Mozilla vs Opera

[Gregg Bolinger]

Which do you like better? Which has better support for 3rd party plug-ins (Flash, JS, Applets, etc) I have used both, just wanted other opinions. I am looking for a solid IE alternative.
Thanks.

[Thomas Paul]

I like Mozilla better than Opera.

[Ashok Mash]

Opera.
IMHO, Mozilla might be closer to IE if it's about compatibility with pluggins etc, but Opera gives you the ultimate browsing experience.

[Corey McGlone]

Well, if Mozilla develops a solid blast of radioactive breath like its big brother, I take Mozilla in 3 rounds by TKO.

[Jessica Sant]

Originally posted by Corey McGlone:
Well, if Mozilla develops a solid blast of radioactive breath like its big brother, I take Mozilla in 3 rounds by TKO.

I think we now might have to move this thread to Blatant Advertising because of Corey's shameless plug to his own website :roll:
but anyway-- I've not used Mozilla much yet (just downloaded it). I like Opera -- but it definatley has some issues with plugins and some of the fancy JavaScript sites.

[Corey McGlone]

Originally posted by Jessica Sant:

I think we now might have to move this thread to Blatant Advertising because of Corey's shameless plug to his own website :roll:

Bah, I thought you'd never recognize me in my Godzilla costume! Foiled again!

[Gregg Bolinger]

Ok, so back to the topic. Do you think that Mozilla or Opera can replace IE? Or am I going to run into JS problems on web pages where the JS was written with IE in mind? Is there any solution for this?
And I realize that it is mostly 3rd party support that is going to fail because of this Windows World we all live in, no one wants to program their plug-in for any other browser. What about Netscape? Opinions?

[Ashok Mash]

Mozilla IS Netscape.
What is Mozilla?
Mozilla is a project to continue Netscape Communicator as an open project. The project is maintained by employees of Netscape (now a division of AOL), RedHat, some other companies, as well as contributors from the community.
Ashok.

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
.. back to the topic. Do you think that Mozilla or Opera can replace IE?

Keeping Microsoft's business practices in mind; I am expecting a future version of IE to have all user-friendly features of Opera and other features of Mozilla copied shamelessly

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Ashok Manayangath:
Mozilla IS Netscape.
What is Mozilla?
Mozilla is a project to continue Netscape Communicator as an open project. The project is maintained by employees of Netscape (now a division of AOL), RedHat, some other companies, as well as contributors from the community.
Ashok.

I know that, however, Nestscape is still considered a seperate project. You can't tell me they are identical. So that's why I specified it seperately from Mozilla.

[R K Singh]

IE is best ....
why dont you want to use IE ??

[Gregg Bolinger]

Because IE doesn't work in Linux. And all the other ones do.

[Garann Means]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
Ok, so back to the topic. Do you think that Mozilla or Opera can replace IE? Or am I going to run into JS problems on web pages where the JS was written with IE in mind? Is there any solution for this?

1. The problem with web pages where the JS was written with IE in mind is that the JS was written with IE in mind. There are standards for JavaScript which browsers and web developers alike have ignored for years. But IE and Netscape have done a lot better at complying with the standards in their latest versions, making it increasingly likely that HTML, JavaScript, and the DOM can really be standards, rather than being an unmaintainable kludge by the time they're implemented.
2. As far as a solution (and this is going to sound reactionary..), don't visit pages that refuse to comply with the standards (..or at least hack around them with an oldschool browser detect). If someone has written a page so that it requires IE, they don't deserve your attention. I remember having to have three browsers on my machine to see the web, and that sucked. It sucked even more trying to develop pages for all the browsers and all their widely differing interpretations of the W3C standards.
Opera and Moz are both good browsers. I've never seen the hard evidence, but Opera is supposed to be more compliant (but it's also more strict - Moz may be a better choice for this reason, since we haven't quite gotten to standards-compliant utopia). The latest releases of the big browsers aren't bad either. If you have one of those four, or any other respectable browser, you have every right to expect that a page will come to you. You shouldn't need all four loaded on your machine. Things appear to be improving, so whichever browser you pick, try and have faith that the IE-only DOM will soon be a thing of the past.
Phew.
g.

