The Hickensian

19.06.08 Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3

46 comments

What a week it’s been for a browser whore – 2 major updates to trial! Opera brought out 9.5 last week (in a move that felt a bit “We must beat Firefox!”), and Mozilla delivered FF 3 this week after some false contractions. What follows isn’t meant to be a proper review, just a brain dump of impressions from living with each one for a few days. Neither have I ‘plumped’ for one browser – I continue to use them all!

Mac Native Themes

Both of these browsers are in the same difficult position – trying to keep a ‘family’ style across platforms while also being a good desktop citizen. My position on that is that looking and acting like a native app is far more important than keeping it in the family, but I guess if you use the same browser on dual platforms, it helps consistency.

Both of these new browsers have much improved Mac themes, that still don’t quite hit the mark. Firefox has managed to get a unified toolbar at last, but still needs an Arronax theme to finish it off. I’ve not found anyone yet who thinks the bloated back button is a good idea (yes I do know you can turn it off with ‘use small icons’) – it also looks more like a slider rather than a button:

ffdefault

That’s the default, and here it is with GrApple Graphite applied:

arronax

See how it adds nice little mac touches like the header for the sidebar, at the same height as the tabs? Lovely! However, beyond the browser theme, Josh Aas has done incredible work in connecting to Cocoa API’s, resulting in elements like proper, rounded semi-transparent menus and progress thermometers. FF no longer feels like the homely Java app that it once felt like on OS X!

Opera’s new mac theme is a vast improvement too, although to be honest, any change to the previous theme would be an improvement. I’d refused to use Opera for anything other than testing sites because of it. When the alpha for 9.5 was released, it didn’t look much better, but a week before the final release, it finally started shaping up.

However, it still falls short. For example all the toolbar buttons are grey except for the stop/reload and home:

newoperamac

It doesn’t feel as good as the ‘native’ Opera skin, which is lighter and crisper, and to me, feels more mac-like. The dark tabs have caused some controversy, but I quite like it in this configuration:

journal%20/%20hicksdesign

This is something I like about Opera – being able to have the toolbar underneath the tab – don’t ask me why though. Form widgets and scrollbars aside, I prefer to use the native theme in Opera.

Neither browser has an updated icon (a new FF icon is awaiting approval!), but Opera in particular really needs to. The shadow is the first thing that strikes you as being wrong, not just the lack of transparency, but the fact that it has highlights in it! I really fancy having a go at updating the Opera icon.

Rendering

First of all, Opera really wins on speed, hands down. It renders fast, and the interface is nimble. Speed is a very subjective thing, and is governed by all sorts of different factors, so this is just my experience. Firefox on the other hand still has some of the sluggish interface feel from v1 & 2- when switching tabs or resizing the window. Opera joins Camino and Omniweb as being the fastest browsers I have, but overall, I reckon Opera has the edge. It also has lots of new CSS goodness, including text-shadow (yay! can has etched text!) and @media queries.

Firefox has still to implement selectors like text-shadow, but rendering is much improved nonetheless. The move to Cairo has brought with it decent crisp type at last, with support for kerning and ligatures (even if they don’t always happen where they should).

Other Features

FF now has growl support! Something Opera would benefit from, as their ‘toast’ style notifications are decidedly un-mac.
The new FF location bar menu is great, and I think the new of quickly adding a bookmark (click the star to add, and deal with filing it away later)
I don’t think it’s new to 9.5, but I like Opera’s content blocking system. When turned on you can click the areas you want to block (which feels like a shooting game!).
Opera does thumbnail previews of tabs when you hover over them. I’d love them to provide this as a sidebar option like Omniweb.

Cons

Downsides to Opera? I miss being able to correct spelling on a single word. I keep looking for a history menu at the top that isn’t there. I miss a preference to open new tabs in the background when cmd-clicking (you can hold down shift to do this, but I want a preference!). I’d also feel more inclined to make use of the mail client and RSS reader if they weren’t just basic unstyled views. It still feels like you still have to put in some work to get the chrome layout looking as you want it, but to be honest these are fairly small nitpicks. Opera is now a browser that I would want to use everyday.

Downsides to Firefox? ~~Well, first of all, I really hate the way it adds ‘- Mozilla Firefox’ to the window title (can that be turned off?), I just want it to butt out!~~ Update – this seems to be a inconsistent bug rather than an intended feature!

I would’ve liked a little more movement on the CSS side and Acid 3. Again, these are small complaints rather than major ones, and like Opera, it’s become a browser I would want to use!

