the last time when I used Opera browser was on my Sony Ericsson W580i and C702i
I remember Opera Mini being the only browser that worked properly on my old Sony Ericsson Xperia X8, all other ones just worked very slowly to the point of being entirely unusable (even Opera Mobile which was a different browser than Opera Mini).
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Opera was useful to me at three very specific points in time for very specific reasons:
When I built my first PC out of old scrap parts in the early 2000s, the only halfway modern browser that was still compatible with Windows 95 and a 486 CPU was Opera. Not the latest version, but new enough to be usable. This version, which came with a permanent toolbar urging users to purchase a full license, already had tabs.
I did not have broadband Internet until 2006. Even 56k modems didn’t work with the awful telephone line we had - I had to make do with 48k. The proxy service with compression Opera came with was the only way to browse then current websites without waiting for half an hour for a page to load.
When I bought my first touchscreen phone in early 2009, the LG KP500, a Java-based phone with only 2G and no WiFi that pretended it was a smartphone, Opera Mini was the only browser that was usable, again thanks to its proxy service.
Outside of these niche use cases, I never saw a reason to use Opera instead of Firefox. While it was an important innovator in the beginning, for me personally at least, it has always been nothing but an “emergency” browser and ever since it was bought out by a Chinese firm and switched over to Chromium, there was no reason left to use it other than brand attachment.
Just install firefox / waterfox / etc. and be done with it.
…groundfox, and airfox! With all the foxes of infinity collected, I can finally be free.
And heartfox! By their powers combined…
darkenergyfox has entered the chat
Long ago, the four foxes lived together in harmony. But everything changed when the firefox attacked…
Due to recent scientific advances, we now know that firefox is actually oxygen fox combining with other molecular foxes and waterfox is one of those products.
Or floorp
Vivaldi Browser is headed by some of the original founders of Opera ASA and is a reasonably good alternative to Google Chrome, MS Edge, Safari and new Opera itself.
Alternatively, use Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox/Waterfox/Iceraven.
Vivaldi is very pretty, but certainly more on the heavy side of the chromium spin-offs, and also they won’t fight the manifest v3 implementation.
Not sure how they could fight manifest v3, it’s Google making an (objectively bad) internal code decision that has knock-on effects for Chromium and everyone else.
FWIW they are going to try and keep things working and are looking for workarounds
I don’t want to touch any Chromium-based browser. Firefox all the way.
Somebody here is going to have a reason: why shouldn’t I use Safari?
I think there are some better alternatives out there such as Firefox + uBlock Origin extension, Brave, Vivaldi (maybe Arc? Haven’t tried it yet) that gives you some extra features that are missing in safari (for example Multi-account containers, vertical tabs, split tabs,… just to mention the ones I enjoy the most)
But if you just want a browser that works from a normal usage I don’t see nothing wrong in using Safari.
+it uses an engine different from Blink (aka Chromium) which keeps a little bit of variety in the browser engine market. So while using Safari you’re also doing something good for the internet imho
My biggest attachment to Safari is how well integrated it is with the rest of the Mac. Fingerprint integration for passwords, gesture integration with the track pad, seamless handoff between phone and computer—these things are somewhat reproducible with Firefox and extensions, but it is nowhere near as perfect as it is when you’ve got the browser and the whole OS designed to work in a coordinated dance with each other.
Hard to disagree with that… the flawless integration of every piece in Apple’s “ecosystem” is hard to reproduce (even if all those features can be achieved as you were saying, it wouldn’t be “as flawless”) Just maybe pair it with an Ad and Tracker blocker extension like AdGuard
Just for the bullshit with the video players i would never use safari.
What bullshit is that? I’ve never had an issue watching pirated content.
Apparently There is beef between apple and google, and google won’t allow you to watch content in 4K on their video players (say youtube) for newer chip like the M1. There is no sound explanation apart from being a petty org. So to be able to watch stuff in the resolution you like you need to enable dev mode and add “experimental features” and some arent even on after that. Ask me why apple doesn’t battle it? I didn’t care enough to find out at that point, they’re both assholes fighting but the users pay. I simply switched to firefox on macbook pro and i can actually use a retina to its full potential. Can enable 4K there on video players with no hassle.
While inferior to Firefox due to reason outlined by another user, it is infinitely better than going with Chromium-based browsers.
Keep on using it if you feel comfortable with it
As a developer, Safari is the browser that supports the least standards and is holding the browser ecosystem back.
