Key rivals to Firefox are market leader Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple Inc's Safari browser.
It doesn't bode well for Opera when they aren't even included in the list. I'm not even an Opera user, but why doesn't Opera get more love? They have some critical flaw in their browser? Or is it just because it's not the default of a major OS?
I do really enjoy that the browser wars got started again because they are now development platforms. Shows that a seemingly dead market doesn't always stay that way if you innovate.
Opera cache's the hell out of everything. I remember navigating to http://localhost:3000 when developing a rails app without actually starting up a rails server, and seeing the last version of my rails app show up.
That and some wonky CSS rules are my only complaint.
I think that opera has become the third wheel when there is only enough space for 2. The opera browser is pretty good IMHO and it has some outstanding features that people may enjoy but it just doesn't have firefox's plugin support or the wide acceptability and market share of IE. If everybody used opera, everybody would probably continue using opera just how if everybody used firefox, they would continue using firefox, and how now that ~80% use IE, about 80% continue to use IE. Browsers and pretty much anything on the internet run into a phenomena known as network externalities. It is a situation where switching costs are so high that once a user is committed to one choice, they stick to it. Opera is just in the wrong market at the wrong time. This is also why firefox's progress is so amazing. Fighting network externalities is very tough (see ipv4 vs. ipv6).
It doesn't bode well for Opera when they aren't even included in the list. I'm not even an Opera user, but why doesn't Opera get more love? They have some critical flaw in their browser? Or is it just because it's not the default of a major OS?
I do really enjoy that the browser wars got started again because they are now development platforms. Shows that a seemingly dead market doesn't always stay that way if you innovate.