Summary

Out of the two – Firefox has most mac native look and feel (once Arronax has polished things up a bit) while Opera has better performance. Both are great, and the world is better off with them both of them around. Not sure that I’m better off though – for me the choice of browser is harder than ever.

Comments | RSS

No.1

∞ Matt Hamm said 600 days ago:

Firefox wins for me hands down. Opera… it’s just wrong somehow… What do you think about all the social media stuff on Flock?

No.2

∞ Tom said 600 days ago:

I agree completely on the – Mozilla Firefox thing. For a while there in the nightlies, it was removed completely, and I loved it. I filed a bug about its removal. Feel free to confirm it, or at least get some support by linking to it… or perhaps my comment will achieve this goal.

Anyway, I think your post is dead on, much better than the others I’ve seen nitpicking on some of the… less important things.

No.3

∞ Chris Parker said 600 days ago:

So what is your current browser of choice Jon?

I keep slinking back to Safari for the speed, it may not actually BE faster but it feels faster if that makes any sense…

No.4

∞ Jon Hicks said 600 days ago:

“Opera… it’s just wrong somehow”

But how?

“What do you think about all the social media stuff on Flock”

Flock… it’s just wrong somehow

No.5

∞ Jon Hicks said 600 days ago:

“So what is your current browser of choice Jon?”

Like I said “I continue to use them all” ;o)

No.6

∞ Jon Hicks said 600 days ago:

Thanks for the link Tom, I’ve now voted for that bug!

No.7

∞ Dustin Wilson said 600 days ago:

Great review, Jon. Spot on. I’d love for you to take a crack at the icon, actually. Maybe you can do something like you did with Safari where people were allowed to use the Pith Helmet as an icon. Integrated spell checking is probably one of the #1 features requested. That and address book integration. I’d love for those two.

I’m unsure if you could tap into the history in a custom main menu on top (I’d have to check on that); you can search the history by just typing something in the address bar (it’s FAST!), adding a history search input, or by selecting history search in the search dropdown in the address bar. There’s always the history panel as well.

I’m trying in my free time working more and more on my skin for it. 9.5’s added a lot of new stuff i have to tackle. Just not a whole ton that can be done to the interface because you really can only just skin it.

No.8

∞ Matt Hamm said 600 days ago:

I really DO NOT like the dark tabs in Opera. urgh.

Why do you like being able to have the toolbar underneath the tab? Your weird.

No.9

∞ Pjtr said 600 days ago:

Thanks for the not-proper-review.

I really hate the way it adds ‘- Mozilla Firefox’ to the window title.

I don’t see that. You mean that this text is added to the page title at the top of your window like IE does on Windows?

No.10

∞ shelbybark said 600 days ago:

The bloated Firefox button can be fixed by customizing the toolbar to “use small icons.” In fact, this option changes little else on the default theme.

No.11

∞ Arpan said 600 days ago:

I don’t see the “Mozilla Firefox” in the window title either? (It’s there with a new window, but not there once a page loads.) I think I remember it being there in previously in the betas. Perhaps they removed in the final version?

I’m running Firefox 3 with the theme from Arronox.

No.12

∞ J. King said 600 days ago:

As I am not a Mac user, Jon, I’m not too sure if this would actually work, but you should be able to define your own keyboard/mouse shortcuts from Opera >> Preferences >> Advanced >> Shortcuts.

Also, mail can be styled fairly easily (change opera:config#UserPrefs|MIMEStyleFile; you can get at the marukp of a mail message by pressing Alt-F3 (view frame source) or whatever the Mac equivalent is), but newsfeeds I’ve found to be quite a challenge: only browser.css seems to apply to them, which is probably why they use an embedded stylesheet. Bugsville, that.

And by the way, content blocking was first introduced in 9.0. :)

No.13

∞ Mario said 600 days ago:

You do know how to fix the bloated back button? right click on the toolbar, “Customize…”, “Use small icons”

No.14

∞ Jon Hicks said 600 days ago:

“You do know how to fix the bloated back button? right click on the toolbar, “Customize…”, “Use small icons”

Yes, I should’ve added that, as I’m sure many will mention it!

“I don’t see the “Mozilla Firefox” in the window title either? (It’s there with a new window, but not there once a page loads.) I think I remember it being there in previously in the betas. Perhaps they removed in the final version?”

It seems to be an inconsistent bug! I’m using the FF3 final, but it doesn’t do it all the time…

No.15

∞ Paul Lloyd said 600 days ago:

Great little review Jon. I’m slightly puzzled as to why Mozilla haven’t hired Josh Aas to work on the Mac theme. The native theme is close, but it’s the details that matter, and that’s where the Arronax themes shine.