Now that’s a reason I can get behind.
furthermore, they add nonstandard features to their browser(along with chrome), which makes it difficult to make websites look the same across browsers.
fortunately, I can test those websites beforehand since we have webkit-based epiphany on GNU/Linux(the engine which safari uses).
but other developers, especially those who are on windows can’t, since safari is mac-only.I have a special stylesheet to fix safari(and chrome) styling.
otherwise it’s a fine lightweight browser(blessed be KHTML).
IE died, and Safari took up the mantle as the asshole of the internet.
It should be held back. Although I dislike the company, I believe safari’s market share and use of an alternative browser engine is important in keeping google from closing the web.
God damn it. I just switched to Opera because of the “Hey get off Chrome” posts like 2 weeks ago.
I have Firefox installed but don’t love it. Need a “and the next closest good mobile browser is X”
Brave, Firefox Focus and Mull are decent options for mobile users.
Not brave.
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What is Firefox lacking for you to love it?
Not who you asked, but the tab islands is my favorite feature from opera
Fair, that is pretty awesome feature, especially for the tab sprawl in this day and age.
I (obviously) use Firefox, and I had the same problem, and found the “Tree Style Tab” extension solves the same problem for me, however it does it in a very different way.
Instead of having your tabs along the top of the window, your tabs are kept in a sidebar, and vertically. Opening new tabs from an already open page makes the new tabs nest under the original tab. You can collapse and expand whole trees of tabs, and move them around should you need to.
It also integrates nicely with the “Container Tabs” putting a colored band next to the tabs belonging to each container.
The tabs being vertical also means that you can always read the titles of the tabs, they don’t get “squished”.
It does cost a chunk of screen real estate, but for me the organization is worth it.
BTW: The extension doesn’t itself hide the tabbar at the top of the window, but that can be hidden with a relatively easy modification to a file.
That tree tabs sounds awesome. I’m using container tabs already and it’s greatly helped my tabs become less of a mess. But keeping them organized based on which tab I spawned them from sounds great, too. And tbh, it not hiding the original tab bar sounds even better because then I can combine the organization of container tabs with the historical origin of the tabs from tree style tabs and just use whichever one feels more intuitive in the moment to find the tab I’m looking for (or to traverse open tabs for cleanup).
Awesome to hear, and good luck with it!
I just want to mention that there is a lot of configuration options in Tree Style Tab, so if it doesn’t behave exactly how you want it to, there’s a high likelihood that you just need to tweak the settings a bit.
PSA: The old Opera guys have a new browser, Vivaldi.
It’s quite nice and I use it daily.
It’s a rebranded chromium with some extra bloat. Just like his older brother Chinese Chromium, Opera, and their edgy cousin, Microsoft Chromium. All following the example of Papa Chrome.
Don’t forget about their outdated-hIpster friend, Brave Chromium.
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Last I looked, I couldn’t find a Linux version of Vivaldi. Which is strange as I’m pretty sure their beta releases did. Been a hot minute since I’ve looked again. Other than being chromium based, I liked what I seen. It’s almost like kde developed it with its staggering feature set lol.
It’s available for Linux.
Vivaldi has the best tab management ever.
That’s what I thought until I installed Firefox with Sidebery and oh man, that’s another level. It required quite a bit of configuration make it really fit my needs, but when you configure it, it’s incredible.
Thanks for telling me about sidebery!
Yep. I daily drive Vivaldi on both macOS and Android.
I love it. The sidebar is a great feature; I stash my extension icons there. The theme is highly customizable; I have mine set to something similar to the Opera dark theme.
I don’t use the email or calendar features. The great thing about Vivaldi is that they provide a ton of power user features, but don’t shove it in your face. It’s super easy to turn off the things you don’t want and to turn on the things you do want.
I do use UBO, but they also have a builtin ad blocker if you want to use that instead.
The settings page is very extensive. Tons of customization. True to the Opera legacy!
The sidebar is a great feature; I stash my extension icons there.
That’s amazing, I didn’t know you could do that. I’ve been using Vivaldi since the alpha days and I had no clue you could drag the extensions there.
It’s just another flavour of Chromium though isn’t it?
For gecko the best alternative to old opera and Vivaldi I found so far is floorp
Yup
I looked it up and it looks great. Currently downloading it to give it a try. I wonder how it compares to LibreWolf though.
Much more UI customization and a shitton of power user stuff too
Still chromium, no thanks.
