I can’t remember when was the last time I downloaded and installed two new browswers in a day – has to be several if not many years. But with my ‘stay-cation’ trundling along, I figured, no time like the present – especially with the world record being sought today on Firefox 3‘s release. So I also grabbed Opera 9.5, and put them both to the test on my favorite site in the whole wide world.
BOTH loaded KTVZ.COM faster than Internet Explorer 7 does. Each had an issue – some ads are missing (horror!) in Opera and I had to download the latest Adobe Flash Player to make the Top Stories area work right in Firefox 3. (Unlike in IE, where it just shows a snazzy automation when done, you have to shut down Firefox to finish updating the Adobe Flash Player in it – what’s up with that???)
Anyway, each has little whizzy new features, like the beefed up address-bar search capabilities in Firefox. I’ll try to play with more of each browser’s features in coming days, but face it – many of us have to work with our browsers, and for example, the Website’s content management system is only IE-friendly, not to mention the lack of a preview pane in Outlook Web Access when you use non-Microsoft browsers.
Sigh. Still, with IE8 due later this year, it’s nice to see competition still pushing our main “window to the Web” forward, even if they are features many of us will rarely use. And you can’t beat the price! 😉
Leave it to Barney 