First Impressions : Opera 9.10

Currently trying out Opera v.9.10. Right out of the box, it seems a bit quicker than Firefox 2, has more functionality built into it (without requiring the installation of all those extensions), but is a little odd getting used to after using Firefox for so long. It has a built-in sliding sidebar (they call it a Panel), a place for all my notes, integrated BitTorrent client, integrated RSS feed reader (although I still prefer Google Reader), integrated IRC client (not that I need it), and… it found all my Firefox bookmarks automagically without me having to do anything at all! None of this import/export business going on here.

Main things I’m missing : the StumbleUpon toolbar (no Opera version available), Colorzilla (still looking for a replacement for that), and some way to get Opera to recognize that when I click a mailto link, I want it to open my Gmail compose page (I got Firefox to do that for me, but I haven’t figured out yet how to get Opera to do that or if it’s even possible). Gmail works fine for me in Opera, btw, contrary to some of the things I’ve read online, but I don’t use the chat features in Gmail since I have Gtalk running anyway.

Opera works very well with Newsvine, although I’ve noticed that when I vote on an article or seed, the Vote button which normally turns grey and gets a checkmark, doesn’t render properly after I’ve clicked it, although the vote still works. I get a little grey square, which looks like only the left quarter of the button is showing. One other annoying thing… the Seed Newsvine button always opens in a new tab rather than in a popup, when I click it, and I can’t figure out how to make the bookmarklet open the popup instead (but that’s an Opera issue, since the del.icio.us bookmarklet does the same thing). Allowing either domain to open popups doesn’t affect the bookmarklets’ behavior, so I haven’t been able to solve this one. And I haven’t yet found a solution via Google either. I’m assuming someone out there has figured out a user.js solution to this, but since I’m still getting my feet wet with Opera, I’m not messing with that yet.

I’ve also noticed that Opera seems to use a whole lot less resources (CPU, RAM) than Firefox does, allowing me to have many more tabs open and accomplish a lot more quicker. So… I think I’ll be using Opera for my Newsvine stuff and maybe some general browsing, and Firefox for the toolbars and features that I can’t get for Opera.