O is for the only one I use to browse the web

It's faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssst

Opera 10 Beta 1

Dang, it's fast.
I will be reviewing this upgrade after about a week or two. Ongoing notes after the jump.


Design

• New UI Skin, being worked on by the venerable Jon Hicks, better known as the designer of the Firefox/Thunderbird brand.
• The standard skin is pleasant, and not garish. There is a bit of a Leopard vs. Vista feel when comparing the two.
• In return for all the functionality cues Chrome takes from Opera, 10.0 buttons resemble Chrome's.
• Mild design oversights that should be ironed out in the weeks to come. The address bar has a Jay Leno (2-3 extra pixels along the bottom edge, forming a "chin")
• Visual Tabs: pull down the Tab Bar expander to show live previews of open tabs. Can also be activated by double-clicking the pull tab (which I prefer), or turn it off entirely. OMNIWeb and Windows 7 inspired?
• There seems to be a pixel shaved off the right edge of my scroll bars
• An updated snapshot build of the Beta rectifies many of the issues above. They've been stricken from the list.

Function

• Hot diggity it is fast compared to 9.64. I don't care much for benchmarks, but something under the hood is whipping through page rendering.
• Benchmarks show beta 10.0 is slower than Chrome 2.0 and Firefox 3.5 beta 4 in synthetic tests. Chrome, Firefox and Safari are definitely the front-runners in terms of rendering/scripting speed. Browsing speed, however, is more than just benchmark performance. Good to see so much competition though!
• Configurable Speed Dial: up to 25 Speed Dials available now, going from 2x2 to 5x5 configurations, with wide-screen options (4x3, 5x4). Choose your own background.
• The one function I missed the most when I switched from Firefox to Opera back in 2007, was in-line spell-checking. Opera 10 has finally added it to its extensive repertoire.
• Opera Unite beta is rolled into the latest snapshot build of the Beta. It allows for some direct P2P sharing, and treating your computer like a file share with select people, with zero configuration. Accessible through browsers other than Opera. More info.

it is a great time to be a nerd

this past monday was Apple's WWDC (developers conference), where they announced a launched a plethora of promising items (iPhone 2.0 & 3G, OS X Snow Leopard, MobileMe). the upgraded iPhone garnered the greatest amount of attention from the intertubes. i'll admit that i was not interested in the first iPhone, but exposure to it has softened my stance over the months, and now the iPhone 3G's foray into Canada has piqued some interest.

what i was really pleased about was Snow Leopard, the next OS X. it is set to launch next year, which is exactly the time i plan on acquiring a new notebook (see The Plan). it will be light on new visible features, but high in refining processes and performance. its main focus will be utilizing the new hardware (multi-core processors) more efficiently and effectively. while some people find the name confusing, i, for one, think it is awesome. this is not simply because i heart snow leopards, but because the name speaks to the incremental nature of the improvements. essentially, OS X 10.6 will be the same as 10.5 Leopard, but with changes under the hood.

---

on Tuesday, June 17, Mozilla will be releasing Firefox 3.0, the much awaited upgrade to the lacklustre Firefox 2.0. even though i'm not a regular Firefox user, i am still excited for this release. from what i've seen in the beta, 3.0 is vastly superior to 2.0 in terms of memory usage, speed and general usability. aside from the wonderful collection of extensions and add-ons, Firefox does a lot of the little things well -- like in-line spellchecking and update management. Mozilla is looking to break the Guiness World Record for number of downloads in one day with Firefox 3.0's release. here's your chance to become part of history, or, if you're like me, wait until the day after, when the servers are less stressed and shaft them out of one more download.

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Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) was finally released today to subdued fanfare (relative to the above news). Opera currently holds 0.7% of the world's marketshare of browsers used. this is reflected in North American usage, but not indicative of European statistics, where it is the browser of choice for a significant number of countries. i've been using Opera since 9.0, so i'm a newbie in comparison to the stalwart users from 1994, when the company first entered the browser market.

like Firefox 3.0, Opera 9.5 is a fairly significant improvement over 9.27. i've been using the alphas and betas upon their respective releases, so the speed increase and some of the features are not quite so novel. however, there have been a few changes made since the last build i used (beta 2). the most marked difference is the new default skin in Windows. i must say that i am not a fan of some aspects of the new look, but they are not too obtrustive. apart from those minor niggles, there is plenty to be pleased about. i will likely devote a separate post to Kestrel in the near future. for the uninitiated, Lifehacker has a short roundup of what's sexy in this latest release.

