i've used both firefox and opera, and i just cannot see why everywhere i look, people say how firefox is way better than opera... i find that opera is much better looking, faster, and has more features, while firefox looks plain and has a few but not nearly as many features as opera.. i do give firefox credit for being totally free, but with opera i can easily deal with having the skinny ad bar at the top. if anyone has used both i'd like their points of view, because to me, opera is much better.

I was going to make a screenshot of opera next to firefox to show you what I don't like about it. However as I was removing the clutter to make it look more like the clean firefox interface I accidently removed the main menubar and couldn't figure out how to get it back (I used the menubar to remove itself). So now I have another reason to not use Opera: it just made itself unusable. ;-)

As for your points:

1. Better looking is really subjective.
2. Faster is subjective as well. I've never had problems with a browser being slow.
3. More features... True, firefox doesn't have as much crap added on to it when you first install it. It is designed to be a basic browser which is easily extended using ... extensions.

Also firefox isn't just free, it's open source. That's important even if you aren't a programmer.

(just go to View/Toolbars)... one gripe i have with firefox is that when i clicked a link, it would have to wait until the entire page loaded before it would continue to the link i clicked, but i'm not sure if this is just a setting.. also it didn't seem to integrate into windows as well as opera does, but that could also be an individual problem....... well after easily getting rid of the extra toolbars that i don't use, it is as basic looking as firefox, but simple features like the ability to zoom in to the page really come in handy at times and don't get in the way.. also mouse gestures are a neat thing to have.

I used Firefox for all of a day - no complaints - quite nice and simple. Main problem - windows(XP) kept crashing, so I had to remove it. I'm sure there is a lot of tweaking I can do - but I don't have the time nor patience to "make it work" so Microshaft win again, I'll just keep using IE - next machine will be a Mac so 60% of my time isn't spent fixing bugs. (SP2 - don't get me started!)

I am using mozilla firefox now, have been testing it for about 4 days now. It runs pretty smoothly. The only problems I've had is with the lack of integrated video functioning, I've had to switch to IE to view some pages that have videos playing in media player within the page, and for a few real player videos (including ones in which u download the ram file, which really doesnt make sense, should run no matter what browser). The always downloading to desktop bothers me, but this is a setting I am sure that can be changed, I've been to lazy to play with those yet.
Also decided to test, and found out that, it lacks the ability to convert to the Large Fonts option set in windows video settings. Also with large fonts, funky things start happening in forms (text boxes and buttons cut off parts of the text).

Positive points: It just seems to run more smoothly to me, the popup blocker is elite, its much safer adware,spyware wise, its open source so I'm sure its highly expandable, seems to use less cpu time although it uses a bit more memory.

I havent used Opera, I'll test it in a few days maybe, when I'm done with firefox.

Firefox > .

Firefox is godly, end of discussion.

its just a browser
it cannot be compared to Me
I mean, a deity

co2metal: I think that you don't understand the problem. The whole menu bar (including the 'view' menu that you pointed me to) is gone.

Uninstall reinstall?

& anything that is free but comes with "Advertisments" is not free, so Firefox trounces Opera. =]

well, I wouldnt discard software just because of one ad. Theres an ad at the top of your screen in caedes mind you :-p

hmmm.. can't duplicate the problem, must have been a glitch....... well now i see that firefox is more of a basic, clean browser while opera is a bit more souped up.. i guess it just comes down to personal preference

" well, I wouldnt discard software just because of one ad. Theres an ad at the top of your screen in caedes mind you :-p "

I can live with websites serving ads, but having ads on something I use to view that website too is a no no.

"well now i see that firefox is more of a basic, clean browser while opera is a bit more souped up.. i guess it just comes down to personal preference "

Firefox has add on toys that make it Max Powered if you want it to be, you get the choice which is one of the main things I lurve about it.

I only have 5 extensions added, mainly for web dev stuff & they do pretty much everything I need. =D

I'd rather not have shedloads of stuff there that I am not gonna use, but prefer to add stuff as & when it is needed so it's not sucking juice that can be used elsewhere, & the less it has the less that can go wrong.

i see... what are these extensions.. what do the 5 that you have do

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/?application={ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}

I have...
DOM inspector (Tool for viewing & manipulating documents.)
Web Developer (This rocks, loads of little menus with all kinds of webmaster goodies & helps/links)
Basics 1 (adds a new tab button onto my browser)
Close tab on double click (double click on an open tab & it closes it.)
Copy plain text without formatting (Helps when copying & pasting text in & out of pages, so it doesn't screw up & add all kinds of junk formatting.)

I didn't think that DOM inspector was an extension. Maybe it comes standard on the Linux version?

I think it is prepackaged with, but it shows up as an extension in the browser doofah.

there's no extension capability on opera?

I dunno, I downloaded it, saw the ad banner thing, unistalled it straight away.

lol.. doesn't bother me, it actually shows the same ads that are at the top of caedes

See, now that would really do my head in.