in my aggregator - Slashdot, OSNews, and Digg - have all picked up this Wired story about Firefox. Apparently people are starting to complain that the Fox has gotten slow and bloated. I guess they haven't been paying attention.

As an Opera user, this is something of a sore spot for me. First, the contention that Firefox is getting slow is complete and utter BS. "Getting" is irrelevant. Firefox has always been slow. Granted, speed is relative, and while FF may be fast compared to plain-old Mozilla (now known as SeaMonkey), Opera has always been way faster than both of them. If you don't believe me, try running Opera and Firefox side by side on a Linux box with a 500HMz processor and less than 256MB of RAM. The difference is painfully obvious.

And speaking of RAM, Opera has always had a lower base memory footprint than Firefox. As an example, here's a quick, highly unscientific screenshot comparison of memory usage in Opera 9.20 and Firefox 2.0.0.3 running on Windows XP. Note that Firefox has 9 extensions enabled and 6 tabs loaded. Opera, on the other hand, has 24 tabs loaded.

The really interesting thing to note here is that Opera's memory usage is quite variable. The 22MB in the screenshot is when Opera is sitting minimized in the task bar. Once I maximize it and start browsing, the numbers go up. In fact, the memory usage got up to 120MB at one point, but as soon as I minimize the browser window, it drops back down to 20MB or so, presumably transferring the data to disk cache. When I bring the browser window back up and start switching between open tabs, the RAM usage slowly creeps back up. So Opera is actually quite smart about memory. Not so with Firefox - its memory usage remained static when I tried the same thing.

Of course, Firefox would probably have a significantly lower memory footprint with no extensions enabled. But then, what would be the point of using it? After all, extensions are one of the big selling points. It's also where most of the cool features are implemented.

I always thought that was one of the biggest problems with Firefox: it almost forces you to install a bunch of extensions. Out of the box, Firefox is a good browser, but it's nothing special. I suspect the development team is finally starting to realize that having lots of good features out of the box is important. The extensions are great, but finding and downloading them is a pain and many "regular" users simply can't be bothered (not to mention the compatibility issues). By integrating them into the core, you spread the benefit to the masses rather than just those with a technical bent. Plus, you can (in theory) get better performance with the native C/C++ in the core than with a JavaScript extension.

So I still use Opera everyday and use Firefox for web development. I find Opera faster and easier to use in many respects. But Firefox has the Web Developer, Firebug, and HTML Validator extensions, which are really compelling. Now if only Opera would implement an extension mechanism and allow you to set an external RSS reader, I'd be all set....

Blocking IntelliTXT

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

Here's a handy little IntelliTXT-blocking User JavaScript for you Opera users out there. I've been using this at work for some time and just noticed the other day that I didn't have it on my laptop, so I figured I'd post it for posterity.

If you're not familiar with IntelliTXT, just browse through the forums on Tek-Tips.com and you'll see what I mean. The adds are added by a JavaScript which highlights certain keywords that it finds on the page. When you mouse over these words, it pops up an obnoxious little semi-transparent DIV with an ad in it. The actual ads look really nice, but they're really annoying, especially given that it's very easy to inadvertently mouse over one of the keywords and pop up an ad over the text you're trying to read.

The actual code for the script is below, for those who are interested. You can also just download the script and drop it in your UserJS folder, if you're feeling lazy. // Block those annoying IntelliTXT adds. window.opera.addEventListener('BeforeExternalScript', function (e) { if( e.element.getAttribute('src').match(/intellitxt/i) ) { e.preventDefault(); } }, false );

Opera and Akregator

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

Yay! I can finally do it! I can finally use Opera and Akregator together! Well, at least to a certain extent.

Yesterday I discovered this blog entry by zeroK on this very subject. The basic concept is so simple it's brilliant: define a custom protocol. Opera allows you to modify the handler programs for protocols like mail, telnet, etc. Well, the solution is to simply define a feed:// protocol and set the handler to your RSS aggregator.

Unfortunately, there's really no such thing as a feed:// protocol, so you need some JavaScript. For feeds linked in the page header, the solution was to use the modified bookmarklet that extracts the links and pops up a list with feed:// substituted for http://.

As for the handler application, I banged out a little shell script using DCOP calls and KDialog to add a feed to a selected group. I didn't use the Akregator command line options because they don't seem to work when you're embedding Akregator in Kontact.

The only problem with this is that it doesn't work with Opera's built-in RSS icon. Changing the protocol on the linked RSS feeds with a user JavaScript just seems to make them stop working altogether.

Hopefully Opera will eventually add a setting to configure an external feed reader. While I love Opera as a web browser, I never really cared for the mail client. And since the RSS reader is based on the mail client, I don't like that either. In fact, not only is the feed reader based on a mail client I don't like, but it seems to work more like a mail client than an RSS aggregator. I tried it out again the other day and I really hate it. I'd much rather have something with the three-panel layout like Akregator or SharpReader, so I don't think I'm going to be switching any time soon.