Fair, site compatibility is needed for my work so I unfortunately must use chromium
Quit the job, work in Firefox only environments, send the message /s
I’ve heard multiple people say this as the reason for not using Firefox, but I can’t remember if I ever had sites not working on FF. Does it happen often for you?
Not often, but it does happen enough times that I have Chrome installed as a backup in case something doesn’t work. It’s usually the in-house websites (for instance, the ones made for tracking timesheets) that break on Firefox. Not all of them break, of course, but if you’re required to submit a form via a particular in-house website and it doesn’t load on Firefox, then you’re kind of forced to have a backup browser at minimum.
It doesn’t happen often enough that I would say that using Firefox is problematic, but if you combine that with people’s inherent aversion to change, you can start to see why people are so resistant to even trying Firefox. Unfortunately, it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the less people use Firefox, the less the web development teams at these companies would be incentivized to make sure their website works on Firefox
Yeah unfortunately, things like Apple Business Manager, ezoffice, and our KVM software refuse to work on non chromium browsers, no matter how many user agent spoofing extensions I install
My power got shut off one day before December last year. I thought the bills were all being paid cause I received no notice of delinquency. Turns out, my electric company purged my account.
When I tried to make a new account, going through multiple attempts where the only thing that worked right was their shitty captcha (select all motorcycles bullshit), I finally had to call them. Turns out, soon as I switched to a chromium browser, it allowed me to complete the registration.
I told the rep on the phone, a nice lady who was as shocked as I was that Firefox wasn’t allowing registration to complete, to convey to their IT team that a) removing the accounts of paying customers is a really awful policy (who logs into their power companies site after setting up auto pay?) and b) that catering to a single line of browser was not bad practice. She said she’d pass it on.
I don’t think she passed it on.
Happened to me during an internship, I was really frustrated to install this on my machine.
You can try floorp, it’s Firefox + some of Vivaldi
Yeah
Huge fan of Vivaldi for both pc and mobile!
Isn’t Vivaldi also shady?
Maybe a tiny bit unstable and proprietary, but I don’t think they have had any controversies or shady action.
I loved some of the functionality Vivaldi adds (split tabs, tab groups, etc) but I couldn’t take the instability that came with it. That thing crashed more times in the 6 months I used it than Firefox or Chrome ever have for me total I swear to god.
I use Vivaldi on macOS and Android.
I’ve never had stability issues.
Not to mention it has the best ad and tracker blocking I’ve seen without extensions, I’ve never used UBO or anything and still have zero issues on YouTube with ads or performance problems.
Yeah yeah I know, it’s still based on chromium, but until Firefox gets a suitable alternative to tab stacking and the side bar (ive already tried all of the solutions people claim is good enough or “the same” and find them all lacking) ill stick with V.
Side bar was what I miss most from GX when I tried it.
I keep revisiting Vivaldi once every few months, and get reminded of why I uninstall it within minutes. They remove the option of changing DNS servers from the configuration UI and moved it into flags. I have absolutely no idea why they do that, and its a philosophy I vehemently disagree with.
the ad blocking on its own is just amazing, blocks some trackers that even UBO misses sometimes, rarely, but does happen.
This is unlikely to get the Opera GX fanboys to switch.
Good article though. Fuck that noise.
I don’t know if there are any Opera GX fanboys lol
Why would we need them to switch? Shouldn’t we just leave them be if they’re happy that way?
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More importantly, using Firefox (or any of its forks) would mean less people are dependent on Google’s Chromium. With less people depending on Google’s Chromium, the less Google can swing its weight around, imposing its dictum on unsuspecting users.
Someday this will be Firefox too. You used to be cool Opera, but all good things to poop one day go.
at least someone will be able to fork Firefox’s code, unlike the sad story with Opera’s old Presto engine, that due to being proprietary suffered an inevitable dead.
Firefox has so many issues. I do hear people say that if you use the nightly build it gets better, but e.g. the app store version on a mobile has a lot of stuff turned off.
I still use it, both on mobile and desktop, but its main appeal for me right now is that it is “not Chrome”. The 5% breakage of Firefox is nowhere close to the 50% enshittification of Chrome:-(.
but e.g. the app store version on a mobile has a lot of stuff turned off.
Considering that the chrome app does not even have a way to install extensions, this is still a massive win for Firefox.
Mozilla has also started to make more and more extensions compatible with the mobile app recently, see https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2023/11/01/is-your-extension-ready-for-firefox-for-android/
It does keep getting better and better (while Chrome gets shittier and shittier).
