Opera 9

i used opera 9 beta for a while but the one thing that really annoyed me is the lack of extensions like stumble upon..and you really think that firefox is a copy? firefox has way more features through extensions than opera. remember, opera is now free, but it wasnt some recent time ago....it is good browser though but i keep switching back to firefox ;-)

I used to like Opera a few years back, but when Firefox came along with all the features I liked but for no money I switched and haven't gone back. I tried a new version recently and whilst it IS good, I've got so many useful Firefox extensions now Opera just feels neutered in comparison. Good browser but as a proprietary software vendor they just can't compete with the community Firefox has built. Their best feature is their device support for mobiles, portables etc.

As for the copying claim, the reverse seems to be true now. All the features I see in Opera 9 have already been done as Firefox extensions.

yes, i agree with the above, especially with the copieng part

Seems to be pretty much Opera 8. ;)

Oh wait, I've been using the Opera 9 Beta for a while now and maybe I've fogot some new stuff. There's BitTorrent and Widgets...

Widgets, of course, suck. BitTorrent-support is quite nice.

What else? A few updates for stuff, but nothing new, methinks. The quiestion now is: Why is it Opera 9 and not Opera 8.?

I read about the new features on Spiegel Online and I'm not that impressed. Most things are about enhancing allready present features and the really new things ... well i use other programs for irc or bt.

What do you have against firefox. It is a great browser.

It's true. Opera had all the cool features before firefox, and firefox is just copying them. Innovative open source programmers, eh.

Who cares who came out with the features first? Nigh on all good software now uses "features" invented/developed by someone else for some other (likeyl competing) product. There are features in the new Opera that were developed as extensions to Firefox. And while I cannot see them myself, I will take your word for it that there are features in Firefox first in Opera (tabbed browsing comes to mind but I'm not sure who had them first).

In any event, I do not see why anyone can get riled up because a good feature from one product is incorporated into another. After all, look at all the good BSP-based engines/games that have come out over the last decade. If we weren't allowed to incorporate innovative features & algorithms like that into new products - only id software would be making 3D games with any grunt!

--EK

Reminds me of an ongoing IntelliJ IDEA vs Eclipse vs Netbeans discussion we have at work, same story there. Wouldn't it be terrible if one could not copy the useful features? Imagine everything would be patented. There would be no competition and no open source development at all... Eternal Knight gave the example of 3D games, and most likely we would all (have to) surf with a totally uninnovative Internet Explorer...
Although I prefer Firefox, too, it's good to see that Opera is still in the race.

I switched from Firefox to Opera now. The reason: Firefox is extremely slow when many programs are running (Eclipse, GIMP, FTP Client, Subversion Client, ...), which happens often since I am a programmer. Firefox needs then about 30 seconds to respond (!), while Opera opens at once! That's great.
At the moment I try to learn Opera M2, the mail client. It's not easy, and there is not much documentation. But it's a different concept, and it's interesting.

Well, I'm going to give Opera another chance, the only thing that drove me mad about it (versions 8.x and below) was that it didn't support modern javascript features very good (AJAX stuff wouldn't behave as expected).

But I recognize that Opera was a better browser overall, I really liked "mouse gestures", and the way you can save different "sessions" of opened webs, not just 1 like in firefox (if you can do this in firefox tell me how).

Well, it's not so much about who had the features first as it is which one has the most publicity. In the states, there was a community of FireFox users who paid out of their pockets to run a fullpage ad for FireFox in the NY Times...

And it doesn't just happen between internet browsers either. If you do your history, you'll see that Microsoft has copied a lot of features from Apple when it comes to making an operating system. Apple had a GUI first for their computers, but Microsoft had a bigger presentation and marketing. And if you don't believe me, read reports on Windows Vista... apparently when minimizing a window, it does a "swooping" animation similar to windows on OSX ;)

It's as they say: Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.