[Jim Yingst]

why dont you want to use IE ??
In addition to "because it works in Linux", other popular reasons:
Microsoft is Eeevil. Many people don't want to support them, and want to minimize their dependence on them (Of course, many of these people are also using Linux, so...)
And if you're a web developer, you should be in the habit of testing your web pages on a variety of different browsers (and different versions of the same browser) to see how crappy your pages look if you've depended on nonstandard features (or standard features which aren't properly implemented by some browsers).

[Marcus Green]

I like moz and opera, however Moz gives me a nice web editor and email client plus I believe the long term virtues of open source mean it's rendering engine is going to be around for a long, long time.
Can't beat opera for WAP testing thoug.
Marcus

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Garann Rose Means:

2. As far as a solution (and this is going to sound reactionary..), don't visit pages that refuse to comply with the standards (..or at least hack around them with an oldschool browser detect). If someone has written a page so that it requires IE, they don't deserve your attention.

Actually, a page deserves my attention if it provides useful information and isn't too painful to view. If that means that I have to have IE installed on my PC then so be it. The fact is, that very few sites are making money any more so we really don't have the right to expect that a webmaster is going to check his site in three different browsers just so that we can be different and use Opera. The only one you are punishing by not going to a site is yourself. The webmaster is probably relieved that you are using his bandwidth.

[Simon Brown]

At work, IE is the best for one reason - I can't get through our NTLM-based firewall. :roll:

[Garann Means]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:

...The fact is, that very few sites are making money any more so we really don't have the right to expect that a webmaster is going to check his site in three different browsers just so that we can be different and use Opera. The only one you are punishing by not going to a site is yourself. The webmaster is probably relieved that you are using his bandwidth.

That's the point of pushing standards compliance - so no one has to check their site in three different browsers anymore. And, in the interim, I think it's much more reasonable for a webmaster to say to her users "this site will appear with very generic, Lynx-like formatting if you're not using a modern browser" than "this site appears to be blank because you're not viewing it in Netscape 4.7." Moreover, standards-compliant code is vastly easier to write than even the most elegant of the old hacks, more maintainable (for those webmasters who aren't making money and don't have time after work to deal with a website), and will last longer. Perhaps I should speak only for myself this time when I say that if a web developer hasn't done the cost-benefit analysis there and gotten with the program, I'm going to close the page after about the second JavaScript error.
As far as a webmaster being relieved that his bandwidth isn't getting used, I've yet to hear a webmaster exclaim, "Thank goodness! I've only got three users!" Generally it's the opposite. Most people don't establish a website with the hope that the rest of the world will ignore it.
g.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Garann Rose Means:

As far as a webmaster being relieved that his bandwidth isn't getting used, I've yet to hear a webmaster exclaim, "Thank goodness! I've only got three users!" Generally it's the opposite. Most people don't establish a website with the hope that the rest of the world will ignore it.
g.

Actually what was said was "The webmaster is probably relieved that you are using his bandwidth."
Anyway, this has been great discussion though I don't know if I am anywhere closer to choosing a browser over IE. From what everyone has said you almost need 3 browsers to surf affectivly. Oh well. I supose I will run Moz and Opera and use whichever one I need for whichever page needs it.
Thanks to everyone.
[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Gregg Bolinger ]

[Randall Twede]

i havent tried Opera. i do use Mozilla now. it has a problem running applets but someone told me i can download a different plug-in for it from the netscape site. i clicked a link for the MSN gaming zone once and got a page saying my browser could not render the site. i thought that was pretty lame on their part. i suppose if i really wanted to go there i could use IE. i have found that mozilla is fater than IE5.5 and i love the way you can disable popups. it also has feature for webmasters though i havent used them. i hated netscape 4.7 so i was surprised at how good mozilla is.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Garann Rose Means:

That's the point of pushing standards compliance - so no one has to check their site in three different browsers anymore.

