blog

Migrating from Opera to Firefox (Part 1)

For years I have been using Opera as my web browser, as well as email client, IRC client and more recently RSS aggregator. It works excellently, is fast as hell, is full of innovations and renders web pages as intended.

The drawbacks with Opera are the following:

• It is not free. There is an ad-banner unless you pay.
• It is closed-source.
• WYSIWYG. There is no extensibility.
• Some websites will not serve Opera pages.

For those reasons and more I have decided to switch to Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/). Primarily, anyone can write an extension for FF, and a lot of people do, making it now the most feature-rich browser, but also secure and fast.

But, I did a trial period for a couple of days, and found there are certain functions in Opera that I couldn't do without. Here is how to recreate those in Firefox.

1. Opera::- One of the best features of Opera, and what brought me to it initally, was tabbed browsing. Rather than cluttering up your taskbar with multiple instances of the browser, you have all of the pages as 'tabs' in the main browser window.
   
   Firefox::- FF has this feature (as it is now a 'must-have' for any browser implementation), but it is not well implemented. URLs open in new browser windows rather than new tabs as default. This extension (tabbrowser preferences) http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabprefs/ will rectify this, although it is not recommended by the developers, as it is reported to be extremely buggy. No problems here so far, but it's only day 2 :-D
2. Opera::- Another excellent feature of Opera's tabbing is the ability to re-open closed tabs, with their history intact, through the 'closed' menu.
   
   Firefox::- Although not as convenient, http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/undoclosetab will allow you to re-open closed tabs, though not selectively AFAICS (you can't just open the tab you closed 3-ago, without undo-ing the first two as well.).There are also loads of 'session-saving' extensions, to emulate Opera's ability to remember what pages you had open upon a crash, etc... I will not list them here as they are not a feature I ever use.
3. Opera::- Typing a single letter into the address bar (e.g: 'g' for google), will execute a search for the words typed after. Rather than using a separate search field, you just type: "g tom walsham" to search for me in google. 'z' for amazon, etc...
   
   Firefox::- Bookmarks can be assigned a keyword for the addressbar, and can be fed parameters. So, create a bookmark for "http://www.google.com/search?&q=%s&sourceid=firefox" (which is actually there by default), and the keyword to 'g', and there you have it.
4. Opera:-- Mouse gestures. Navigate pages (forward, back, open in new tab etc...) just with the mouse. I particularly like the clicking mouse buttons ones (right-left = Back, left-right = forward).
   
   Firefox::- This one's easy. There's an extension: http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/ It's also nicely customiseable.
   
   
5. Opera::- the '+' and '-' keys on the keyboard zoom the page in and out, including all images. I tend to use this for displaying images larger, or for surfing with the TV as monitor which is too fuzzy for small fonts/images.
   
   Firefox::- 'Ctrl +' and 'Ctrl -' will zoom the text but not images. There is a plugin Image Zoom, http://imagezoom.yellowgorilla.net/ that actually lets you zoom individual images (including using wheelmouse)...more useful in fact than Opera's full-page zoom.
6. Opera::- Information is displayed in the status bar, while loading a page, such as speed, number of images/number loaded, time elapsed, % loaded etc...
   
   Firefox::- Extensions to the rescue again: http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=1328
7. Opera::- I have a 'find-in-page' search field next to the address bar. As you type, it highlights the first instance in the page of that word, and 'enter' will take you to subsequent instances
   
   Firefox::- Haven't worked out how to have the field next to the address bar, but Firefox has 2 very easy ways to use its (built-in) 'find-as-you-type' feature. Ctrl-F or '/' will bring up a 'Find' bar at the bottom, which has the additional function of highlighting all of the instances of the word on the page. Very useful as previously I often used the Google Cache for this feature alone. Also, in Tools-Options-Advanced-Accessibilty there is a checkbox to enable find-as-you-type merely by typing when the page you are viewing has focus. This has been pretty nifty so far.
8. Opera::- When using copy and paste for a URL, with the mouse, there is an option in the right-click menu for the address bar to 'Paste-and-go'. Just a timesaver to stop you having to press enter, but I use it all the time.
   
   Firefox::- This extension: http://tecwizards.de/mozilla/ does exactly that. Nice.
9. Opera::- This one is not a killer, but the 'stop' and 'reload' buttons are the same. This really just clears up the navigation menu, as you never need to use both buttons simultanously, and they are closely related.
   
   Firefox::- Someone obviously liked this feature of Opera, hence: http://v2studio.com/k/moz/ (scroll to 'Stop-or-reload button'. Simple, yet effective.
10. Opera::- When the 'insert'/'typeover' key is toggled on, the text cursor looks fatter, so you can see if you are about to start typing over what you've written.
    
    Firefox::- Erm. Not solved this one yet, but I don't think it's a deal breaker.

Of course, there isn't much point in using Firefox just to attempt to emulate Opera. The real reason to use Firefox will come in my next post. Extensions that I have installed to add functionality not found in other browsers.