Re: CHAT: browsers

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 02:51:57PM +0100, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
[snip]
> I'm planning on doing it as soon as I get Opera to work correctly with
> my webmail (I tried to read my emails through the email client of Opera,
> but although it manages to download the IMAP folders and the titles of
> the mails, I can't get it to download the messages themselves :(( . So I
> don't know if it would work there... If you have an idea how to make it
> work, I'd be more than happy :) ).
Hmm. I've never actually used any browser-integrated mail apps. I'm
strictly a command-line freak when it comes to mail. The only exception is
with work-related mail, which I read on Outlook just 'cos that's what my
employer setup when I got the job, and I haven't had the time/motivation
to replace it. (I probably will, since there has been several virus scares
recently... most of my work is logging in to Solaris servers anyway, so
the Windows desktop is pretty much useless to me.)

> > On Linux, I find Mozilla too heavy: it seems to be painfully slow
> > unless you're running the latest, greatest hardware.
>
> Well, at least I'm not the only one having this problem. Under Linux at
> work it is just painful. It's better now that I have 512Mo of RAM
> instead of 64, but it's still painfully slow.
I have a 333MHz processor, so having more memory doesn't seem to help
much. I've tried disabling all unnecessary functions in Mozilla to try to
make it more tolerable, but it's just slower than a frozen elephant, so I
gave up. I mean, I can literally see it repaint the screen when I load a
new page. And I thought we've come out of the Motorola 6502 days
already...

> > I've not been able to successfully run Konqueror or Galeon -- they
> > seem to be overly tied to the KDE/GNOME desktop, and just don't work
> > with VTWM. Opera is both lightweight, fast, and supports almost every
> > site that MSIE supports.
>
> Yep. Until now, I haven't been able to find a site that IE can open and
> Opera can't. I even found a site that IE has difficulties to open but
> Opera works out like a breeze! And it is generally as fast as IE,
> contrary to Netscape and co., even when loading! And it handles
> encodings much better than IE (and has much more choice too. For less
> than 4Mb of download, I think that's quite nice!
Bigger doesn't mean better. The bigger they are, the slower they crawl.
On the contrary, *smaller* is better.

> Only thing IE seems to do better than Opera is using Windows's Symbol
> fonts.  But I know it's a common problem of non-IE browsers. But
> unfortunately I need to be able to use the Symbol fonts (i.e. the tag
> <FONT FACE="symbol">). If you know any way to do it (I found a trick
> working with Opera 6 but it cannot work with Opera 7), I'd be extremely
> happy to hear it :) .
Hmm, I'm not sure... is this even something supported by the official HTML
standards?

> > Except those that insist on using IE-specific features, of course; but
> > Opera even supports IE's JScript extensions when in IE-compatibility
> > mode.
> >
>
> Is IE-compatibility mode the "Identify as..." preference thing? I find
> it funny that Opera can pretend to be IE or Mozilla ;))) .
Yes it is. Sites that use IE's JScript extensions can be made to work in
Opera by setting "Identify as" to MSIE5.0. JScript symptoms include
JavaScript errors that complain about undefined references, undefined
functions, etc..

[snip]
> I agree. Once you begin using the mouse gestures, you really get
> addicted to them! It's making things so much faster! And I just love
> being able to google by typing "g something" ;))) .
Mouse gestures are *awesome*. Also, Opera 7's keyboard navigation (shift +
arrow keys) is something I've always wanted. Now you can browse without
that miserable rodent! Imagine that! :-)

[snip]
> Indeed. I'm at the 2nd day right now. If when the ad appears it's the
> same as with Opera 6, it shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't take much
> place. It's not even as annoying as Winzip reminding you each time that
> you open it that you haven't registered yet ;))) .
[snip]

So far, the ad hasn't appeared on my Opera 7 yet. I probably won't mind
it; they've made it as unintrusive as you can probably get without scaring
advertisers away. On another note, though... if I can only figure out how
to pay without needing a credit card, I'd probably just buy my copy of
Opera instead. I think it's worthwhile to support *good* software (as in,
good from the user's POV, not from marketing dept's POV, like in
*cough*micros~1*cough*).


T

--
When solving a problem, take care that you do not become part of the problem.

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