Leslie Franke

There is a nice discussion going on now over at Opera Watch about why more people do not switch over and use Opera as their main desktop browser of choice. As a current Mozilla Firefox user, who has used IE, Firefox, and Opera in the past, I believe there are several reasons that Opera has not developed a large following.

One of the most important reasons that people have not switched to Opera is a lack of a clearly defined reason to make the switch. A key to marketing is to market a solution not the product. For the average user, what compelling reason is there to switch to Opera? Or put another way, what does Opera add to my browsing experience? Mozilla, with Firefox, pointed to issues such as tabbed browsing, extensions, and most importantly security, which people could easily understand and relate to. With Opera the solution is missing, Opera’s innovation and advanced features do not matter to the average user.

A second reason people avoid switching to Opera is that too many web sites fail to function properly in Opera. Whether it be with Google or other sites, Opera has failed to work on too many times. Users are not going to understand that it may be the web site’s fault, not Opera’s, that the page does not render correctly. Since it works fine in their current browser, they will blame it on Opera and go back to the browser they were using before.

Finally, the look and feel (UI) of the Opera browser is different than Internet Explorer or even Firefox. It is not as smooth as a transition from IE to Opera, as it was from IE to Firefox. Opera is not always easy to use, has a very busy interface, and is missing buttons, like the stop button, on the toolbar. This only adds to the confusion. First impressions are very important. The average user will only quickly give Opera a try. To them the UI is a hurdle to continued usage of the product.

One way for Opera to grow their desktop browser market share is to use their name recognition and leading status in the mobile browser market to encourage and push people to using Opera on the desktop as well. As mobile browsers become more and more sophisticated and people learn to trust Opera on their phone or PDA this may become an easier and easier thing to do. Ultimately, though, Opera needs to find an answer to the question of ‘What compelling reason is there for me to switch to Opera?’. In many ways, like the new Flock browser Opera seems to be a solution without a problem.

Opera has released version 9.0 of its browser adding a number of new features including a built in BitTorrent downloader, content blocker, tab previews and widgets. While it does not have the marketshare of Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, Opera is a free browser with a very loyal user base. Besides a desktop browser Opera is a significant player in the mobile browser market.

BitTorrent support has made its way into this version of Opera. A separate BitTorrent application is no longer needed to download large files. Now, downloading a BitTorrent file works the same as downloading a regular file. The simplicity of the one click download process should appeal to many BitTorrent users. (For more information on BitTorrents please visit Wikipedia.)

Opera Widgets are small applications, such as multimedia, newsfeeds and utility programs that run on the desktop outside of the browser. They are similar in idea to extensions in Mozilla Firefox. As all of Opera’s browsers run on the same core components, widgets holds extreme promise for the future. It should be easy to develop and distribute applications for mobile devices through the use of a widget. While the number of widgets available is currently small, this should grow over time.

Opera’s new content blocker will block various kinds of web page content, including ads, from being displayed in the browser. Opera’s tab preview is also a nice new feature. Hover the mouse over one of the browser’s tabs and a thumbnail appears which will display a screen shot, page title, URL, and other information. Finally, Opera now lets you easily add your favorite sites to the browser’s search engines by right-clicking on a site’s search field.

The major problem that many will find with Opera is the lack of support for many of Google’s services such as Google Notebook and Calendar. The way widgets are implemented can also be annoying. They spawn themselves in new windows, thus removing one of the major benefits of tabbed browsing.

Opera enthusiasts should find that this new release really appeals to them. It remains a solid browser that continues to remain at the forefront of browser innovation. If you have never tried Opera before give it a try. I would still recommend Mozilla Firefox or even Flock over Opera to others, but different features appeal to different users. You can not go wrong selecting Opera has your main browser.

Opera Watch has a informative post about whether we will ever see the Opera Mobile browser for the Palm OS. Basically it boils down to the fact that there is insufficient interest from Palm itself. While the newer Palm browsers are workable alternatives and Opera Mini is full of issues when running on the Palm OS, it would be nice too see Opera develop a browser for the Palm OS, breathing much needed innovation into the marketplace.

Update: 5.31.06. There has been some confusion about Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. They are different products. To see a good example of the difference look at Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PC.

With the release of the public beta version of IE7 more and more articles are being published postulating that Mozilla Firefox is beginning to lose its lead in the browser wars. Many are relating this to the way Netscape lost its lead to IE in the past. Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web, writing on ZDNet, is the latest to put this point in writing. The argument seems to be that Firefox is quickly losing its main advantages and selling points which have contributed in converting 10% to 15% of the market to the browser. Leaving that argument aside for the moment, I often wonder if most of these ‘pundits’ (Richard MacManus excluded) are fully aware of the subject they are writing about. First of all, while I myself use Firefox as my primary browser, Firefox is not now or has been in the past the leader in browser innovation, this honor belongs to Opera. Secondly, these comparisons between the beta version of IE, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8.5 are like comparing apples to oranges. Comparing a beta version of IE with the latest two end user releases from Mozilla and Opera makes little sense. At the very least, use the new beta version of Opera (Opera 9) which has many significant changes (the soon to be released alpha version of Firefox 2 includes many significant changes, also, and will be in end-user release by the time IE 7 hits the market).

The argument that Firefox is losing its edge revolves around three issues. IE 7 is no longer behind the curve on security, Firefox has way too many memory issues, and any advantage Firefox had in the user interface department has been taken away by IE 7. On the security front the new version of IE is a definite improvement. The IE developers have taken some drastic steps to clean up its act (See A Crawler-based Study of Spyware on the Web (PDF) by the University of Washington for a study on the threats facing IE 6 and Firefox 1.5 and please no references to George Ou reporting that Firefox has more security holes than IE). But while the new architecture, in IE, should result in a decrease in the number of overall exploits, IE is still and will continue to be playing catch up in this area.