TDSB Interview: 9 AM

tomorrow, i have my first teaching-employment-related interview with the Toronto District School Board.

what should i wear?

EDIT 17:12:
it is now well after the interview, which went as well as it could have. it was not nervewracking at all. then i went to a career fair at the civic centre. it was meh. then i went to visit the company i worked for two summers ago and after another interview, i now has a summer job. it was pretty much a 5 red car day.

yesterday, i woke up to find a message: Opera 9.5 Beta 2 was released!

another long and boring story about how i solved a problem that no one else that reads this blog will ever have

i started using Opera's M2 email client (built-in to the browser) several months ago when the public beta of 9.5 came out. i hooked up my UT email and dumped Thunderbird and was fairly pleased with the way it all worked. until i was notified that my UT account would be nuked some time after graduation, unless i paid for an alumni service to maintain the account forever. the other option was to forward the address to another account to manage.

i've been putting my UT address on official stuff ever since i got it, so it displeased me to have to give it up. nowadays, people have an easier time changing their address of residence than their email address and cellphone numbers (see my hotmail address, in use since grade 7 -- i just can't get rid of it). because of my severe reluctance to start using another address, or forwarding the mail to a personal account, i sought alternative options. lo and behold, those who seek shall find.

UT has started a beta project in partnership with Google, in which the Gmail service handles an alumni branch of UT email (@alumni.utoronto.ca). the project sought beta testers to try out the system, essentially for free. all i had to do was email the email manager for UT. sweet.

so i forwarded the UT account to the new Gmail-handled alumni account that i was given and set up a new IMAP account in M2 to take care of it. Gmail had recently implemented IMAP and i wanted to take advantage of it.

testing the forwarding system and the IMAP settings with emails to myself, i quickly discovered something strange. in the default view in M2, it shows all messages marked as 'unread'; my test messages were appearing twice. was i downloading two copies of the message? was the forwarding system not working properly? i tested the forwarding system by emailing directly to the alumni account. same problem. time to Google.

my research found a small handful of people encountering the same problem; someone had the answer: the Unread view in M2 is a virtual folder. it simply scans every IMAP folder i am subscribed to and displays anything that hasn't been read yet. the problem was that the Gmail IMAP account shows labels as folders (Sent Mail, All Mail, Inbox, Trash, etc. are all folders). every message i received is given the Inbox label and the All Mail label. if i had a filter set up to shunt certain messages into other folders (Work, Fun, etc), they would show up in the Unread view as well. so, the simple solution would be to simply unsubscribe from one of the IMAP folders -- All Mail being the most reasonable.

in M2, it's fairly easy to customize which IMAP folders to subscribe to. the checkbox interface is intuitive and simple to use. so i used it on the Gmail account and unchecked the All Mail folder. i tried another test message and the double showed up again. i rechecked the IMAP folders. for some reason, the All Mail folder was subscribed to once again. i tried this with every other folder and all folders. they just kept coming back. jerks!

so for a couple of months, i just lived with receiving two copies of mail. that account doesn't receive that much, so it was not a big deal. i was prepared to live with it forever. until i was struck today (12 minutes ago) by inspiration: why don't i just set up a filter that allows my mail to bypass the Inbox? in two minutes, i set up the filters (for both direct and forwarded messages), tested them out and they work like a charm.

naturally, i'm very pleased with myself at this point, though i'm not sure why i never considered this solution earlier. anyway, the morale of this story is to never settle for almost-great. if you're that close to great already, might as well take it all the way.

Opera 9.5 Beta

at the beginning of September, i posted about the public alpha release of Opera 9.5, codenamed Kestrel.

