Re: [gentoo-user] Re: browser advice

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Thursday 30 November 2006 00:46, 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:

> > 1) This version of Opera really seems to struggle with "heavy" pages.

Opera takes a bit longer to load fonts other than the default fonts for your 
set up.  This happens to me when I come across pages with Chinese type of 
characters.  Once the fonts have been loaded the delay does not occur again 
on the same session.

> > The whole app slows down, no response to clicks etc, until the page has
> > fully rendered. Example of affected page:
> > http://funds.ft.com/funds/searchFund.do?symb=AQSTG&type=F1
> >
> > 2) Opera infrequently causes my system to hang completely. I can't ctrl
> > +alt+F1 to a terminal screen, I can ctrl+alt+backspace to kill X, I
> > can't do anything. It's a hard reboot of the box. Admittedly I'm
> > slightly impatient, but I give it 10 secs before hitting reset,
> > sometimes longer. I can't categorically state that it's Opera, but I've
> > a very strong suspicion. Especially given that I basically use an
> > xterm, sylpheed and opera 95% of the time.

Opera is usually quite light footed and performs well in resource constrained 
systems - I've been using it on a 600Hz Pentium III with 125M RAM for years 
and have even used it on a Pentium I, with 75M of RAM!!!  The only time I had 
Opera causing *system* crashes was when I had a faulty memory module on my 
MoBo.

> > 3) Javascript seems fairly broken in Opera - but that could be my fault
> > for not setting something up properly.
>
> JS works great here - perhaps reemerge everything?

Ditto.  Opera does not handle the JavaScript code that renders dhtml toolbars, 
like certain online field editors use (e.g. the formatting toolbar that comes 
up in the gmail composing page for html messages).  There might be a couple 
more, but not many.

> > 4) Some pages just don't render properly in Opera and I have occasion
> > to fall back to firefox. As another poster said, it's often badly
> > designed banking sites.

You need to try:

a) setting Referrer on;
b) changing the browser identification to M$IE6, or Mozilla to fool the 
server - Opera will render fine most of M$IE 'optimised' non-standard 
compliant code;
c) accept all cookies - banking sites in particular use a different to their 
main page verifying server to store cookies from;
d) on Opera 9.02 you can set preferences with regards to browser 
identification, Java & JavaScript, cookies, history, etc. preferences on a 
website basis.  Banks feed you a couple of web pages with cookies to test 
your browser and settings before you arrive at the login page.  You need to 
hit stop in a timely fashion (before the cookie test errors out) and then 
right click to change the particular page preferences as per a-c above.

If after all of the above the page still fails to render properly then the 
problem is most likely Opera specific.  The Opera forums and newsgroups can 
offer a lot of help in resolving particular page rendering issues, either in 
terms of browser settings or in terms of debugging html code.

> > 5) Overall though, IMO Opera is a nicer browser to use than firefox.
> > Tabbed browsing is implemented in a more effective fashion. Keyboard
> > shortcuts are lovely, eg F2 to bring a dialog for typing a URL, which
> > can be configured to fire up a new tab is very nice. Shift+F2 allows
> > you to have a one key shortcut for favourite bookmarks (again firing
> > up a new tab). Sidebar is far more effective in Opera. Obviously
> > personal preference, but I much prefer it.

I particularly like/use the save session feature (takes a snapshot of all your 
open tabs/pages and settings for future use), page tiling, the FastForward 
button to scroll through subsequent pages without having to return back to 
the Home page of a website, the launch menu which allows you to continue from 
your last session, etc.  In mail client terms I like the self-learning spam 
filter, powerful search, custom views (sort of folders/filters in other 
clients) and in particular I like view mail messages in threaded view.  I 
wish I could find a way to make Kmail show mail messages in threaded view 
like it does in Knode - any hints?

> IMHO, Opera loads MUCH faster, and surfs much faster as well. ALSO, it is
> easy to put Opera in a Chroot Jail; FF is a PITA to put into a jail.

chroot jail!??  Can you please share a link for this?  Sounds interesting.  :)
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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