opera, firefox, ie, acid
So, I saw an article or two on slashdot, including a slashdot-proclaimed “windows guru” claiming that the world should boycott IE7 based on its failure to comply with the Acid2 test.
And I looked at the acid2 test. And it renders like crap. In ie, in firefox, in safari. Opera is close, but not quite.
Which is expected. None of them claim to have css2 support down yet. But it made me fire up opera, just to have a look-see.
And that prompted me to go back and look again, and see if I could get it to do what I want it to do (other than having an ad-bar, which I don’t want, and don’t want to pay to get rid of).
I found that I couldn’t. At least, not easily.
Back in firefox-land, I have a theme I like. I use it. It’s got a nice row of links, a tab bar when I’ve got more than one tab open (that disappears when I don’t, and has a standard place on the tab-bar level that I can click to close a tab). I’ve got a theme I’m happy with. Got a plugin living on the end of the links bar that checks the weather (thx forecastfox). It renders pages reasonably fast, with a nice user interface that’s easy to get to do what I want it to do.
Well, opera’s got its ups and downs. The main “up” being that it’s REALLY FUCKING FAST. I mean … YIKES fast. Even rendering simple CSS layouts, it’s just noticably faster than firefox. MAD fast. The other main up is that the default theme is pretty slick, and it’s easy to grab skins and apply them (firefox’s reskinning requires a restart of the browser). The “downs” are that everything is totally unfamiliar, button placement is odd, the tab close button is either on the tab (annoying) or jammed up in the far right corner next to the close window button. On the other side of the ad banner.
Which leads to the other big negative point: the big honkin’ ad banner. And the only legit way to remove it is to go and buy the stupid browser. While it’s fast and slick and all, I don’t think the speed and slickness warrant spending actual money. And that’s the big failing point… I can’t put up with the ad, and don’t want to pay actual money.
*shrug*. That’s about it though.