What browser are you guys using?

I’m starting this thread because I honestly can't wrap my head around why such a tiny fraction of people actually uses Opera. From what I can see, it’s easily the fastest, most stable—and if I’m being bold, the most secure—browser out there right now. Not to mention its support for web standards is top-tier. Personally, I’ve been sticking with Opera for years, whether I'm running Windows or Linux, and I have yet to experience a single freeze, crash, or any weird glitches involving JavaScript or other technical quirks. Meanwhile, I’m constantly reading horror stories on various forums about the endless headaches people deal with using Internet Explorer or Firefox.

What are your thoughts? Any critiques or different perspectives?

If you ask me, you just don't know how to use the search function.

Kyle Perez50 said:Honestly, it feels like you just don't know how to use the search function.

Honestly, thank goodness that last reply was from back in 2004, Laura Rivera. It’s a relief, really. Looking back, it's almost surreal how much Opera has evolved since then. And don't even get me started on the sheer mountain of new web technologies they've cooked up over the last two decades. We're living in a completely different digital world now.

Good morning. Hope everyone's having a decent start to their day.

Nah, I don't use it. I've gotten too used to Mozilla. It drives me crazy when Opera tries to take over my torrents.

I've been sticking with Google Chrome for the last month or two—it just feels straightforward and honestly pretty snappy. At this point, I'm not even really looking for anything else. I used to be an Opera devotee, hands down, but I barely touch it anymore. Every time I try to download something, the whole thing just freezes up—I can't click any other links or jump to a different page until the download is totally finished. That little glitch drives me absolutely insane.

I mean, I'm sticking with Firefox, mostly just because the Firefox ok McAfee SiteAdvisor actually works on it, but otherwise, I guess both Opera and Firefox are fine enough.

Kyle Perez50 said:Well, I've decided not to use it—mostly because I’ve become quite accustomed to Mozilla! It honestly gets under my skin when Opera tries to take over the reins on my torrents.

That can be turned off quite easily—it really isn't much of a hurdle at all.
opera:config 🙂

Jeffrey Hall5 said:Inace mi je Opera bila najomiljeniji browser ali je sve manje i manje koristim jer kad nesto skidam sa neta ne mogu nista otvoriti (nikakv drugi link ili stranicu) dok downolad ne zavrsi, a taj problemcic me jaaako zivcira.

This is actually the first time I've ever heard of that specific issue—I mean, truly, the very first time. I’m certainly not saying it's impossible, of course; technical glitches can be quite unpredictable—but on my end, everything seems to be running perfectly normally. I haven't run into any of those hiccups at all.

I can't quite wrap my head around why people in such small percentages bother using it—though, I have to admit, it really is an excellent piece of software. I recall stumbling upon some stats a while back suggesting it’s actually quite popular over in Russia—if my memory serves me right, they were sitting at around 16%, wasn't it?

The most irritating thing has to be how Ubuntu handles font rendering—it looks absolutely terrible. I scoured Google and found probably a hundred different fixes and workarounds, but honestly, nothing seems to actually work once you try implementing them. Then again, I’m not exactly a full-time Linux user, so whatever—I've moved past it.

It’s not that Firefox is actually bad—honestly, it holds its own—but I just find browsing on Opera so much more comfortable.

Firefox and Internet Explorer both manage to squeeze through to Hotmail just fine—while Safari is a bit hit or miss...

Robert Moore65 said:I stick with Firefox, mainly because it's the only one where Firefox ok McAfee SiteAdvisor actually works, but otherwise both Opera and Firefox are fine

McAfee SiteAdvisor, too!😍

Steven Hayes26 said:Opera is proven to be the fastest

Fastest at what, exactly? Last time I checked, Tracemonkey and the Webkit owners had Opera beat when it comes to JavaScript, and just launching the app isn't significantly faster—if it even is—than Firefox, Chrome, or whatever else is out there.
So, what exactly is left for Opera to be "proven fastest" at? 🤔

It's just Firefox or Internet Explorer for me! I mean, I guess there’s really no point in even trying to explain further beyond that.

Mozilla Firefox👍
And of course, when it comes to MSN and Internet Explorer
I just don't get this: I set Mozilla Firefox as my default browser, but everything still insists on opening in Internet Explorer
I mean, I know it's all part of the Microsoft ecosystem—it makes sense—but it's still super annoying!

I'm currently running Internet Explorer 6 and Google Chrome.
I tried using Internet Explorer 7 once, but my PC was such a piece of junk that I ended up switching right back to Internet Explorer 6.

hollowcanyon6 said:Fastest at what, exactly? Last time I checked, Tracemonkey and the Webkit owners of Opera were the ones leading the pack regarding JavaScript, but just launching the app isn't significantly faster (if it even is) than Firefox, Chrome, or whatever else is out there.
So, what else is left for Opera to be "proven fastest" at? 🤔

It's the fastest at rendering pages—basically, it has the most advanced rendering engine. I won't get bogged down in the technical weeds here, but if you do a little Google searching, you'll find plenty of benchmarks online. They've been run on all sorts of hardware configurations with wildly different internet speeds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not playing favorites or claiming everyone else is terrible. Using a specific browser might just be a matter of habit. It’s kind of like how you always grab your milk from Publix instead of Safeway—a slightly clumsy analogy, I know, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

Firefox 3 is honestly incredible, I mean Firefox 2 was already pretty great, but this version is just absolutely perfect!

From what I can see here, it looks like 😁

LNK 1
LNK 2

Firefox, plus Chrome as a backup

I don't know. I never really clicked with Opera. I gave it a shot back when it first launched and thought it was better than Internet Explorer (which isn't actually true, right 😬 ). But then I switched over to Firefox and just stuck with it. Never had any issues, and it honestly just feels better than Opera. I'll occasionally pull up Opera if Firefox fails to render something correctly, but those cases are pretty rare.

So, I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for years and honestly, I was pretty stoked with it (well, except for those annoying hiccups with version 3.x... where scripts on like 10% of websites would just constantly crash the whole thing, you know?). But since my wife and I share a ton of the same online services, I finally hit my breaking point a few days ago because I was getting so tired of typing in logins and passwords over and over again! So, I ended up just leaving Firefox for her to use and I made the jump over to Opera. It’s actually pretty great 👍