[marketing spiel] included in the alpha, and now given a name, is the Opera Link service. it is essentially an online repository for your browser's bookmarks, personal bar settings and speed dial sites, allowing you to synchronize any computer or mobile phone running either Opera 9.5 or Opera Mini 4. the process is simple, painless and works in the background. you can turn it on or off at your leisure. if you have multiple computers and a mobile phone with wi-fi capability, this handy feature will save you a bundle of time. there is also a web interface for firefox/ie/safari users who use Opera Mini on their phones.

9.5 is a significant evolutionary upgrade from the latest stable release, Opera 9.24. as i mentioned before, the rendering engine has been retooled for greater performance both in speed and resource usage. it will bridge the gap between 9.2x and Opera 10 (Peregrine), as most of the backend of the browser will be in 9.5. Peregrine will improve on the user interface, cross-platform compatability and usability and new tools for web developers.

[/marketing spiel]

i downloaded it this morning. i only just got home to install the beta over the alpha. so far it has not exploded. it feels snappier than the alpha (i was using an early public build as the later versions tended to crash when using Google Reader). i just signed up for the Opera Link feature a couple of nights ago before it was publicly named. it has not caused any problems, although i don't exactly have any other computers or mobile devices to actually try it out on. i just signed on so in the event my settings get wiped, or i decide to clean up my browser profile, i'll have an easy way of getting it all back. and when i eventaully migrate to a mac and need to install Opera 10 on it, i'll be set. can one of you mac users please try out the beta on OS X (Leopard leaps tomorrow, btw)?

all the rendering glitches in Blogger seem to have been ironed out as well. the glitches i've been putting up with in GMail have also been cleaned up (paragraphing, not being able to read text that i've typed unless i press enter before typing, crashing if i type then go back and press enter... it was a chore). Google Reader seems to be running without trouble. i am well pleased.

Kestrel (Alpha)

i write this post from Opera 9.5 Alpha, a public pre-release build of Opera's latest development, codenamed Kestrel. since it is an alpha-build, it is bound to be buggy, but so far i haven't had any problems with the usual browsing experience. i'm not a power-user by any stretch of the imagination. download here, from the Opera Desktop Team blog.

there are new features galore and most of them look promising. there isn't anything as big and flashy as Speed Dial, but mostly little minor usage improvements (click for video preview). my favourite so far is drag to scroll (opera:config#UserPrefs|ScrollIsPan).

the big thing that no one else really cares about (since only one or two other people reading this use Opera =P) is how my blog looks in the archive section:

Opera 9.23 vs. Opera 9.5 rendering of Blogger Archive Arrows

the downward pointing arrows render correctly, but the horizontal arrows are not. the top and bottom halves are overlapped, thus forming some manner of squished arrow. this is corrected in Opera 9.5.

most of the real changes are taking place under the hood, so everything is faster with an even smaller memory footprint. the mail client, M-2, as also been improved. i will likely begin to use it when 9.5 is truly released.

Nerd Corner: Opera Portable

it's software pimping time and i am pimping my favourite thing again.

a good number of people are heading back to school next month, myself included, and there will come a time when you need to use one of the school computers. if your school is anything like mine, the computers will be running Windows and the the internet browsers will be either Internet Explorer 6, Firefox or a combination of the two. and if you are anything like me, having to use either IE6 or Firefox will make you feel unclean. chances are you are using Firefox and you've tweaked the grease out of the monkey. what i'm trying to say is, using someone else's browser configuration is uncomfortable.

enter portable applications. these are your favourite pieces of software, stripped down to fit on a portable drive (e.g. USB flash drive), allowing you to use the programs you are comfortable with on any compatible computer.

i personally use Opera Portable (hereafter denoted as OP). Opera, the desktop browser, is already designed to have a small memory footprint. my current installation (Opera 9.23) is 4.88 MB; OP is 4.66 MB. while most portable versions of applications tend to be nearly neutered or slower than Tarzan on a Japanese IQ test, OP is essentially the same as the desktop (non-portable) version. it is merely repackaged and streamlined to save space.

