Because of recent spam, I am now moderating comments. When you leave a comment I will get an email, and I will approve it. Thus, there will be a while between the time of posting and the time of other people being able to see the comment on the site. Sorry.

I promise to approve all comments from real people.

A while ago I posted a note on the info page of my photoblog telling loyal Opera users to email me and explain why they chose the browser they did. About a week ago, Jason became the first to do so. I thought people might be interested to read some of what he said.

I don’t pretend to sit here like some would and preach that my browser of choice is better than yours (Unless you happen to be an Internet Explorer user, in which case I’d find it almost impossible not to after I’d stopped laughing at you). Firefox is, as far as I’m concerned, a brilliant browser, and one that I happily and regularly recommend to friends, family, and colleagues. It’s raised the game for browsers, and really thrust its way into the market as a viable alternative to IE, and because of that you can’t help but respect it.

Firefox is superb, but I’ll always prefer Opera. From the first day I sat down and decided to try it I knew I’d found the interface that I wanted to use to browse the web. I don’t use Opera or indeed any browser because I want to “Rediscover the web”, I use it because I want to surf the web, and I want the tool that allows me to do that easily,
and efficiently.

Mouse Gestures, Customisation (But quickly! No Options menu, just one button press), the Wand (Opera’s Password Manager - All I need to do is go to a page that requires me to log in, and gesture forwards. If I’ve got multiple usernames, it’ll ask me which I want to use, if I haven’t it’ll log me in), they all work together to allow me to surf without thinking about how I’m doing it (That’s me personally, I’m not saying anyone else would have the same success using Opera as I do).

The whole point is though, that I think it comes down to personal preference. Right now I’m sat in front of a little Powerbook using Safari (A Mozilla based browser), and though I’ve tried Opera on it, it didn’t click like it did on my PC. It doesn’t bother me though. When I do surf on the Powerbook, I can surf almost as well as I can with Opera on the PC, and with time, I’ll probably be able to match it (Held back only by the touch-pad and screen size, one reason I use a USB mouse andexternal screen when I’m at home!)

“….in my experience, it is the best one out there for Windows.”

People say exactly the same for Opera too, and they’re right. It all comes down to personal preference, provided you don’t use IE, then it’s just blind ignorance. (Or you happen to be updating windows…)

I was very happy to get this email from Jason. It was exactly what I wanted: the opinion of someone who gave up on IE but ended up with Opera instead of Firefox or some other browser.

I guess my dislike if Opera is a personal preference. Honestly, I haven’t used it that much, but to me it seems ugly and bulky. Maybe that’s just my inherent distrust of feature-heavy programs coming out, though.

I am completely fine with browser partisanship. I am okay with people designing for certain browsers. I do it myself. I don’t care too much if your website doesn’t display correctly in my browser of choice. But I can’t stand it when someone creates a personal site that is only functional in a certain browser. I think that’s just irresponsible.

The site I’m thinking of has since changed its itself to something less offensive, but a few months ago I visited it to find that the navigation could only be accessed by IE users because of a fancy and completely unnecessary javascript trick. The owner had a note about it on the main page and everything.

And, come on, IE? None of the cool kids use IE anymore. Psh.*

*Author acknowledges that there may be a cool kid somewhere using IE right this very minute. But there shouldn’t be. She also acknowedges that her unconditional hatred for Internet Explorer may be more than a little immature. But she doesn’t care too much.