Exactly. You check it in one browser. That one browser should be the one your users use. In my case, that means IE.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Garann Rose Means:
As far as a webmaster being relieved that his bandwidth isn't getting used, I've yet to hear a webmaster exclaim, "Thank goodness! I've only got three users!" Generally it's the opposite. Most people don't establish a website with the hope that the rest of the world will ignore it.

I guess humor hasn't been discovered on your planet yet.

[Garann Means]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
I guess humor hasn't been discovered on your planet yet.

Guess not. Why, did you say something funny?
Look, I'm not attacking you, or your website. I hold an opinion that development for one browser is not ok, you disagree, fine. Discuss it or drop it, don't flame me.

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Exactly. You check it in one browser. That one browser should be the one your users use. In my case, that means IE.

Anyway, you make my point for me. A lot of webmasters will continue to prefer the short-term benefits of coding to one browser to the short-term investment/long-term benefit of coding to the standards, and there's a need for educated "consumers" of websites, or there's going to be no impetus for those webmasters to change their minds. I stand by my original argument that a website, even if it's not for profit, is a product, and you don't have to buy a product you can't use. People don't build websites for no one to look at, and an elitist attitude regarding the value of a webmaster's content being worth the hassle of downloading and installing the webmaster's browser of choice is ultimately short-sighted, given better alternatives for both webmaster and website user.
g.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Ok, my topic has been sabotaged. This is not a discussion on browser programming. I simply wanted to know which browsers out of Moz and Opera and possibly netscape do people use and like?
I realize that I asked about the JS problem with other browsers, but please do not continue to debate webmaster page design in the topic and/or start your own discussion.
Thanks.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
I simply wanted to know which browsers out of Moz and Opera and possibly netscape do people use and like?

I like Mozilla. Once you figure out how to use the options you can control all sorts of nasty things like pop-ups.

[Rob Ross]

I have not tried Mozilla. But I have been using Opera at home for about 3 months now and I really like it. It give me a lot more control than IE in terms of security settings, and it seems to work with the major sites I've tried, with the exception of Hotmail....for some reason it won't work there, even when I set the Browser identifier as "IE 5". I think MS is purposely making non IE-browsers not play well with hotmail.
So other than hotmail, I've had a pretty good time using Opera.

[Jim Yingst]

This topic has inspired me to spend more time over the last week with both browsers to check them out, and I'm finding myself drawn to Mozilla. Like Randall, I got fed up with Netscape back around 4.7, and hadn't really given Mozilla much of a chance. I looked at an early beta (or alpha?) and was unimpressed, but things have come along substantially since then. There's a certain learning curve involved in learning all the features of a given browser, and maybe I just haven't spent enough time with Opera to fully appreciate it, but here's my current list of reasons I like Mozilla:

• Custom skins. I particularly like Skypilot.
• Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts & Plugins -> Allow scripts to open unrequested windows. Uncheck. 'Nuff said. [Hmmm... I guess Opera has this too, now that I look again. Well, anyway, it's cool.]
• Look at these chars: -- A -- A -- A -- Mozilla displays "A" just like "A", which should of course be "A". Opera chokes.
• In general, more customization and control over browser behavior seems possible in Mozilla.
• Definitely more cool-looking toys under Tools -> Web Development. The DOM Inspector and JavaScript debugger will warrant further investigation.
• Mozilla is free. Opera asks for money. (Though they're not overly aggressive about it, I admit.)
• I think the open source model will allow Mozilla to keep pushing forwards with cool enhancements. Not sure Opera will be able to keep up in the long run.

[ July 30, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Randall Twede]

i have had no problem using hotmail with mozilla. as i mentioned though, i couldnt access MSN gaming zone. i agree that it seems MS is using IE only features.

[Anonymous]

I like Opera better since it's less memory greedy - just check it out with your task manager - it takes two times less than Mozilla.