I guess if you know me or if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that for the past few years I’ve been a huge fan of Opera, and it’s pretty much the only browser I’ve been using. I did always have Firefox installed for the sake of seeing how my various web pages look in it, and every time there was a new version of Firefox, I did give it a try. But so far Opera had always been better. Why? Because of a lot of cool features that it has. The smallest little things that make my life easier. I like the way Opera handles downloads, I like the Opera speed dial feature, I like the fact that it’s toolbars are customizable since I have a habit of making my toolbars as thin as possible [using as little rows as possible], I like the fact that it had lower memory usage than Firefox, and I like it’s speed of loading pages. And these are just to mention a very few. So I guess it’s now clear what I mean, when I say “I just switched my default browser to Firefox”! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Firefox finally sold me!
About a week ago I installed the new Firefox 3 Beta. It was just supposed to satisfy my curiosity, but that wasn’t exactly what happened. For starters I opened up a bunch of tabs and had a look at my mem usage. Low. Lower than Opera!! Then I loaded a few pages and darn it, this thing’s fast! It’s now faster than Opera! And unlike Opera it doesn’t simply re-display the entire already loaded info from the cash [which in case of Opera, usually means you have to refresh the page a few times in order to see the changes that you just made to your web page]. Then I had a look at the add-ons … ah well. Speed Dial, only better: tabbed and completely customizable. The toolbars are also fully [and I mean FULLY] customizable, and quite neat, clean and thin. There’s also this other add-on that can handle your downlaods and alike in a neat, auto-hidable sidebar. And again, this is only to name a few. It’s also the case that Firefox passed the Acid 2 test with no problem, and had a pretty good score in the impossible Acid 3 test as well. And then of course there’s the issues that Opera has with handling things like xml pages. If your xml doesn’t have a defined style [for example if you’re looking at somebody’s pure xml APML or something similar], Opera will end up showing you nothing. But Firefox can show you the pure xml with no problem. And I could go on about this for a few more hours, but lets just say that Firefox seems to have finally done it. I’m now very much looking forward to the alpha. Lets see how that one will look like. =)