Firefox versus Opera

I've been using Firefox for about a year now. I'm very happy with it. Especially useful is its extension mechanism. One can download small extensions to enhance the browser to do just about anything. But I've found that most of the things I've extended Firefox with are features I grew accustomed to while using Opera.

A couple of days ago a new version of Opera was released, version 8.5. The big news is that it doesn't have any ad banners in the unregistered browser anymore. I downloaded it to try it out and see how it compared with Firefox nowadays. And I must say I'm very tempted to switch back. Opera feels lighter and snappier. It comes with just about any feature I use on the web preinstalled. It saves sessions by default so that when you start the browser again it will show you the same set of pages as when the browser was closed. One previous problem with Opera was that it didn't handle som web sites that well, including Blogger and GMail which I depend heavily on. But that is a problem of the past. The only thing I'm lacking in Opera is some feature to block ads in a webpage. I'm currently using the Adblock extension to Firefox which has made my everyday surfing experience so much nicer.

But then there is also the question of whether I should support an Open Source project or not. It feels good to contribute the the Firefox project because I believe in Open Source and I think it is a good thing. But Open Source also needs competition otherwise it run the risk of growing stale. And Opera seems to me to be a better browser in a lot of respects. If I can make it block ads in web page just as well as the Adblock extension does it I'm probably going to switch back.