In the olden days they had 100% support for extentions
Well put
Thank you for the comment in spite of the downvoters:-)
The Mozilla circlejerk is strong (and pathetic) on the Fediverse.
😅Love the optimism here! And Firefox fanboyism here! I’m a FF user too, but if you think FF is immune to going down shitty paths in the future like almost all well-intentioned tech products eventually do, there is antifreeze in your kool-aid, and I’m afraid you’ve gone blind.
Mozilla has bad resource management, that’s a fact.
However turning into a loan shark app business? I really don’t think so. Unless another browser enters the market and takes off (which is extremely difficult given the tons of features browsers are built to support for all sorts of websites) Mozilla never has to worry that much about money since Google is their top funder; and Google’s main reason to fund them is to not deal with all sorts of legal issues and fines they’ll recieve for creating a monopoly.
Didn’t Mozilla just do a big roadmap talking about what they plan to do in the future and it was basically all AI and Activism with no mention of Firefox?
I hope to see Firefox grow, but who knows. Especially if antitrust actions or a continued drop in Firefox usage cuts off the Google money and makes Mozilla go poof.
But of course at least Gecko is Foss so it can’t disappear entirely if the community doesn’t let it.
Oh come now. Who would have predicted Opera would have ended up like this? Even with hindsight this dark path is hard to predict bit the overall trend is not.
Mozilla has created something of value and it has amassed a growing audience. If you are willing to invest in your confidence, I would happily short you in 10years or less, it’s nearly ripe for corruption and not at all immune from something similar to what has become of Opera. Trusting that Google will doing anything consistent is another lesson in ignoring trends.
Can you name any other non profits, around for as long as mozilla, and as large as mozilla, that have become “something similar” to a Chinese malware producer?
Besides opera? Its a decent case example. openai started as nonprofit. You think they have your best interest in mind right now?
Is openai similar to a Chinese malware producer?
What happened with Opera was very predictable. When it comes to companies and corporations, and when their software products are proprietary, the pattern is always the same. They make something that might be good, maybe very good. Good enough to get some level of popularity. That’s how they start. Over time though, the profit driven model inherent in corporations pressures them to implement questionable features - things that might generate more revenue, but are things people might tolerate at best. At some point they become more anti-features than questionable. And eventually both the company and their product devolve into garbage and we find out they’ve been basically an arm of the surveillance state the whole time.
Mozilla is not immune to corruption. The deal people are referring to here is that Mozilla sets the built in default search engine to whoever is the highest bidder. If I recall, there was a brief period where either Microsoft or Yahoo was going to be that company. But generally it’s Google. And not everything Mozilla does with Firefox is considered good for privacy. That’s why we have smaller projects like Mull - basically somebody takes Firefox, removes all the problematic parts, and adds extra security and privacy features.
But those projects have a tendency to come and go, because maintaining a complex piece of software like a browser is challenging and costly, and those projects do not generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining.
So Mozilla isn’t perfect, but they are a nonprofit organization, which does provide them with a revenue model that allows them to strike a decent balance, and on the whole Firefox is a net good, and has always been one of the most important bulwarks for the free and open web. And the fact that Firefox is entirely open-source forces them to stay good.
The moment Opera was sold to China it was obvious that it’s time to jump ship.
Opera invested $30 million in the crypto startup ICST that same year, and the startup’s CEO was arrested four days later for financial crimes.
LOL
Well, some years ago the crypto startup was all the heat.
Is this a shitpost or is that idiot actually telling me not to use Opera because of alleged investor fraud in 2020?
I don’t give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the “Don’t be Evil” clause from their code of conduct. If you want me to stop using Opera then you’ll have to give me a reason about the specifications of the program, not about the company’s petty crimes due to Chinese regulatory failures.
I don’t give a fuck about that, mate, when the other option is a Monopoly that literally removed the “Don’t be Evil” clause from their code of conduct.
That’s not the only other option. Use Firefox.
I would if they brought back manual cookie handling like it used to. Just feels like a downgrade in features, tbh.
Yeah, if I stopped using/buying a product just because the company behind it did something slightly shitty, I wouldn’t have any belongings, food, etc.
I use Firefox just as much as I use opera gx, I use them on each of my browsers. Opera gx is more primary but yeah…
I dont know what I would replace it with. Brave, I guess?
I use Brave on occasions and it’s pretty good. But for some reason I just can’t seem to make it my everyday driver.