But, at any rate, at least I'm making progress in this department.

Still an Opera user

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

It seems that the upgrade to 8.0 final fixed my CPU-sucking problem with Opera. Or maybe it's the fact that I started over with a fresh config directory. It's hard to tell. Over the years, I've found that sometimes Opera behaves better if you start with a clean configuration.

The new version is nice, but no nicer than the 7.6 beta release, if you ask me. The new tab interface is the only reason I stayed with the beta releases rather than reverting to the 7.54 stable version. It's also kind of cool that they added a spell checker, but it's not half as good as the one Konqueror has. Opera just has a regular, on-demand spell checking utility, whereas Konqueror highlights misspelled words as you type. The "recycle bin" for closed tabs is creative and comes in handy every now and then, but it's not exactly a killer feature. Likewise, the new, stripped-down default interface is nice, but it isn't much different from what I had set up myself.

It's also nice that they thought to redo the preferences dialog, but I don't think it's any better than before. In fact, it might even be worse. In previous versions, they has the old-fashioned list box on the left that you used to change between the preferences pages, much like Mozilla. Now they have a tabbed dialog. The only problem is that they have only four tabs, the last of which is an "advanced" tab that just contains the familiar old list box, except moved out of sight. It seems pretty pointless to me. I would have preferred if they'd spent the time on a menu editor or search editor. Or maybe they could have fixed printing.

Of course, the best part is that they didn't make me pay for this upgrade - my old registration code worked! I'm glad they did this, because I'm not sure I could justify paying for this upgrade. The new version is great, but it just doesn't feel like they've added much that I care about. It feels kind of like upgrading Microsoft Office - sure, the new version is better and has more features, but why pay again when the old one does everything I want?

@$#% Opera!

pageer@skepticats.com (Peter Geer)

I really need to upgrade my system so that I can try different web browsers. I've been using the Linux version of Opera for several years now because it was the only decent browser that ran well on my aging AMD K6, but it's really been starting to piss me off lately.

The thing is, I really like Opera, and have for a while. I liked it so much that I actually paid for a license to version 6.0 and then paid again to upgrade to 7.0. It's very fast and has a pretty good user interface.

The problem is that it doesn't feel like Opera is making progress. There are lots of little things that are missing or haven't worked right for a long time. Allow me to give a few examples.

It took them until version 7.60beta to get printing right. Then, in the 8.0beta releases, I started having trouble again.
There is no configuration interface to the address bar search functionality.
There is no user interface for configuring the menu bar, although it can be done using the INI files.
There is no single font changing, like the "larger" or "smaller" menu items in IE or Firefox. There's a setting for the minimum font size, individual settings for each text element, and a "zoom" feature, which scales the entire page. I find this somewhat annoying.
There is no ad blocking functionality and Opera won't add one because, apparently, they feel it's hipocritical to have an ad blocker when they have banner ads in the freeware version. Of course, as a paying customer, I frankly don't give a damn how they feel about it. I want an ad blocker!

There have, of course, been many "revolutionary" new additions to Opera since I started using it. I even use some of the small ones. However, the big things are the "web suite" features, like the e-mail client (which I don't like), the RSS aggregator, and the chat application. These are all well and good, but I don't want a web suite - I want a web browser. I already have an e-mail client and an RSS reader - KMail and Akregator, and they're part of a PIM suite that integrates with my entire desktop. The only reason I don't use the web browser that goes with them is that it's slower than molasses on a cold day in January.

The problem I just had, though, was the last straw. I couldn't log into my Newegg account in Opera. After putting in my user ID and password, I got to the "processing login" page and was never redirected. I don't know why. Maybe it's related to the cache problem I had a few minutes before, where Opera showed me an old version of my shopping cart. (I've had cache mishaps in Opera for years, although they don't happen too often.)

I think it's just time for a change. Opera is nice, and there are a lot of features in it that I like, but it feels like it just isn't getting any better. Or, rather, it's not getting better in a way that matters to me. And with Firefox and it's massive number of useful extensions (I really miss the web developer toolbar when I'm using Opera), Opera just doesn't feel like as obvious a decision as it used to.

I always feel a little sad when I start moving away from a piece of software that I've loved for a long time, but it's always proved to be for the best. I suppose it will probably be the same way with Opera. Of course, I have to upgrade my system before it's feasible to switch, so maybe Opera 8.0 final (or even 8.1) will be good enough to keep me a loyal user. But I'm not going to hold my breath. On the up side, if I do drop Opera, I'll be moving to Firefox or Konqueror, both of which are old friends, so it won't be as jarring a change as usual.