However, I’m a little puzzled by your comment:

However, beyond the browser theme, Josh Aas has done incredible work in connecting to Cocoa API’s, resulting in elements like proper, rounded semi-transparent menus and progress thermometers.

I’m not seeing any updates here. Are you talking about browser chrome, or form widgets? Either way, I don’t see any difference here between the native theme and the Arronax themes – and I would love to see these improvements!

(I also like how the Arronax themes update the icons on the Web Developer toolbar too! It really is a great great theme.)

No.16

∞ Dusan Smolnikar said 600 days ago:

Thanks for reminding us about the GrApple. I didn’t quite like these with ff2, but I think they look great on FF3. Url bar could use some work, but I do prefer this over the original theme (which is not too shabby to start with, much improved over ff2)

Also, I’ve always loved the stop-or-reload extension, which combines the stop and reload buttons to work like they do in Safari.

And to anyone who’s missed it, here’s a way to view PDFs inline in FF3

So basically, I can now finally have a safari-like browser, with extensions. hooray!

No.17

∞ Tom said 600 days ago:

@Paul Lloyd (#15): Josh Aas is a Mozilla employee already.

No.18

∞ Chriztian Steinmeier said 600 days ago:

Hi Jon – great writeup.

As a long-time Opera user I’m probably a little biased, but Opera just does the best job for me. Shift+G to toggle Stylesheets; Shift+I to toggle images – Mouse Gestures etc. – command+F3 to view source (in editor of choice) – change a couple of things and then see changes with Reload From Cache… love it…

No.19

∞ cuetip said 600 days ago:

I snickered when I read “Opera joins…Omniweb as being the fastest browsers,” but then I went and downloaded Omniweb 5.7 and… yeesh this thing is FAST on my Core Duo Macbook pro. I mean BLAZING.

new default browser.

No.20

∞ Daniel J. Wilson said 599 days ago:

Another feature in both Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 is support for animated PNG (http://animatedpng.com), which I hope to eventually see in WebKit and as an export option in Fireworks.

No.21

∞ Christoph Schröder said 599 days ago:

Nice point of view. I also have to say, that I am quite impressed by the new Opera version. I am a long time Omniweb user and I am currently disappointed by it’s development. There is no real development happening. the atom rss bug has not been fixed after years.

Opera has done a huge step with 9.5 I wished they will include rounded corners in css in the futere. only thing I miss.

I think the new interface is ok, but I find the reload and stop button quite ugly.

Firefox 3 is ok, but boring. No real changes in my opinion. just a new interface….

No.22

∞ Ian said 599 days ago:

Nice review!

Part of the slowness of FF3 I think is because they are now constantly flushing memory (especially images in cache) – you get a low memory number to stop peole complaining but horrible performance of the UI/scrolling. This doesn’t come up on benchmarks as they don’t test for it but it is noticeable. Opera still handles available RAM better keeping performance up…

Remember, if you want to change the icon, you can simply replace Opera.icns and OperaDoc.icns in the app bundle with icons of your choice (I use a ruby script to do it automagically with each new build), I use these:

Opera.icns
OperaDoc.icns

Preview:

But I’d love to see a Hicks icon for Opera!

For those that don’t like the toolbar beneath the tabs, remember you can enable the main bar then (shift+drag) your buttons and turn off the address bar to get toolar above tabs.

Oh, here is my critique (yeah, highlights on shadows was stupid back then too!) of the opera icon from many years ago:

Opera logo — a comedy of errors

No.23

∞ Jon Hicks said 599 days ago:

I’m slightly puzzled as to why Mozilla haven’t hired Josh Aas to work on the Mac theme.

As far as I know, Josh is a developer, not a designer!

I’m not seeing any updates here. Are you talking about browser chrome, or form widgets?

I’m talking about things like the bookmark bar menus. Previously in FF, you would get an opaque grey menu, but now that it taps into the Cocoa API, you get the correct slightly transparent rounded (on Leopard) menu. Don’t forget that Form widgets can be overridden via css.

“Another feature in both Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 is support for animated PNG (http://animatedpng.com).”

I’d missed that one – thanks!

“Firefox 3 is ok, but boring. No real changes in my opinion. just a new interface….”

No changes? Boring? Sheesh, you can’t please everyone! There are loads of changes, but don’t forget the whole idea of Firefox is that it isn’t over-laden with features. It’s meant to be a lean browser that add the features you want via extensions.

