Jumping off the bandwagon

I’m no trendsetter, but as an IT-type geek-type I seem to see a few new technology related products before your average Joe Public. And no disrespect to Joe, I’m just saying. And in a bid to be just a little bit different, I’ve controversially (albeit perhaps temporarily) ditched Mozilla Firefox. I was using Firefox way back in pre-beta, when it was still known as Firebird and tabbed browsing was a slightly sketchy and relatively new concept. Firefox/-bird has done remarkable things for the browsing world, introducing new levels of security and experience, as well as putting a dent in Internet Explorer’s market domination. Especially as IE is a big pile of smouldering cow dung.

Well, I still like Firefox, but I’ve installed Opera’s latest offering. I remember Opera from “way back when” I was doing more serious web development type issues, and remember it being a really pain in the nuts to design for. Back then though a “your site doesn’t work in my Opera browser” would usually be responded to with a “I don’t care” seeing as it didn’t even account for a handful of visitors.

So, that’s really just a very longwinded way of saying I’m trying Opera 9, both Mac and Windows-flavoured. Heck, if I had a decent mobile phone, I could even try it on there too. So far, so OK. Essentially, it’s a browser… it lets me view web pages and write posts on a blog no-one reads. It has a bunch of handy-dandy features (for which Firefox-style plugins will almost certainly exist) and looks all very purty with it’s tab and nicely bevelled graphics. The only thing so far is it appears to have no support for accelerator/access keys, which is a most suprising oversight (especially as their own website uses them) and a usability no-no. Though I really haven’t checked the W3 docs on that sort of thing for quite a while, so don’t quote me on that. And it’s entirely likely I’m making it up that it doesn’t work.

If interested, watch this space. Or alternatively, download it yourself and have a play.