1450 - New Company


I have used Opera as a browser for pretty exactly ten years. That’s a long time, and although it was not always the best supported browser (in fact it got pretty much neglected by web designers around the world), at least it was the best, the fastest and it had unparalleled cross-platform support.

Most of the goodies, that we now take for granted, originated in Opera. Just think of tabs, sessions, crash recovery, mouse gestures, bookmark synchronization, …

Opera is still a good browser, but the Linux version has been pretty much behind for more than a year, and it still leaks memory. With a big session of maybe 15 tabs it starts out using 20% of my main memory, and after a while it consumes 40%, and then it gets noticeable and I have to restart the browser. OK, that’s normally after a week or two, but still.

Firefox is not an alternative. It has all features that I need, but it is too slow, especially with big sessions. So what?

Google Chrome was the answer. It is not yet as polished as Opera, its extensions are not yet as sophisticated as those for Firefox, but we’re getting there. Most important though, it is much faster on Linux, faster in GMail (small wonder 🙂), and it consumes much less memory.

Of course I’ll try Opera when the next version comes out, but I am not likely to switch back.

The image is a bit of chrome from Friday morning. It’s Sunday now, I’m on the train back to Vienna and instead of taking photographs, I have spent this Sunday cooking. Not bad either 😄

The Song of the Day is “New Company” from Solomon Burke’s 2010 album “Nothing’s Impossible”. Good stuff! Hear it on YouTube.


There are 6 comments

Eric Jeschke   (2010-10-03)

I tried to like Opera a couple times, but never could take to it. I have been using Firefox for years, but about 6 months ago began playing with Chrome, and am now using it about 50-50 with Firefox. I anticipate switching to Chrome entirely unless Firefox somehow manages to catch up in speed. It feels, like you say, much more nimble getting around the web.

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Rick   (2010-10-03)

I also tried Opera a few times a long time ago, and was a faithful Mozilla user since the days of Phoenix. I didn't want to change, but after having to use Chrome for a very nice wee website (http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ - worth a look if you've got time), I have to say I'm hooked and haven't gone back. Sure, there are some extensions I have to fire up Firefox for, but for the most part - Chrome is my browser. It just seems slicker and somehow easier.

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andreas   (2010-10-04)

The funny thing is, although IE still is the #1 browser, though not by such a margin as five years before, just look at the stats for my programming blog and those for the photoblog. Macs with Safari all over the place in the photo community, and the programmers use Firefox and Chrome. Now, what does this tell about me??? I don't reach the masses 😄

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Cedric   (2010-10-04)

Never tried Opera but have been on Chrome since day 1. It's come a long way since then and is so feature rich (to me) that I now find it frustrating working in anything else (not just any other browser but any other application).

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Rick   (2010-10-04)

Wow, I tried Chrome right at the beginning and was frustrated by the lack of extensions/add-ons. I always get frustrated that all applications don't work like Photoshop/Indesign/Illfrustrator "What do you mean I can't zoom in on this webpage with ? + =...??"

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andreas   (2010-10-05)

Oh, you can perfectly zoom it with Ctrl+Wheel, and you can get it back to normal with Ctrl+NumZero. Is that photoshoppish enough? 😄

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