On the memory front, Firefox is not without its problems and can be improved. At times Firefox can use up a fair amount of memory. Most of this seems to be caused by extensions, though Jesse Ruderman has described a memory leak issue with Gmail, which have been released without the proper testing. The Session saver, NoScript, IE Tab, and a combination of FlashGot and Filterset.G Updater extensions have been found to cause memory leaks (this is why the Mozilla folks need to create a group that much more extensive testing on extensions before they are added to the Mozilla add-on site). In addition, setting the browser history to extremely large values, opening large amount of tabs or keeping high amounts of days in history will increase memory usage. Opening a large amount of tabs can cause a problem as Firefox has a Back-Forward cache that retains the pages for the last five session history entries of each tab. Many of these memory issues have been fixed in Firefox 1.5.0.1, some will be fixed in Firefox 1.5.0.2 (which is scheduled to be released in March), and most will be fixed in Firefox 2.

When it comes to the user interfaces of the browsers, this area is not just about having a built-in RSS reader and tabs. If it was, Opera would be where Firefox currently is. Firefox is more that just a browser, unlike Netscape or even the upcoming new version of IE. It is a browser based platform. Firefox extensions and Greasemonkey scripts are what truly make Firefox stand out from the pack. While many use very few of these extensions, some extensions like the Web Developer extension, for web developers, and the Performancing extension, for bloggers, by themselves make Firefox in indispensable piece of software to have.

While others are worried that Mozilla may be “dropping the ball” with Firefox I see no real cause for concern. Mozilla has a significant challenge ahead of it in continuing to grow its market share, there is no real immediate danger in Firefox losing its place of innovation and leadership in the browser market. It’s very nature leads Firefox to lead IE in security, even in its current state Firefox is more secure than than IE 7. Most of the memory issues are caused by situations the average user and even most heavy users will never encounter and the list of improvements and enhancements to Firefox 2 should allow the browser to continue to be at the forefront in setting the user interface enhancements in the industry.

Update: Ben Goodger has just posted an article about the Firefox memory leak.

Now that the IE7 Beta 2 Preview is available to the public it is a good idea for web developers to start looking at how their web sites render in IE 7. In the past one could always run standalone copies of IE with the latest version of the browser. Unfortunately, the IE6 Cumulative Security Update broke the IE standalone mode causing all kinds of problems. The current IE 7 beta release does include an uninstall, which will return your machine to its previous version of IE, but this is no help to web developers who want to prepare for IE 7 but still need a solid copy of IE6 on their machines for development purposes.

Thanks to Jon Galloway, we can now run IE7 in standalone mode while keeping IE6 as the main IE version. Run IE7 as standalone and keep IE6 as the default browser. Visit Jon’s web site for more information and the script necessary to accomplish this. Basically many of the non-browsing features do not work but it is quire handy to browse and test websites. In addition, justaddwater has reported that “If I start IE6 before IE7, I cannot use the address bar in IE6 (as this loads the page in Firefox which is my default browser). The workaround for me is to start IE7, and then start IE6. Now I can see a web page in IE7 and IE6 side-by side.” Remember this solution is unsupported and thus may cause problems, but many have reported it working so far.

Microsoft has made major news by releasing their first public beta of Internet Explorer 7. This release features many crucial fixes on how IE 7 renders web pages. Many of the most famous CSS bugs have been fixed and transparent PNG support has been included. Some other changes include:

RSS Feeds: IE 7 Beta has a RSS Reader built-in. With a few clicks you can subscribe to a website’s feed. In addition Microsoft has added certain things to the RSS feed to make them a bit easily to read for the average user. Like the built-in readers to Firefox, there is still the major issue of having your RSS reads synchronized across computers. For this reason if you use more than one computer a web based aggregator, such as Bloglines, is a better choice.

Security: IE7 includes phishing protection, checking every website visited in the browser. Of note: when installing IE7 you can also install Microsoft’s Malware Remover application which scans your computer in the background for popular viruses.

User Interface: The overall look and feel of IE has been improved. While it is not the most appealing interface in the world, the look has improved over previous versions. Like most other browsers, IE 7 now includes tabs that are enabled by default. There is also a Quick Tabs button that puts miniature versions of all your open tabs in a single window, much like the Showcase or foXpose extensions in Firefox. As with Firefox, you can have tab groups which can be used to load multiple home pages at startup. In addition, the traditional drop-down menu is no more and the traditional place for many browsers buttons, like Stop and Home buttons, have been moved. IE 7 also features zoom controls which can increase the size of both the text and images on a page and a shrink-to-fit option among the print choices.

If you want to update to IE 7 be forewarned, the IE 7 beta will replace IE 6 on your machine. This may not be a big deal to many users if you like the changes and are willing to live with the crashes and bugs that exist in beta software. If you are a web developer this presents a problem though. The usual hack to get two versions of IE running on the same machine has created a whole host of problems for many. This has always been a hassle for web developers and will create even bigger issues here with so many dramatic changes. While developing pages, confirming that your page will work correctly in IE 7 in the future and currently in IE 6 will continue to remain a hassle.

Overall, IE 7 is a big step forward. I would recommend, though, that most users, and heavy IE users in particular, stay away from this beta preview. Robert Scoble has posted about a new video with the IE development team on Channel 9. For Firefox users, popular plug-ins such as IE View and IE Tab will now use IE 7. There are still too many issues with the browser for it to be used on a regular basis. Remember, there is a reason a application has been labeled a beta version.