to prevent caching and stuff from decreasing your flash drive's lifespan (flash memory has a finite number of writes), OP creates an invisible, temporary folder on the computer you are using (so you won't accidentally run out of space on your protable drive). after closing OP, the folder is overwritten and erased, eliminating all trace of your internet tracks from that computer.

the benefits of using OP, rather than the provided browser on a public computer, are rather obvious. with your portable application you carry with you all your bookmarks and customizations and tweaks and blah blah blah. sensitive information (online banking, juicy emails to your long-distance paramour, etc) are not blabbed to the computer's hard disk in the event that you forget to log off or whatever. personally, i can spare myself the frustration of trying to use mouse gestures or keyword searches on browsers that aren't configured to do so.

whimsy

on a lark, i did some cheap redecorating of this blog. and by cheap, i mean i only used the predesigned stuff -- none of that fancy html/xml/php/javascript stuff.

the colour scheme is more neutral; white and grey and black match with pretty much everything on your (the reader's) setup. i shrank the font size because i like it that way and i don't respect the visually impaired (use Opera to zoom if you need to). i moved the sidebar to the left because the template i picked had it there. i changed the header text to something less russian -- brownie points to whoever actually could tell what that old header line (Это курам на смех) means, or where it was used prominently.

Herman and the Fox

there's no hate. i respect the huge headway Firefox has made for alternative browsers into IE's marketshare. back in 2003, only a small bastion of early Opera users and Netscape holdouts were using browsers other than IE on Windows.

i liked it when i first tried it. there's something every attractive about animals on fire. foxes are naturally associated with fire due to their flame-red coats and wilyness (vulpix and ninetales anyone?). also, Samson tying torches to the tails of foxes to raze a Philistine village after they insulted him. what Firefox really has going for it is the coolness factor, due in most part to the image it conjures in your mind. a literal fox on fire is really not that cool, but we're talking mythical fire here.

Firefox is also attractive because it empowers the user. the extensions API (advanced programming interface) gives users countless options in terms of feature, performance, graphical experience, etc. if you are a Firefox user and you haven't dabbled into extensions yet, you'd be better off with another browser.

The Fox is marketed as being better, faster, safer than IE6 or anything else out there. as far as marketing goes, Firefox gets an A+. unfortunately most of Firefox's claims are not true, but most users don't care too much and hold on to what they've grown to like. that's alright, Firefox is a capable browser with a very helpful user-base that continues to make improvements.

i originally did not intend to switch to anything when i tested out Opera. Firefox was in its heyday, having just released 2.0 with great features like in-line spell check and... that's all i remember. i had just gotten the hang of tweaking the program to do my bidding, streamlining the interface and setting up shortcuts through keywords and tinkering with the cascading style sheets (userChrome).

after spending a bit of time on Opera, overcoming the slight learning curve with the rather intricate interface and list of options, i began to notice Firefox's shortcomings, specifically in the start-up time and rendering speed. i don't know how it works on your computers, but on mine, Firefox takes like 10 to 20 seconds to fire up. that's like a lifetime compared to IE6's instant activation. to be fair though, IE6 is coded into Windows, so it is technically always on, even when it looks closed. Firefox, however, has no excuse in comparison to Opera's 2.47 s mark. clearly, good coding can achieve times similar to IE6's 1.77 s, even in third-party applications. start up times and rendering times can be found here.

i will not go into how the feature set of Opera compares to Firefox. using basic installations, Opera blows Firefox out of the water, but Firefox has nearly limitless potential through extensions. users beware though, as not all extensions are equal in quality or security. they are made by users like you (with lots of time on their hands), so there is the possibility of incompetance and/or malice. also worthy of passing mention is how a good chunk of the really good FF extensions are copied (not always cleanly) of Opera features.

so, in conclusion, i thank Firefox for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of browser tweaking and showing me that it is okay to expect more than the status quo.

Nerd Corner: searching for answers

if you haven't done this already since you found out about keyword searches in Firefox and/or Opera, you might find it useful to set up such searches for particular translations of the Bible.

simply navigate to your preferred online Bible (Bible Gateway or Crosswalk) and select the desired translation in the drop-down menu. right-click the search field and Create search... or whatever Firefox calls it. repeat as desired.

