Death of a diehard
Summary Description Simon Vandore finally changes his browser religion.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Vandore
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Story Group 000917
Post Date 15/09/2000 06:25 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 11/09/2000 07:47 PM


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Content
Introduction
It took six years, but I've finally changed my Web browser.

Body
In late 1994 I reviewed Netscape Navigator version 0.8 (then called Mosaic Netscape) for Australian Personal Computer. Previously I'd used an buggy alpha version of NCSA Mosaic and experimented with Cello, its underwhelming rival.
Netscape was a giant leap forward and, apart from the notorious <blink> tag, it was quite faithful to Web standards. It was fast and quite reliable on Macs, PCs and Unix systems. It opened up the Web to widespread use, attracting Microsoft's attention.
The original Internet Explorer (IE) was diabolical. Using buggy technology licensed from Spyglass (which had itself licensed NCSA Mosaic), Microsoft put out an unstable product lacking the features of Navigator. What's more, the company committed the unpardonable sin of introducing proprietary HTML elements that caused pages to load differently in IE. To this day, Web developers struggle to make pages that are compatible with all browsers and the blame lies squarely at Microsoft's feet.
Why? Because these sexy, non-standard features tie people to Windows. It's a hijacking in the name of profit -- the Web, a nonprofit open standard, is meant to work the same on all platforms.
Today's IE is a brilliant abomination. It dominates the market, it's sleek and fast, but I only need it for sites that use proprietary formatting. It's a dumbed-down Internet experience that obscures error messages and uses hokey Bill Gates words like 'shortcuts' and 'favorites' in place of correct Web terminology like 'hyperlinks' and 'bookmarks'. As you can tell, this offends me.
Recent incarnations of Netscape have offended me too. The browser has showstopper bugs which cause regular crashes on both of my PCs. I started using IE by necessity, but just when it threatened to grow on me, the crashes began. IE is more stable than Netscape, but a power user can quickly bring both to their knees.
It was time to look for an alternative. A cheesy IE add-on dubbed Neoplanet is widely advertised online, but isn't much more than a facelift for the bland Microsoft browser and does nothing for stability. I had to find some real competition, even if it was just experimental, so I headed to Tucows.
I remembered the Opera browser from various flirtations with it over the years. Opera has always been the fastest and most compact browser around, but for me it was never quite all there. Last time I looked, it didn't support Java and couldn't handle frames.
Enter Opera 4.02, the browser that changed my online life. Still the fastest browser on the market, and totally configurable to suit refugees from Netscape or IE. Instead of singing its praises for the next few paragraphs I'll give you my power user configuration and hope you try it out.
Download and install the version that includes Java. Go to the View menu. Turn off the hotlist, make the button bar 'simple', move the status bar to the top, turn off the window bar, move the progress bar to the top. In the Navigation menu, set your home page and delete both entries. Remember to go back later and explore all of the menus for cool features such as 'clear private data' and 'reload all documents'.
Move back to the File menu and open the Preferences. Note that in the 'connections' category you can tell Opera to masquerade as any other browser on the market. Under History and Cache, set document checking to 'always' and leave everything else intact for the moment. Under Start and Exit select 'show single window with global home page', deselect 'confirm exit' and deselect 'save window settings'. Move to the Toolbars category, where I recommend you select 'images only' and 'always show color'. Deselect all popup help. Again, remember to go back later and explore all the other cool features.
How does it all work? Use Ctrl-Tab to switch between Windows. Ctrl-N opens a new window, Ctrl-W closes it. Hit F2 to enter a new URL -- this window is also where Opera's autocomplete feature lies, which does a good job of guessing your desired URL. And learn to love the letter G. Hitting the G key switches on the fly between graphics, no graphics and showing cached graphics only.
There you have it, the greatest Web browser that ever lived. It doesn't churn up resources, it almost never crashes, but it does ask for $US39 after 30 days. However, unlike Microsoft and Netscape, the manufacturer appears to respect people more than dollars, so they got mine.
Vandore appears every Friday on Newswire. You can contact Simon Vandore on svandore@acptech.net.


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Simon Vandore finally changes his browser religion.

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Vandore: Death of a diehard

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