You know those times when you know you really should try something, that friends are using it and say it’s good but for one reason or another you just can’t get around to it? I mean, what you have is good enough – really good even, so what else could be this good?
Let me tell you – Opera 9 made me very happy today. I was away from the computer for a little while and when I sat down to pick up where I’d left off I experienced crash weirdness – the kind of crash that happens for no apparent reason and you’re not even sure what it was you were working on but you hope the machine is going to turn on again (and you swear if it does you’ll immediately do a backup but then you don’t because you remember what it was you were working on and figure you’d really better get it finished). But there were definitely more than a dozen tabs in Opera, probably twice that open in Firefox and a few applications running as well.
After I rebooted I opened Opera and made my new best friend. Opera asked me if I wanted to begin where I’d left off. OMG. Opera remembered all my tabs. And opened them for me. and like the Energizer bunnyTM I just kept on going. The Pandora widget also started up at the station I was listening to last. Glory day.
The other thing I have since noticed and come to appreciate (and have wished for in Firefox for awhile) is the close tab button. Opera puts one on each tab, right beside the tab title. Firefox has one button, down at the right end of the row of tabs. More than once I’ve closed the wrong tab in Fx because I had the wrong tab highlighted. It takes up a tiny bit more space this way but I prefer knowing that I am closing exactly what I mean to.
I won’t be leaving Firefox – some of the extensions there are essential like the Web Developer Toolbar and Colorzilla but Opera has definitely earned itself a prominent home on my quick launch bar.
23 June 2006, 5:07 pm
I’m loving Opera 9 too, but there are a few things I’ll always love about Firefox, particular its extensions and its Live Bookmarks.
Just an FYI: Firefox 2 will have the close-button-per-tab thing, though I usually use the middle mouse button for both Firefox and Opera for this task.
I don’t think the “Sessions” concept made it into Firefox 2 though (the “picking up where you left off” thing). I think if Firefox crashes it will restore your tabs, but not if you shut down normally.
24 June 2006, 10:52 am
I was a heavy Live Bookmarks user until just yesterday when I discovered Opera 9 has a built in feed reader. I opened all the blogs I read with a right click > open all in tabs (yes there were a Lot of tabs), subscribed to each one’s RSS and voilà: all my favourite blogs’ recent posts delivered straight to my browser.
I’ve played some more with the “Sessions” feature – if I close Opera with tabs open, the next time I open Opera they open with the browser. Pretty cool imo.