Firefox dumps keyword searches into the bookmarks area, pretty much willy-nilly, unless you create a folder specifically for your keyword searches. Opera is cleaner; keyword searches are squirreled away in the Preferences... under Tools, where you can edit the name and keyword of any existing search.

Day 11 at St. Florence: Simple Pleasures

this post comes from my mom's computer, via Opera Portable. if you have a usb drive, i highly recommend finding a portable version of a web browser just in case your computer blows a tire (like mine seems to have) and requires a reformat. this one has all the features of a full Opera install, but doesn't leave any trace on the computer you use, has options for multiple profiles and is packed with all the speed inherent to the Opera browsing experience. i don't like browsing on the configurations of other people's browsers (it is usually the standard set up or overtweaked); it's like using their toilets.

anyways, about today. today was much better than yesterday, due to slighty more sleep and slightly less allergies and a few adventures to speak of.

i stuck around in teh staff room at lunchtime today because i was feeling better; as a result i am now privy to some really neurotic moments in the lives of the teachers i work with. it's like watching friends, and every character is a meld of Rachel and Monica. someone woke up last week to a mouse falling from her ceiling onto her shoulder, so she is mildly traumatized, traumatizing other mouse-haters by extension. mouse stories evolved to rat, raccoon, rabbit, cat, fox, coyote stories. i like animals.

i worked witht he special ed kids this afternoon so i missed out on some excellent excitement while the grade 1s went out to play while my teacher did more shotput tryouts. Fancy Dancer tried out and swept away the competition with a trial distance of over 12 m with a 4 kg shot. my teacher thinks he's on steroids; i think he's a robot. the other fun time i missed was pyro-boy deciding on a whim that he needed to pee, so he let it fly off the top of the slide and it hit the nerdiest, most legalistic girl in the class on the foot. she tattled. the girl who is absolutely in love with pyro-boy told off nerd girl for getting her beau into trouble, so nerd girl got really upset and threw a fit. my teacher whapped me with her clipboard later for laughing at her and abandoning her at such a crucial juncture.

while all this was going down, i made a paper airplane and helped some kids with their homework on interplanetary objects while finishing the day's crossword.

throughout the day i tried to make note of the simple things that i appreciate and enjoy (much like Amelie). i've taken a shine to watering the little plants we jiffy potted on Friday; watching the soil soak up water is rather sublime. one has already sprouted and i stared at it for a good 2 minutes just amazed at life. i potted some extra jiffy pots with soil but they have no seeds and receive no water. they are my control group. they are also there just in case God wants to pull off a flashier miracle.

The Browser Wars: Episode II Attack of the DOMs

i found this 40-minute video back in March (from Opera Watch) filmed at a Yahoo! hosted convention of Web developers. presentations were given by representatives from each of the big 3 Windows web browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera) detailing their vision, touting their product and what they plan to do in the future. technically, Opera commands a 0.87% market share, so i would hardly consider it as BIG in that sense. as evidenced by the nerd-audience reaction to the Opera representative (Hakon Wium Lie), however, market share means diddly-squat.

the video is pretty long, and probably filmed by someone without a tripod. the editing is nearly a hack job in terms of aesthetics, but that makes it seem more authentic (a la Blair Witch Project). the only funny/interesting bits are from the introduction by the moderator (the first 10 minutes) and the last presentation (the last ten minutes). i think maybe 3 of my readers would be interested.

Nerd Corner: Opera 9.20 revisited

Speed Dial
i've been using it for a few days now (4) and for all its redundancy, it has started to grow on me. every time i open a new, blank tab, my eyes are met with convenient links i can either click on or swiftly ignore. occasionally, it will remind me to update myself on something that i haven't read yet.