No.24

∞ ade said 599 days ago:

I’ve not found anyone yet who thinks the bloated back button is a good idea

How about Paul Fitts?

No.25

∞ Johan said 599 days ago:

Good review. One thing that struck me is that you from now on you feel you have to make your favicon with a transparent background. The hicksdesign icon looks great but it doesn’t work that well for the mint favicon.

No.26

∞ giz404 said 599 days ago:

Speaking of Firefox 3, I thought your were working on the application icon (Starting again from scratch)
I assume I’m not the only who thought that.
It seems that the icon hasn’t changed a bit. So what was the teasing about ??

No.27

∞ Chris Hester said 599 days ago:

a new FF icon is awaiting approval!

Dont tell me they’re replacing the current one! Why?

Opera also has lots of new CSS goodness, including text-shadow (yay! can has etched text!) and @media queries.

The latter has been part of Opera for many years.

Firefox has still to implement selectors like text-shadow

Coming in 3.1! Along with @media queries, font-stretch (at last!) and downloadable web fonts with @font-face.

More details (as well as Firefox 4 goodness) here.

There’s also a neat test for CSS3 support I’ve found. If you run Opera 9.5 through it, the browser passes 100%! But Firefox 3.0 doesn’t – it’s almost there though. Apparently 3.1 does pass the test 100%. I’m wondering why they didn’t wait to release that version instead.

The CSS3 test is here.

Re: Opera:

I keep looking for a history menu at the top that isn’t there.

The History is in a side panel. Press F4! Don’t forget the trash can also for any closed tabs.

Users might also want to replace the default icons for Back and Forward with ones that include an arrow to see where you’ve been. Just right-click on the toolbar and choose ‘Customize…’, ‘Buttons’, ‘Browser’.

I miss a preference to open new tabs in the background when cmd-clicking (you can hold down shift to do this, but I want a preference!)

I thought the default behaviour was to open tabs in the background? I have had to delve into the guts via “opera:config” to make them open in the foreground. Or maybe that only affected the previous betas?

I have to do the same with Foxy, only there’s a menu option in Preferences under Tabs to do this.

No.28

∞ Jon Hicks said 599 days ago:

Dont tell me they’re replacing the current one! Why?

Calm down, it’s just an update! A larger icon is needed for Vista and Leopard!

The latter has been part of Opera for many years.

Not media queries it hasn’t! That’s CSS3!

The History is in a side panel. Press F4!

Yep, and that’s not a menu at the top is it? I like the location bar searching though – even easier.

No.29

∞ Pjtr said 599 days ago:

A larger icon is needed for Vista and Leopard!

http://www.maybethisisthebiggestlogooffirefoxintheworld.cn/

No.30

∞ SkylarP said 599 days ago:

I, for one, am very much looking forward to seeing the updated, high-resolution icon!

No.31

∞ Ian said 599 days ago:

Yes, @media queries have been in Opera since V7.x IIRC. It was a candidate recommendation in 2002 ;-)

http://virtuelvis.com/gallery/mediaqueries/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-css3-mediaqueries-20020708/

(Tantek still at MS, Danial Glazman still at Netscape/AOL!)

I never understood why no-one else jumped on them for so long (Safari still doesn’t use them fully for iPhone IINM); they are sensationally useful.

No.32

∞ Jon Hicks said 599 days ago:

So why do Opera list it as a new feature in 9.5 ? Maybe ‘experimental support’ doesn’t count!

No.33

∞ Adam Thody said 599 days ago:

Funny that you mentioned the bloated back button. I was surprised to read that you can’t find anyone who thinks it’s a good idea because the first thing I thought when I saw it was “wow, what a great idea!”.

Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but I use the back button easily 10x as much as the forward button, so giving it a larger click area makes a ton of sense to me.

No.34

∞ Jon Hicks said 599 days ago:

Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but I use the back button easily 10x as much as the forward button

Thats not freaky – most users use the back button the most, but does that mean it needs to be larger? I think the distraction outweighs the bigger hit area.

No.35

∞ kevadamson said 598 days ago:

I think, and I may be wrong, that FF3 is OS 10.4 only. So, for my girlfriend’s iBook running 10.3.9, Opera wins hands down ;) Safari keeps crashing :/

No.36

∞ Paul Lloyd said 597 days ago:

Thanks for the info Jon, but I’m still seeing square corned menus everywhere I try (and I am using leopard). Bizarre!