A couple of people have made a good argument for Brave.
Not that it matters either way but they didn’t remove the clause, they just moved it from the introduction to the closing statement. Which clickbait articles all reported as “removed”.
But it was always meaningless anyway.
People in here dropping facts on me.
I’m just tired as the next person about posts that provide a million half-assed reasons to not use anything but Firefox. But honestly If we don’t stop these places from building dossiers on us and locking us out of websites that are unsanctioned by them, It will a erode our opportunities in years to come.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like it matters. Lexis-Nexis knows every nickel you ever spend and every creditor that ever ran a check on you, Google knows what type of porn you like to watch, tik tok and opera are storing everything that you’ve ever been into in a place that can be retrieved by other governments.
At some point we’re going to have to take our privacy more seriously. Preferably before 1984 actually becomes real.
If you could just provide some citations about Opera intrusively tracking and building profiles then I’d happily switch. The thing is, though, it’s still leagues better than Chromium in that regard.
Opera IS a Chromium browser, you doofus!
Ah wow you’re right, ever since Opera 15 they dropped the presto engine. Still, my point was supposed to be they’re much more privacy friendly than Google Chrome, and that still stands to be argued.
For what it’s worth their privacy policy does say they gather telemetry and they did pay how many billions for the company?
Almost everybody else is gathering telemetry as well obviously. The actual root of the concern is that the companies are based in China, you know the great firewall of China, China. The Chinese government holds a stranglehold on the companies that operate within them. For example if you have a US company and you want to do some business in China you have to find a Chinese partner company to sponsor you. Everything you store there everything you touch runs through the Chinese government. If they want any of the data, that required to be given access.
If you remember when Google went to open a data center in China there was a pretty big kerfuffle. It was because the Chinese government was going to be handed keys to the kingdom for anything that was stored in China. For better or for worse it’s just how they operate.
You may not feel the same way but I’m sure you at least get the concern there.
Personally I try not to use Google integrated Chrome or Microsoft integrated chromium. I still use brave when I need a Chrome browser and that’s not the best either. They’d sell me up the river if they decided they needed a buck.
I honestly wish we had more Firefox competition. And unified plug-in languages. The stuff that Opera and brave are providing aren’t difficult to mimic. And I really like there being developers fighting YouTube ad blocking and website pop-ups and pay wall bypasses.
I’m not saying oh my God they’re going to rape you over the coals right now but do consider that the people that are making these crazy ass posts aren’t delusional or entirely wrong, and do use who’s getting your data on your consideration.
Usually the saying is “rake you over the coals” but I kind of like your version in the context.
If you’ve done nothing wrong then you’ve got nothing to fear. If you’ve got something to hide then you shouldn’t even be here.
20 years later you’re denied a house loan because your internet records show you went to a fascist website. Or an anti-fascist website, whatever floats your boat.
Things that were acceptable or slightly garish 20 years ago are now grounds for dismissal at a job, you know.
You’ve had your chance now they have the mandate. If you’ve changed your mind I’m afraid it’s too late.
Nah, you’re conflating wrong with unlawful
People still use Opera?
The true Opera fans moved to Vivaldi.
All that is left are those who got caught.
Actually after Opera switched engine from Presto to Blink and become another Chromium-based browser I was a bit lost, and switched between different browsers while never really had that “good connection” I had with Opera, but I eventually switched to Firefox and I don’t really see any other alternative right now. It just works, and supports free and open web.
Tried using Vivaldi at one point and I really liked it but it was noticeably slower than both Firefox and chrome even though it’s just another chromium fork. I’ve since switched back to Firefox and haven’t looked back.
firefox is slower for me lmao, still use it but compared to vivaldi, it uses more cpu and ram somehow
I don’t see regular Opera being used, but often Opera GX. Their marketing is so powerful, and those edgy features attract gamers.
Hindenburg is an investment firm that researches publicly-traded companies and shorts their stocks if they find sufficient evidence of investor fraud before releasing its report.
What a wild business plan. I’m amazed it’s legal.
It’s kinda scummy to manipulate the market as such, but it’s much more scummy to partake in the fraud.
They’re like the anti-hero of this story.
Hilarious name too, honestly.
The Crash n’ Burn Bois
Short sellers provide benefit to society by finding and shaming doomed businesses so they fail faster and don’t suck up as many resources.
They also have a proud history of uncovering outright fraud.
In business, the people complaining loudest about short sellers are emperors with no clothes.