Fig. 1 - My current Speed Dial links
my current set up only has 6 links: Google Reader, Gmail, Hotmail, Blogger, Notebook Review Forums, and Metagame. Reader is my RSS aggregator of choice, so all my news bits and blog updates are funneled through that. Email is obvious. the other three are really just filler. NBR forums and Metagame do not come with RSS feeds so i dropped them into Speed Dial as a visual reminder to waste my time. i set it up as a triangle because a) i didn't have enough to fill all 9 spots; b) my eyes follow left to right, top to bottom, so the triangle tracks better. note how the interfaces of most applications have next to nothing going on along the bottom-right corner.

the Ctrl+# shortcut really is a time-saver (so i can waste time more efficiently) when i remember to use it. it will open up a new tab and load the page without my having to manually open one.

Tab Thumbnail Previews
i've only used Opera v9.x, so i can't speak for its previous versions, but Opera 9 (and i suspect 7+) have thumbnail previews for the tabs. i think this is available in Firefox through the Tab Mix extension. in 9.10, they looked like this:


Fig. 2 - Tab Previews in Opera 9.10
Opera 9.20 improved on this neat feature by removing the extraneous information and boiling the thumbnail preview down to its essentials.


Fig. 3 - Improved Tab Previews in Opera 9.20
as you can see, the preview is now url independent so the preview box is no longer stretched to wizzle-wazzle when you preview hotmail or something. Encoding, MIME Type and Security have been completely excised because no one really cares what that information when previewing a site you are already visiting. page title and url are moved to the top and bottom respectively to remove the extraneous whitespace. all these changes make the preview a whole lot more attractive than before.

Tab Cycle Preview
this is not a new feature in 9.20, but it's something i found recently and thought i'd share/proselytize. Ctrl+Tab will cycle through your browser's tabs the same way Alt+Tab (or Win+Tab in Vista) will cycle through windows in your taskbar.


Fig. 4 - Default Tab Cycling Interface
a slightly hidden preference allows you to preview the tabs as you cycle through them,


Fig. 5 - Tab Cycling with Thumbnail Previews
making it a whole lot easier to see which site you're scrolling to. with the text only interface, it is easy to select a similarly titled tab, especially if you are cycling through them quickly.

to enable this preview, go to the address bar (or Ctrl+L) and type opera:config to access hidden browser preferences (yes, this was inspired by Firefox's slick about:config, which makes the average user feel like a hacker. opera:config is categorized and slightly less imposing at first glance). in the search field, type 'tab' to quickly find the right toggle. under User Prefs > Use Thumbnails in Tab Tooltips, check the box and click Save.

on a slightly related note, you can cycle through tabs in Opera with a mouse gesture: Right-Click + Scroll Wheel.

Note from me:
moyee thinks this is shaping up to be an epic battle between me/Opera and carl/Firefox on account of our recent posts, but i don't think so. my last summer job asked me to write some instruction manuals for the employees on how to use new software (screenshots, step-by-steps, etc). it was quite fun, so i've continued this here (starting with keyword bookmarking in Firefox, which, by the way, exists in Opera too). i think i prefer teaching by writing, rather than speaking -- not that i am certain anyone is trying out Opera now on account of this. in any case, it's worth a shot if you have time or simply want to learn something new. there are lots of reasons why i (and some others) prefer Opera to other browsers, but i won't get into that tonight.

Opera 9.20 released

this isn't a tech news blog, nor is it affliated with any particular company; it is, however, my little soapbox for things that i think will make everyone's lives at least a little bit better, like Firefly, or Jesus (in no particular order).

i believe that when we choose something to use (or watch, or enjoy), we ought to find the best possible instance of it and really believe in it (not that choosing a product is in any way comparable on the same level to eternal salvation). if that particular product screws up, or drops off in quality, you reserve the right to get up in its metaphorical grill and to tell it just where it dropped the ball.

case in point: Firefox. when i first found Firefox (i was reading a webcomic and there was an itty-bitty link and i always click the itty-bitty ones that come with instructions), i was elated to find something that wasn't IE6 and that was customizable for nerdplay. i tweaked the heck out of the GUI ("I couldn't breastfeed any of you kids" - Lucille Bluth, "Altar Egos"). it was fun. i turned a blind eye to most of the faults (slow start up, slow rendering, wonky everything) until i discovered that Opera had become free since version 8. you know what was cool when i first used Firefox? tabs. you know who's been implementing and refining and perfecting tabbed browsing since 1995? Opera. you know all the really good extensions that people use to tweak their interfaces (TabMixPlus, Mouse Gestures and the like)? most of them are porting or expanding upon standard Opera features.
weird how the browser with the 1% market share is 99% better than the next competitor (that's just math hyperbole; it's actually only 72% better).