As to Josh Aas being hired by Mozilla or not, developer or designer, to clarify, my point was just that given the quality (and popularity) of his themes, and the obvious huge effort he has put into matching the OS, why these aren’t the basis for the official Mac OS chrome (of course, with the signature back/forward controls if you must!) Just seems so incredibly strange…

No.37

∞ David said 597 days ago:

I’ve always had a secret liking for Opera – with the tabs at the foot of the page ;)

Anyway, I’ve been hooked on iCab since it came over all webkit – lots of hidden features (particularly if you like GeoTagging and Stand-alone web apps) and when running on webkit nightlies leads in the speed stakes (Sunspider) – is even faster than webkit itself – plus that new Inspector, a 100/100 Acid3 feeling and breezes the CSS3 test.

Awesome effort by Alexander Clauss.

No.38

∞ Jon Hicks said 596 days ago:

Thanks for the info Jon, but I’m still seeing square corned menus everywhere I try (and I am using leopard). Bizarre!

Sorry Paul, you’re quite right, they’re not! I think I’m hallucinating, but they are semi-transparent!

As to Josh Aas being hired by Mozilla or not, developer or designer, to clarify, my point was just that given the quality (and popularity) of his themes, and the obvious huge effort he has put into matching the OS,

You’ve confused Arronax (designer of the Mac themes) and Josh Aas (developer at Mozilla who wrote all the specific OS X code to use Cocoa APIs).

As to why they don’t hire Arronax – I think it’s because they don’t want (in their eyes) a Safari clone, they want a family feel. Trouble is most Mac users want the Arronax look (which I don’t think is a Safari clone for the record).

No.39

∞ Paul Lloyd said 596 days ago:

Ah, I had a feeling after I posted that last night that I was getting the two confused!

Bottom line, Firefox 3 is a massive improvement than its predecessor in terms of browser UI and feature set. Hopefully Firefox 3.1 will bring the browser up to speed in terms of CSS3/standards support etc. and rejoin the race taking place between webkit and Opera. It’s certainly a renaissance period in browser development.

No.40

∞ Jim Barraud said 596 days ago:

I have to say, I’m quiet impressed with this release of Firefox (not that FF2 set the bar that high). I’ve had Safari set as my default browser for the longest time, but my I’ve finally set my default to FF3.

It took a few add-ons to get it to act as a more native app, but there are some issues that even the add-ons won’t address. (Where’s my OS X Keychain support?!).

Anyway, not be total post whore, I’ve listed the add-on’s I used to bend Firefox to act more like Safari for anyone interested in doing the same (and I’m looking for suggestion on anything I might have missed): http://jimbarraud.com/2008/06/19/safarify-your-firefox/

No.41

∞ Dustin Wilson said 596 days ago:

Jon, Opera didn’t list @media queries as a new feature. It’s just discussed in that article. The only thing different pertaining to @media queries between 9.5 and previous versions I believe is that the media will reflow in 9.5. Taking Chris Mills’ example you linked to there… If you resize your window to below 450 pixels in width and then resized it greater than it wouldn’t change back. Now it does.

No.42

∞ Alexander Kane said 593 days ago:

The large back button is the only new feature of the GUI that I actually liked.
Not that it matters, I only ever really use Camino for browsing.

No.43

∞ Aa'ed Alqarta said 589 days ago:

I have added a new post to my blog about Opera vs. FF, which talks about the anti-phishing capabilities of both of them. enjoy :)

“The war is still burning between Opera Vs FF, and they have improved the code to secure the user’s online life. As working with security products as a daily basis task, I have the habit of testing their capabilities to approve what they are suppose to protect against. Sometimes when you put anything to the test, you’ll get surprising results and mostly disappointing. Today, I got two contenders, Opera 9 and Firefox 3.”

http://extremesecurity.blogspot.com/2008/06/firefox-vs-opera-anti-phishing-review_30.html

No.44

∞ Finn said 586 days ago:

Nice heads up, If you want to check out my opinion on Opera 9.5 check out

http://pimpyourapple.blogspot.com/2008/07/opera-95-for-mac-pimp-your-mac-review.html

^^ IF that doesnt work Its the first story on pimpyourapple.blogspot.com

No.45

∞ flo said 585 days ago:

@kevadamson yeah, I’m afraid you’re very right that FF3 doesn’t run on 10.3.9. This is because for gecko/FF3 to take advantage of new apis in Tiger/Leopard, that are not available in earlier versions, they decided not to support it anymore, and writing a second set of code just to run it on earlier versions (and support it) would have taken more manpower then they currently have.