The Logics

When building websites I use a dual monitor computer with 19” and 15” monitors so that I can see how the websites will fit different sized screens. I also use Explorer®, Firefox®, Google Chrome®, and Opera® browsers to ensure that the websites will display properly in each. Microsoft’s Explorer continues being favored for its quality of display, and though I frequently use Firefox due to its speed and choice of skins, I have been pleasantly surprised with the new Opera version 10.10.

Opera’s turbo mode is said to use Opera’s own servers to compress a web page’s file before sending it to your computer. In my experience the turbo mode does work well, typically increasing load speeds two to three times normal. Although I have not yet actually timed page loads, I am almost certain that Opera is sizably faster than Firefox. The only known drawback of the turbo mode is that graphics arrive with a fair bit of distortion due to being compressed at a high percentage. Nevertheless, the distortion is of little concern since it is a simple thing to turn off the turbo mode and refresh the screen to download a page’s graphics in their best quality.

Most noticed by me is that Firefox and Opera both have recently improved their ability to properly display text. The browsers can now accurately display a tabbed first line in a full-justified paragraph, a thing that only Explorer was able to do previously. Too, Explorer, Firefox, and Opera appear to be handling tables well, but Google Chrome completely fails to display tables that are empty of content but used for coloring of the page’s design. An example can be viewed at http://repoman.websitedesigningamarillo.com/. The red and blue lines display properly in Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, but are not displayed at all in Chrome. I suspect that very few users would ever know of Chrome’s limitations since the errors may not be noticeable without the user viewing the same web pages with Chrome and other browsers. To ensure the web page is properly displayed in all browsers, in the future I will replace the colored tables with fixed lines sized to a similar thickness.

Chrome now has a few choices of browser coloring, but Chrome is still somewhat primitive in feel, look, and use as compared to the steadily increasing refinements of Opera. As soon as I import all of my bookmarks from Firefox and Explorer, Opera may become my main browser.

Opera’s full-screen command (F11) works well, and it also hides the vertical scroll bar. I am accustomed to undoing the full-screen mode by moving the mouse pointer up to the top of the screen on Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome where a click can restore the screen to normal size. Opera is a little different, your only needing to right click anywhere on the screen which results in a menu popping up with the option to toggle the full screen mode. Opera has a lot of added features like mouse gestures, some of which I believe are worth having like the ctrl + scroll acting as page zoom.

At present I am so pleased with Opera’s layout and function that I thought it would be a good thing to sing a little praise for the good work done by the Opera people.

http://www.opera.com/

Favored Skin: ibis_inspire-2_91