anyhoo, Opera just released 9.20, the second update to the 9.0 platform.
the highlight feature they're pushing is Speed Dial, a function that was designed for the Opera Mini browser (for cell phones). it is basically a layout of 9 thumbnail shots of 9 sites of your choosing, allowing you to access them by Ctrl+#, or typing the desired number into the address bar. you can change the order and what-have-you. i personally think it is superfulous (great idea on cell phone browsing though) since i've already nicknamed the sites i visit with little keywords, granted that '2' is faster to type than 'gm' (for gmail). it is pretty easy to turn off, so it's not being forced on you.

for something even faster, put all those need-to-visit sites into one bookmark folder and give the folder a nickname. this is an exisiting feature in Opera that i haven't been able to find in Firefox. for example, i check two email accounts: gmail and hotmail (which i really ought to phase out, it's almost 10 years old). i have gmail nicknamed to 'gm' and hotmail nicknamed to 'hm'. i could open up two tabs and type in 'gm' and 'hm' in rapid succession; it's pretty fast. OR i could just plop them both into a bookmark folder, let's call it 'mail', and give that folder a nickname, let's say 'm'. open up a new tab, type 'm', and have at it. neat.

by the way, has anyone ever visited Secunia?
it's a security website that documents all the reported security holes in specific software (browsers, office applications, etc) and tracks the progress of plugging those holes.
Opera 9.x
Firefox 2.0.x
Internet Explorer 6.x
Internet Explorer 7

enjoy the paranoia folks.

why i heart opera

How to Go Back/Forward in Opera.

Back by Keyboard:

1. Backspace
   
2. Alt+Left Arrow
3. Ctrl+Left Arrow
4. z

Back by Mouse:

1. Back Button
2. Right-Click | Select Back
   
3. Hold down right mouse button and move mouse to the left (Mouse-Gesture)
4. Tap right mouse button and then left mouse button in rapid succession (Mouse-Gesture)

Forward by Keyboard:

1. Alt+Right Arrow
   
2. Ctrl+Right Arrow
3. x

Forward by Mouse:

1. Forward Button
2. Right-Click | Select Forward
   
3. Hold down right mouse button and move mouse to the right (Mouse-Gesture)
4. Tap left mouse button and then right mouse button in rapid succession (Mouse-Gesture)

Due to the amount of redundancy (which is a good thing in this case) any user can find a simple way to navigate back or forward. Keyboard ninjas of either left or right hand dominance have options. Mouse browsing is a breeze with mouse gestures. I find myself using mouse gestures in other programs (windows explorer) that don't have this feature and then finding a bit of frustration.

Nerd Corner: no longer trying out Opera

two weeks ago, i wanted to dig up a picture, so i hit up the trusty Google image search (via keyword search which Opera already had). lo and behold, something looked off. every image no longer showed any information below it (requiring a mouse hover instead). i was a bit annoyed, but it didn't bother me enough to search for a workaround. the next day i stumbled upon one anyway, courtesy of Google Operating System (via Lifehacker) and implemented it immediately.

what struck me was not the idiocy of Google Image interface designers, but the ease of correction in the web browser i am using (Opera). where Firefox users had to dig up their user profile in hidden folders and edit javascript files (granted that there are many firefox users very willing to muck around in their hidden folders and edit javascript files) and Internet Explorer users had to open a menu regarding Security (every time i see that word in a menu dialogue, i get antsy), Opera users merely had to right-click for site preferences and uncheck a box.

Opera wins.

here is a comparison from extremetech of Firefox 2.0, IE7 and Opera 9. the FF2 and IE7 tested at the time were still in beta. i have all three final versions and most of the obvious observations are still there in the final versions (particulary the Acid2 Test).