Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Opera, anyone?

Changing browsers is like changing banks.

I've had a quick look at most browsers that come along and keep six up-to-date for various purposes (most are variations of Firefox). But, I've relied on Safari and Firefox. The latest Firefox won't run Rapport on 10.6.8, so I do all my banking on Safari. But I keep hitting news sites that tell me Safari is out of date, so back to Firefox.

Recently, I tried Opera. It is so much faster than I was used to, I have spent the last two days organizing bookmarks from the other two browsers. I hope it's worth spending the time. So far, I haven't found an site that Opera can't cope with, but it doesn't load the Rapport extension.

Anyone else using Opera routinely?

This is too bizarre?! :

I've accessed this site on Firefox and Safari as normal. But, when I try to access FTM with Opera, I get a homepage that features Tacit wearing bunny ears!

This is only in the last 24 hours, but it is happening now. It is the same address, copied and pasted into the browser. I don't know how I can get two completely different sites with the same address?

Anyone else?

See my just-posted thread in FineTunedMac Feedback: "Was FTM hijacked?"
I was/am using Firefox 38.0.5, and this site is now loading extremely slowly, which it wasn't a few minutes ago.

See my reply to Grelber in the Feedback forum.

Yeah, I had to clear the cache.

I tried OPERA a couple of years ago and there was a problem with importing/exporting BOOKMARKS from another browser or file. In fact, I seem to recall, it could not be done as one file transfer.

I haven't tried since. Has the current version of OPERA re-vamped this process . . . i.e. like the simplicity of doing so with SAFARI and other browsers?

Importing bookmarks from Firefox was a major PITA. The bookmarks were exported from Firefox in html format, but Opera imported them in seemingly random folders and alphabetical order. It's taken hours of reorganization. Mind, I have had the chance to delete many obsolete bookmarks and reorder everything.

It was worth the trouble. Opera is now my default browser. The deciding factor was Google Maps. I have been planning a trip to Spain and used all three browsers for the travel sites and maps. Opera is the star. So fast! Safari was the slowest, Firefox a bit better, but Opera rendered each map at least twice as fast.

I still use Firefox for my banking, because Rapport will not work with Opera.

That's actually quite odd. When you tested Safari, Opera, and Firefox, did you also test Google Chrome?

Opera is no longer an independent browser. It switched from its own rendering engine to WebKit (the Safari rendering engine), then jumped ship to the rendering engine used in Google Chrome (Blink, a fork of Webkit). Today, Opera is merely a reskinned Google Chrome--it uses the Google Chrome rendering engine (Blink) and the Google Chrome Javascript engine (V8), but adds its own bookmark manager and user interface. Internally, it's pure Google Chrome--you're just getting Chrome with a different interface.

So I would expect it to be, depending on what version you're using, either identical performance to Safari (if you're using a version that used WebKit), or identical performance to Chrome (if you're using a new version that uses Blink/V8).

That's very interesting. I quit using Chrome when it seemed to be "taking over" my computer. I've deleted everything Google from my machine, but still use the search engine and maps extensively. I did notice Chrome was fast when I tried it out, however.

I also noticed that the original developers of Opera were beta testing a new browser, Vivaldi. Your post suggests the reason for a spin-off, as does MacUpdate's description.

Anyway, try this:

12 Rue Saint Romain, 76000 Rouen, France

Drop this address into Google Maps in each of the browsers and see which loads faster.

Or try this address: http://www.theguardian.com/uk

Firefox wasn't even showing the pictures, Safari eventually did and Opera had them up in an instant.

I was keeping Firefox and Safari open at the same time, if an address didn't work in one, it would work in the other. But, Opera seems to handle everything. I'm using the latest version.

As an aside, I hate to think how much Google knows about me...

works great here in safari

Where has the Bookmarks Bar gone in Safari 8.0.7?

Never mind, found it.

I've been playing with Safari for a while now, and it is much snappier than I experience a couple days ago. I confess my testing methods are less than scientific, just what I have experienced during actual work sessions.

Hmmm... what to do now... I'd rather not use Chrome.

Both address and URL loaded in a flash in my Safari 5.1.10.

The map was a tad slower to load in Firefox...the URL a tad faster, but in neither case was the difference significant enough to warrant changing browsers.

Ha! As a retired gent, I've got plenty of time to fiddle about!

Don't know how I ever found the time to go to work!

After some manually timed tests I* too have the impression that the latest versions of both Opera and Chrome are faster than Safari (8.0.7) with either task, with Firefox (39.0) a close second. While the difference in the initial tests was a significant 60-100%, this is actually not too bad in seconds. But it’s there.

When running these tests, it’s important to disable potentially speed affecting variables like certain Safari extensions (and similar add-ons installed for Opera and Chrome), and Little Snitch. If running a ‘clean browser’ is not possible, your measurements aren’t clean—and hence comparable—either, but if the browser is still faster, that only emphasizes the difference. And if you repeat the test, make sure to empty browser caches. I noticed for instance that Safari loaded the Guardian page almost as fast as the other browsers after I had quit and reloaded it for another test; the Google Maps test was still as slow as in the initial tests, about half as fast as the other browsers. Finally, for comparison between users, your internet connection may influence results, although that should be roughly similar for the various browsers.

The choice between Opera and Chrome also depends on what user activity each browser retains for its own uses. I don’t know about Opera, but Chrome/Google is known to be a pack rat.

*) iMac Retina late 2014, 4GHz i7, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB, 3GB Fusion drive, Mac OS X 10.10.4

Seems like you have plenty of time on your hands, too!

Thanks for confirming my seat-of-the-pants observations. Anyway, it never hurts to have more than one browser up and running.

Cheers!

On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, those "hypothetical" results are less meaningful to us as end-users than those we get with what we're actually running.

No extensive testing involved here, just feel and impression but Safari 9 in the El Capitan beta is faster than Safari 8 in Yosemite, especially on initial page loading and in both cases that is with all my various extensions active. On the other hand I still encounter shopping carts that will not work properly in either version of Safari. A few that don't work with Firefox either but so far only one of them has failed to work with Chrome.

I'm using a Core i7 Macbook Pro with 16 GB of RAM here, on OS X 10.9.5.

On your tests, Safari and Chrome both load the pages in an eyeblink--there's no appreciable delay at all.

Firefox takes a few seconds to load The Guardian. It loads the address in Google Maps in 3-4 seconds.

some of this could be your ISP also. image and page caching on their end OR yours also can play heavily into these results.

speaking of caching... OMG... I enabled caching on our server here and that is incredible. Whenever a computer on our LAN downloads an update (say for example, 10.9.5 combo) it talks with Apple, who tells it the machine is using the same WAN IP as a caching server, so here's the LAN IP of that server, try to get it from them first. So it contacts my caching server, who doesn't have it. My server downloads 10.9.5.for him, and streams it to him as its downloading. (so, net effect on the client is, no change in download speed, 1.5mb/sec or so) But it also saves it for anyone else local that wants it.

THEN if another client on my network goes for it, the same happens, but my server DOES have it now, and dumps it to the client at 40-60mb/sec. WHOOSH. Love that feature. Wish more stuff could use it. (adobe.... macromedia, oracle) So much simpler than Software Update Server. It's automatic, works on machines that aren't bound to the domain, including guest computers, and is self-updating.