Praising Opera 9

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Hmmm, after reading that there weren't ads anymore in Opera, I gave it
another try (last one was 2 years ago or more IIRC...)

As much as I dislike commercial software for common desktop software, I
have to admit it has at least one huge quality at first sight:
performance/snappiness !

No later than yesterday, I encountered a mega huge performance problem
with Epiphany/Firefox, a real blocker: all I wanted to do was edit the
ubuntu wiki, and add a package to the "Universe Candidates" list:

 (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Packages/Candidates)

Because I find Wiki editing very difficult (When will we have WYSIWYG
for Wikis ??), I pressed the "Preview" button to see what my changes
were doing exactly. Of course I added my package request at the end of
the existing list. The list is very long, but for some reason (maybe has
to do with the "Draft" background image that fills the preview area ?),
the simple act of scrolling to the bottom of the list to see the effet
of my changes, is EXTREMELY SLOW ! Be it by using the Page Up/Down keys,
or grabbing the scroll bar with the mouse, the scrolling was so slow, I
had to give up reaching the bottom of the list.

So I just tried with Opera 2 minutes ago, out of curiosity, and to my
delight it could scroll that page at the speed of light, just like
Epiphany normally does with most pages but that one.

So, I would like to give credit where its due, in all objectivity...

Cosmetically, I find it quite good looking, very polished. It's visually
more pleasant than FF.

So thanks to whoever started that thread, Opera 9 is definitely worth a
try !
Obviously I would rather want to see the performance issues fixed in the
Open Source browser in the first place, rather than having to evaluate
proprietary alternatives...


--
Vince